“They’ll do that, Sir Ludovic,” said Bell, divided between her desire to humor him and her wish to keep off painful subjects; “the ladies have never shown any want o’ respect. But Miss Grace was aye fond of bright colors. They’re no so young as I mind them, but they’re weel-fa’ured women still. The Leslies were aye a handsome family. They take it from yourself, Sir Ludovic, if I may make so bold.”
“Not entirely from me,” said Sir Ludovic, with a smile. He did not dislike the allusion to his good looks, even though he was dying. “Their mother, whom you scarcely remember, was a handsome woman. We were not a bad-looking couple, people said. Ah! that’s a long time ago, Bell.”
“Deed and it’s a long time, Sir Ludovic;” but Bell did not know what to say on this subject, for the interpolation of a third Lady Leslie no doubt made the matter somewhat more difficult. Probably this struck Sir Ludovic too, and he was in the condition when human nature is glad to seek a little help from another, or sympathy at least, no help being possible. This time he sighed—which was a thing much more befitting than laughter on a dying bed.
“That’s a strange subject altogether,” he said; “any meeting after so long a time would be strange. If she had been at one end of the world and I at the other, there would be many changes even then. Would we understand each other?” Sir Ludovic had ceased to speak to Bell. He was musing alone, talking with himself. “And the difference must be greater than any mortal separation. Know each other? Of course we must know each other, she and I; but the question is, will we understand each other?”
“Eh, Sir Ludovic,” said Bell, “it was God’s will that parted you, not your ain. There would be fault on one side or the other, if my lady had been in, say America, a’ this time, and you at hame; but she’s been in—heaven; that makes a’ the difference.”
“Does it?” he said; “that’s just what I want to be sure of, Bell. Time has made great changes on me. If I find her just where she was when she left me, I have gone long beyond that; and if she has gone on too, where is she? and how shall we meet, each with our new experiences which the other does not know?”
Bell was very much perplexed by this inquiry. It had not occurred to her own mind. “Eh, Sir Ludovic,” she said, “I am no the one, the like o’ me, to clear up sic mysteries. But what new things can the lady meet with in heaven, but the praise o’ God and the love o’ God? and that doesna distract the mind.”
“Ah, Bell! but I’ve met with a great many more things since I parted with her; and then,” he said, with a gleam in his eyes which might have been half comic in its embarrassment had the circumstances been different, “there is—my little Peggy’s mother, poor thing.”
Bell sat down, in her confusion and bewilderment, by the bedside, and pondered. “I’m thinking,” she said, “that my late leddy, Miss Margret’s mother, will be the one that will maist cling to ye when a’s done.”
“Poor little thing!” he said, softly, with a smile on his face—“poor little thing! She should have seen me safe out of the world, and then had a life of her own. That would have made a balance; but how are we to know what my wife thinks? You see, we know nothing—we know nothing. And it is very hard to tell, when people have been parted so long, and things have happened, how they are to get on when they meet again.”