Nan laughed. She courtesied with an affected manner taught in Edinburgh schools.
“Sir,” she said, “you are a soldier, and of course the gown at the moment in front of you is always the finest in the world. Don’t tell me it is not so,” she hastened to add, as he made to protest, “because I know my father and all the ways of his trade, and—and—and if you were not the soldier even in your pleasantries to ladies I would not think you the soldier at all.”
The General smiled and nudged the young fellow jocosely. “There,” said he, “did I not tell you she was a fiery one?”
“I hope you did not discuss me in that fashion,” said Nan, pausing with annoyance as she moved aside a little, all her pride leaping to her face.
“Your father will have his joke,” said Young Islay quickly. “He barely let me know you were here.”
The General smiled again in admiration of the young fellow’s astuteness, and Nan recovered.
They went to the parlour. Through the window came the songs of the reapers and the twitter of birds busy among the seeds at the barn-door. Roses swinging on the porch threw a perfume into the room. Young Islay felt, for the first time in his life, a sense of placid happiness. And when Nan sang later—a newer, wider world, more years, more thoughts, more profound depths in her song—he was captive.
To his aid he summoned all his confidence; he talked like a prince (if they talk head-up, valiantly, serene and possessing); he moved about the room studiously unconscious and manly; he sat with grace and showed his hand, and all the time he claimed the girl for his. “You are mine, you are mine!” he said to himself over and over again, and by the flush on her neck as she sat at the harpsichord she might be hearing, through some magic sense, his bold unspoken thought.
Evening crept, lights came, the father went out to give some orders at the barn; they were left alone. The instrument that might have been a heavenly harp at once lost its dignity and relapsed to a tinkling wire, for Nan was silent, and there crowded into Young Islay’s head all the passion of his people. He rose and strode across the room; he put an arm round her waist and raised her, all astounded, from the chair.
She turned round and tried to draw back, looking startled at his eyes that were wide with fire.