Nelly was thunderstruck. "Hame!" she said, at last, slowly, "where you compelled me to travel, where I gloomed on you day and night, as I vowed; I, who would not be a charge and an oppression to the farthest-off cousin that bears your name. Are you demented?"
"And this is the end," groaned Staneholme, in bitterness; "I dreamt that I would win at last. I did not love you for your health and strength, or your youth and beauty. I declare to you, Nelly Carnegie, your face is fairer to me, lying lily white on your pillow there, than when it was fresh like that rose; and when others deserted you and left you forlorn, I thought I might try again, and wha kent but the ill would be blotted out for the very sake of the strong love that wrought it?"
A dimness came across Nelly's eyes, and a faintness over her choking heart; but she pressed her hands upon her breast, and strove against it for the sake of her womanhood.
"And I dreamed," she answered slowly and tremulously, "that it bude to be true, true love, however it had sinned, that neither slight nor hate, nor absence nor fell decay could uproot; and that could tempt me to break my plighted word, and lay my infirmity on the man that bargained for me like gear, and that I swore—Heaven absolve me!—I would gar rue his success till his deein' day. Adam Home, what are you seekin' at my hands?"
"Nae mair than you'll grant, Nelly Carnegie—pardon and peace, and my young gudewife, the desire o' my eyes. I'll be feet to you, Nelly, as long's I'm to the fore."
"Big tramping feet, Staneholme," said Nelly, trying to jest, and pushing him back; "dinna promise ower fair. Na, Adam Home, you'll wauken the bairn!"
So Staneholme bought the grand new family coach of which the Homes had talked for the last generation; and Lady Carnegie curtsied her supercilious adieus, and hoped her son and daughter would be better keepers at home for the future. And Nanny Swinton wore her new gown and cockernonie, and blessed her bairn and her bairn's bairn, through tears that were now no more than a sunny shower, the silver mist of the past storm.
There was brooding heat on the moors and a glory on the sea when Staneholme rode by his lady's coach, within sight of home.
"There will be no great gathering to-night, Staneholme; no shots or cheers; no lunt in the blue sky; only doubt and amaze about an old man and wife: but there will be two happy hearts that were heavy as stane before. Well-a-day! to think I should be fain to return this way!"
Staneholme laughed, and retorted something perhaps neither quite modest nor wise; but the ready tongue that had learnt so speedily to pour itself out to his greedy ears did not now scold and contradict him, but sighed—