“Just swallow this, swallow this, my dear lady; it will give you strength. She has had a bit shock. She will be better, better directly. Just do everything you can for her, like a good woman. I was perhaps rash. But she’ll soon come to herself.”
“I am myself, Mr Somerville, I am not needing any of your brandy. I cannot bide the smell of it. Janet, take it way. I have got some news that I will tell you after. Mr Somerville, I will have to take time to think of it. I cannot get it into my mind all at once.”
“No, no,” he said, soothingly, “it was not to be expected. I was too rash. I should have broken it to you more gently: a wee drop of wine, if you will not have the brandy?—though good spirit is always the best.”
“I want nothing,” she said; “just give me a moment to think.” And then out of that bitterness of death there came a low cry—“Oh, his bonnie name, his bonnie name!”
“Ay,” said the old gentleman, full of sympathy, “that is just what I thought—my old friend’s name, douce honest man! that never did anything to be ashamed of in all his days.”
The blood came back to her face with a rush.
“And how can you tell,” she said, “whether there’s anything to be ashamed of there? You said yourself it was a wild place. They cannot be on their p’s and q’s as we are, choosing their company. I am a decent woman myself, and have been, as you say, all my days; but who could tell what kind of folk I might have got among had I been there?”
She rose up and began to walk about the room in sudden excitement. “He would interfere to help the weak one,” she said. “If there was a weak side, he would be upon that; he would be helping somebody. Him—murder a man! You were his father’s friend, I know; but did you ever see Robbie Ogilvy, my son?—and, if not, man! how daur you speak, and speak of shame and my laddie together, to me?”
Mr Somerville was so taken by surprise that he could not find a word to say. “I thought,” he began—and then he stopped short. Had not shame already been busy with Robbie Ogilvy’s name? But however much he had been in possession of his faculties and recollections, silence was the wiser way.
“There is one thing,” Mrs Ogilvy said; “if this be true, and if it be him—there will be a trial, and he will need defence. He must have the best defence, the best advocate. You will send somebody out at once without losing a day. Oh, I’m old, I’m weak, I’m an old woman that knows nothing! I’ve never been from home. But what is all that. What is all that to my Robbie? I think, Mr Somerville, I will go myself.”