"Then you will not marry me, Sholto?"
Her hands were clasped with the sweetest petitionary grace.
"No!"
The monosyllable escaped from his lips with a snort like a puff of steam from under the lid of a boiling pot.
"Not even if I ask you very nicely, Sholto?"
"No!"
The negative came again, apparently fiercer than before, almost like an explosion indeed. But still there was a hollow sound about it somewhere.
At this the girl stopped suddenly and, drawing a little lace kerchief from her bosom, she sank her head into it in apparent abandonment of grief.
"Oh, what shall I do?" she wailed, "Sholto says he will not marry me, and I have asked him so sweetly. What shall I do? What shall I do? I will e'en go and drown me in the Dee water!"
And with her kerchief still held to her eyes—or at least (to be wholly accurate) to one of them—the despised maiden ran towards the river bank. She did not run very fast, but still she ran.