"Come back, come back, Miss Nelly, afore the Leddy finds out; ye hae nae refuge, an' ye're traced already by mair than me."
But in a moment strong hands were upon her, holding her like a fluttering moth, or a wild panting leveret, or a bird beating its wings; doing her no violence, however, for who would brush off the down, or tear the soft fur, or break the ruffled feathers? She struggled so frantically that poor old Nanny interposed—
"Na, sir; let her be; she'll gae hame wi' me, her ain born serving-woman. And oh, Staneholme, be not hard, it's her last nicht."
That was Nelly Carnegie's marriage eve.
On the morrow the marriage was celebrated. The bridegroom might pass, in his manly prime and his scarlet coat, although a dowf gallant; but who would have thought that Nelly Carnegie in the white brocade which was her grandmother's the day that made her sib to Rothes—Nelly Carnegie who flouted at love and lovers, and sported a free, light, brave heart, would have made so dowie a bride? The company consisted only of Lady Carnegie's starched cousins, with their husbands and their daughters, who yet hoped to outrival Nelly with her gloomy Lauderdale laird.
The hurried ceremony excused the customary festivities. The family party could keep counsel, and preserve a discreet blindness when the ring dropped from the bride's fingers, and the wine stood untasted before her, while Lady Carnegie did the honours as if lonely age and narrow circumstances did not exist.
[IV.—NELLY CARNEGIE IN HER NEW HOME.]
The March sun shone clear and cold on grey Staneholme, standing on the verge of a wide moor, with the troubled German Ocean for a background, and the piping east wind rattling each casement. There was haste and hurry in Staneholme, from the Laird's mother down through her buxom merry daughters to the bareheaded servant-lasses, and the substitutes for groom and lacquey, in coarse homespun, and honest, broad blue bonnets. There was bustle in the little dining-room with its high windows, which the sea-foam sometimes dimmed, and its spindle-legged chairs and smoked pictures. There was blithe work in the cheerful hall, in whose broad chimney great seacoal fires blazed—at whose humming wheels the young Mays of Staneholme, as well as its dependants, still took their morning turn. There was willing toil in the sleeping-rooms, with their black cabinets and heavy worsted curtains. And there was a thronged mêlée in the court formed by the outhouses, over whose walls the small-leaved ivy of the coast clustered untreasured. Staneholme's favourite horse was rubbing down; and Staneholme's dogs were airing in couples. Even the tenantry of the never-failing pigeon-house at the corner of the old garden were in turmoil, for half-a-score of their number had been transferred to the kitchen this morning to fill the goodly pasties which were to anticipate the blackberry tarts and sweet puddings, freezing in rich cream. But the sun had sunk behind the moor where the broom was only budding, and the last sea-mew had flown to its scaur, and the smouldering whins had leaped up into the first yellow flame of the bonfires, and the more shifting, fantastic, brilliant banners of the aurora borealis shot across the frosty sky, before the first faint shout announced that Staneholme and his lady had come home. With his wife behind him on his bay, with pistols at his saddle-bow, and "Jock" on "the long-tailed yad" at his back, with tenant retainers and veteran domestics pressing round—and ringing shouts and homely huzzas and good wishes filling the air, already heavy with the smoke of good cheer—Staneholme rode in. He lifted down an unresisting burden, took in his a damp, passive hand, and throwing over his shoulder brief, broken thanks, hurried up the flight of stairs, through the rambling, crooked passages into the hall.
Staneholme was always a man of few words. He was taken up, as was right, with the little lady, whose habit trailed behind her, and who never raised her modest eyes. "Well-a-day! the Laird's bargain was of sma' buik," thought the retainers, but "Hurrah" for the fat brose and lumps of corned beef, and the ale and the whisky, with which they are now to be regaled!