"Kate," said Barra, more intently and tenderly than he had yet spoken, "some day, and in some isle of quiet bliss where all evil and untoward things are put behind us, I will yet make you love me. For never have I thus set all my fancy on any woman before. And by the word of Murdo, Lord of Barra, none but you will I wed, and, by the honor of my clan, no other shall have you but I!"
He held out his hand. Kate, desiring him to go, gave him hers a little reluctantly. He bent to it and kissed it fervently.
"On this hand I swear," he said, slowly and solemnly, "that while I live it shall be given in marriage to none other, but shall be mine alone. By the graves that are green on the Isle of Ashes and by the honor of the thirty chieftains of Barra—I swear it."
Kate took her hand quickly again to her.
"Ye have taken a vain oath, my lord," she said, "for marriage and the giving of a hand are not within the compulsion of one, but are the agreement of two. And if this hand is ever given to a man my heart shall go with it, or else Kate McGhie's marriage-bed shall be her resting-grave!"
* * * * *
It was but two years since the Little Marie had carried her first basket of flowers to the streets of Brussels. From an ancient farm nigh to the city she had come, bringing with her her fresh complexion, her beauty, her light, swift, confident, easily influenced spirit.
Then, while yet a child, she had been hunted down, petted, betrayed, and forsaken by the man who, being on a visit to Brussels, had first been attracted by her childish simplicity. It chanced that in the dark days of her despair she had found her way to Amersfort, and finally to the Hostel of the Coronation. She had been there but a bare week when Wat came into her life, and his words to the girl were the first of genuine, unselfish kindness she had listened to in that abode of smiling misery and radiant despair.
As a trampled flower raises its head after a gentle rain, so her scarcely dulled childish purity reawakened within her, and with it—all the more fiercely that it came too late—the love that suffereth all things and upbraideth not. Marie was suddenly struck to the heart by the agony of her position. She might love, but none could give her back true love in return. Her soul abode in blank distress after the fray had been quelled and Walter led away to prison. Without speech to any at the inn of the Coronation, Marie fled to the house of a decent woman of her own country, who undertook the washing and dressing of fine linen—dainty cobweb frilleries for the ladies of the city, and stiffer garmentry for the severe and sober court of the Princess of Orange.
For love had been a plant of swift growth in the lush and ill-tended garden of the girl's heart. Constantly after this both dawn and dusk found her beneath Wat's window. Marie contrived a little basket attached to a rope, which he let down from the window in the swell of the tower. She it was who instructed Wat how to make the first cord of sufficient length and strength by ravelling a stocking and replaiting the yarn. In this fashion Marie brought to Wat's prison-cell such fruits as the warehouses of the Nederlandish companies afforded—strange-smelling delicacies of the utmost Indies, and early dainties from gardens nearer home. Linen, too, fresh and clean, she brought him, and flowers—at all of which, for the consideration of a dole of gold, the jailer winked, so that Wat's heart was abundantly touched by the pathetic devotion of the girl. Scarce could she be induced to accept the money which Wat put into her basket when he let it down again. And even then Marie took the gold only that she might have the means of obtaining other delicacies for Wat—such as were beyond the reach of purchase out of the meagre stipend she received from the laundress of fine linen with whom her working-days were spent.