“Indeed, and you must tell me,” said her mistress, now determined. “There's some mystery here that must be cleared, as I'm a living woman. Show me that letter this instant!”
“I can't, Miss Dyce, I can't; I'm quite affronted. You don't ken who it's from.”
“I ken better than yourself; it's from nobody but Lennox,” said Miss Bell.
“My stars!” cried the maid, astonished. “Do you tell me that? Amn't I the stupid one? I thought it was from Charles. Oh, m'em, what will Charles Maclean of Oronsay think of me? He'll think I was demented,” and turning to her servant's chest she threw it open and produced the second sham epistle.
Miss Bell went in with it to Ailie in the parlor, and they read it together. Ailie laughed till the tears came at the story it revealed. “It's more creditable to her imagination than to my teaching in grammar and spelling,” was her only criticism. “The—the little rogue!”
“And is that the way you look at it?” asked Bell, disgusted. “A pack of lies from end to end. She should be punished for it; at least she should be warned that it was very wicked.”
“Stuff and nonsense,” said Miss Ailie. “I think she has been punished enough already, if punishment was in it. Just fancy if the Lord could make so much ado about a little thing like that! It's not a pack of lies at all, Bell; it's literature, it's romance.”
“Well, romancing!” said Miss Bell. “What's romancing if you leave out Walter Scott? I am glad she has a conviction of the sin of it herself. If she had slipped away from us on Wednesday this letter would have been upon her soul. It's vexing her now.”
“If that is so, it's time her mind was relieved,” said Ailie, and, rising, sped to the garden with the letter in her hand. Her heart bled to see the apprehension on Bud's face, and beside her Dan stroking her hair and altogether bewildered.
“Bud,” cried Ailie, kissing her, “do you think you could invent a lover for me who would write me letters half so interesting as this? It's a lover like that I have all the time been waiting for: the ordinary kind, by all my reading, must be very dull in their correspondence, and the lives they lead deplorably humdrum—