“Not—not altogether,” said he, unhappily accepting the common locution of the town, that means always more than it says.
A spark of humour flashed to merriment in her eyes and died to a demure ember again before he noticed it. “Here’s John Hielan’man,” she said to herself, and she recalled, not to Gilian’s credit in the comparison, the effrontery of Young Islay.
The situation was a little awkward, for he held her hand too long, taking all the pleasure he could from a sudden conviction that in all the times he had seen Glen Shira it had never seemed fully furnished and habitable till now. This creature, so much the mistress of herself, and dainty and cheerful, made up for all its solitude; she was the one thing (he felt) wanting to make complete the landscape.
Her blush and a feeble effort to disengage her hand brought him to himself.
“I am pleased to see you back,” said he shyly, as he released her. “I had not forgotten—oh no, I had not forgotten you. It would be easy to convince you of that, I think, but in all my recollection of Miss Nan I had more of the girl in the den of the Jean in my mind than the Edinburgh lady.”
“You’ll be meaning that I am old and—and pretty no longer,” said she. “Upon my word, you are honestly outspoken in these parts nowadays.” She pouted, with lines of annoyance upon her brow, which seriously disturbed him, and so obviously that she was compelled to laugh.
Not a word could he find to say to raillery which was quite new to him, and so for the sake of both of them as they stood at the gate Miss Nan had to ply an odd one-sided conversation till he found himself at his ease. By-and-by his shyness forsook him.
The sun was declining; the odours of the traffic of peace blew from the land; one large and ruddy star lit over Strone. The fishers raised their sails, and as their prows beat the sea they chanted the choruses of the wave.
A recollection of all this having happened before seized them together; she looked at him with a smile upon her lips, and he was master of her thought before she had expressed it.
“I know exactly what you are thinking of,” he said.