“Than you love me,” said Alexander-Jonita; “I know—drive on!”
I did not notice her evil-conditioned jibe.
“Why, Jonita, he has all his life been in love with the Lady Mary—the Bull of Earlstoun’s daughter.”
Alexander-Jonita nodded pensively.
“Even so I thought,” she said, “but, as I guess, Mary Gordon has sent him about his business, and so he has been taken with our poor Jean’s puling pussydom. God forgive me that I should say so much of a dying woman.”
“A dying woman!” cried I, “there is nothing the matter with Jean.”
Alexander-Jonita shook her head.
“Jean is not long for this world,” she said, “I bid you remember. Saw you ever the red leap through the white like yon, save when the life burns fast to the ashes and the pulse beats ever more light and weak?”
“And how long hath this thing been afoot?”
“Since the day of your brother’s first preaching, when to save her shoon Jean must needs go barefoot and wash her feet in the burn that slips down by the kirkyard wall.”