"Sweet she is," said he, as he timidly scanned the face of his first love, and pressed her hand; but his countenance changed as he felt the silky-skinned hand of the girl tremble within his, as if it shrunk from the touch, and saw her blue eyes turned on the ground, and heard a sigh steal from her breast. A feeling that was new to him thrilled through the circle of his nerves, and made him tremble to the centre of his being. He had never calculated upon that strange emotion, nor could he analyze it: it was inscrutable, but it was terrible; it was not simply a return of his own love under the restraint of the new one, neither was it simple remorse, but a mixture of various thrills which induced no purpose, but only rendered him uncertain, feeble, and miserable. So engrossed for a moment was he, that he did not even seek the eye of Isobel, who was watching him in every turn of his countenance. Then he would seek some relief in words.
"You have my mother's love at least, Marjory," he said; and he could not help saying it. "And I shall be pleased to see you wear her gift, which she sent to you through me, who gave it to Isobel."
Marjory was silent, and Ogilvy turned his eye upon Isobel.
"She rejects it," said Isobel, "and wishes me to return it."
"Rejects it!" ejaculated the youth, as he again looked at Marjory.
Marjory was still silent, and her eyes were even more timidly turned to the ground.
"I did not regard the gift as valuable for the brilliants and opals," continued he, "but as conveying the love of my mother; and surely Marjory cannot reject that love."
Yet still was Marjory silent, for she had sworn.
"Oh, she is frightened, poor Sweet Marjory," cried Isobel, with a satirical laugh; "for she has seen the wraith bride on the bastle tower."
"The wraith bride!" responded Ogilvy, relapsing into silence, and instinctively looking round him, where only glared the torchlight among the trees of the lawn, and the dark bodies of the fagot-pilers were moving backwards and forwards. He had heard the couplet mentioned by the forester, and had of course viewed it as a play of superstition; but reason is a weak thing in the grasp of feeling, and now he was all feeling. The remorse of which he had had premonitions, had now taken him as a fit. His eye sought Marjory's down-turned face, and shrunk from Isobel's watchful stare; but the direction of that organ did not form an index to his mind, for his fancy was, even during these swift instants, busy weaving the many-coloured web of the future of his married life, and clouding it with sombre shades; nor did the active agent hesitate to draw materials from the past fortunes of the house of Bell's Tower, and mix them up as things yet to be repeated. Even the wraith bride performed her part now, where she had feeling to help her weakness, and set her up among realities.