“Ah!” he cried ruefully, “there’s where you do me injustice! Did you know me so little—and indeed you know me but little enough, more’s my sorrow—did you know me so little that you must believe me a savage to be guilty of a crime like that? Must I be saying that before God I did not know that my father and—and—”
“—And my father.”
“—And your father, though I would be the last to charge him, were scheming in any commercial way on my behalf? Come, come, I was not blate, was I? the last time we were together; my impudence was not in the style of a man who would go the other way about a wooing, was it?”
“Then you did not know?” She blushed and paused.
“I knew nothing,” he protested. “I knew nothing but that I loved you, and you know that too if telling can inform you. I told my father that, and he was well enough pleased, and I could not guess he would make a fool of me and a victim of you in my absence.”
She stood trembling to this revelation of his innocence, and, once more the confident lover, Young Islay tried to take her in his arms.
She ran from him, not the young lady of Edinburgh but a merry-hearted child, making for the side of Little Fox, the air as she went flapping her gown till it beat gaily like a flag. She ran light-footed, laughing in her sudden ease of mind, and on the more distant of the two slopes of Cruach-an-Lochain, antlers rose inquiring; then a red deer looked and listened, forgetting to crop the poor grass at his feet.
For a second or two Young Islay paused, wondering at her caprice; then he caught the spirit of it and followed with a halloo. A pleasant quarry—the temptation of it made his blood tingle as no sport in the world could do; his halloo came back in echoes from the hill, jocund and hearty echoes, and Sir Deer at a bound went far to the rear among the bracken.
Nan sped panting yet laughing. Then she heard his cry. “I am coming, I am coming,” he called. It might have been the pibroch of the dawn, the hopeful conquering dawn on valley rims. She put more vigour into her flight; her lips set hard; she thought if he caught her before she reached the spot where Gilian last had kissed her, she must be his for good.
“Run as you like, I am coming,” cried her pursuer, and he was easily overtaking her. Then he saw how hard and earnestly she strove. With a grimace to himself, he slackened his pace and let her gain ground. “I must be doing my best for Gilian,” she thought; but as she risked a glance over her shoulder and saw the pursuit decline, saw his face handsome and laughing and eager, full of the fun of the adventure, across a widening space, saw him kiss his hand to her as he ran leisurely, she forgot that she had meant to run for fair play and Gilian, and she, too, slackened her pace.