She was the only one who received me coldly, seemed indeed impatient to be off, leaving the conversation to her friends while she toyed with a few late flowers on the bushes beside her.
“You should never put heather and gall together,” I said to her, rallyingly.
“Indeed!” she said, flushing. “Here’s one who wears what she chooses, regardless of custom or freit.”
“But you know,” I said, “the badge of the Campbell goes badly with that of so bitter a foe as the MacDonald. You might as well add the oak-stalk of Montrose, and make the emblem tell the story of those troubles.”
It was meant in good-humour, but for some reason it seemed to sting her to the quick. I could see it in the flash of her eyes and the renewed flush at her temples.
There was a little mischievous girl in the company, who giggled and said, “Betty’s in a bad key to-day; her sweetheart has vexed her surely.”
It was a trivial remark, but I went off with it in my mind.
A strange interest in the moods of this old school-friend had begun to stir me. Meeting her on my daily walks to town by the back way through the new avenue, I found her seemingly anxious to avoid me, and difficult to warm to any interest but in the most remote and abstract affairs. Herself she would never speak of, her plans, cares, ambitions, preferences, or aversions; she seemed dour set on aloofness. And though she appeared to listen to my modestly phrased exploits with attention and respect, and some trepidation at the dangerous portions, she had notably more interest in my talk of others. Ours was the only big house in the glen she never came calling to, though her father was an attentive visitor and supped his curds-and-cream of a Saturday with friendly gusto, apologising for her finding something to amuse and detain her at Roderick’s over the way, or the widow’s at Gearran Bridge.
I would go out on these occasions and walk in the open air with a heart uneasy.
And now it was I came to conclude, after all, that much as a man may learn of many women studied indifferently, there is something magical about his personal regard for one, that sets up a barrier of mystery between them. So long as I in former years went on the gay assumption that every girl’s character was on the surface, and I made no effort to probe deeper, I was the confidant, the friend, of many a fine woman. They all smiled at my douce sobriety, but in the end they preferred it to the gaudy recklessness of more handsome men.