The next day she met him again, and told him she was going to Glasgow with Lady Drum to see her cousin, the Whaup.
"I wonder," said Earlshope, "if he hopes to win your love, and is working there with the intention of coming back and asking you to be his wife."
"And if that will make him happy," she said slowly and with absent eyes, "I will do that if he demands it."
"You will marry him, and make him fancy that you love him?"
"No, I should tell him everything. I should tell him he deserves to marry a woman who has never loved anyone but himself, and yet that I will be his wife if his marrying me will alone make him happy."
"But, Coquette--don't you see it cannot end here?" he said almost desperately. "You do not know the chains in which I am bound; and I dare not tell you."
"No; I do not wish to know. It is enough for me to be beside you now, and if it should all prove bad and sorrowful, I shall remember that once I walked with you here, and we had no thought of ill, and were for a little while happy."
Talk of Glasgow being a sombre, grey city! To the Whaup it seemed that the empty pavements were made of gold; that the fronts of the houses were shining with a happy light; and the air full of a delicious tingling. For did not the great city hold in it Coquette? And as he sped his boots clattered "Coquette! Coquette! Coquette!" And presently he was taking her out for a walk, and cunningly drawing near to a trysting well.
"Coquette," he said suddenly, "do you know that lovers used to meet here, and join their hands over the well, and swear they would marry each other some day? Coquette, if you would only give me your hand now! I will wait any time--I have waited already, Coquette."
"Oh, do not say any more. I will do anything for you, but not that--not that." And then, a moment afterwards, she added: "Or see; I will promise to marry you, if you like, after many, many years--only not now--not within a few years."