"Yes, my lady," answered Malcolm: "if to do for you all and the best you will permit me to do be to take care of you like Kelpie, then so it is."
Clementina gave a little sigh.
"Mind you don't scruple, my lady, to give what orders you please. It will be your fishing-boat for to-night."
Clementina bowed her head in acknowledgment.
"And now, my lady," Malcolm went on, "just look about you for a moment. See this great vault of heaven, full of golden light raining on trees and flowers—every atom of air shining. Take the whole into your heart, that you may feel the difference at night, my lady—when the stars, and neither sun nor moon, will be in the sky, and all the flowers they shine on will be their own flitting, blinking, swinging, shutting and opening reflections in the swaying floor of the ocean—when the heat will be gone, and the air clean and clear as the thoughts of a saint."
Clementina did as he said, and gazed above and around her on the glory of the summer day overhanging the sweet garden, and on the flowers that had just before been making her heart ache with their unattainable secret. But she thought with herself that if Malcolm and she but shared it with a common heart as well as neighbored eyes, gorgeous day and ethereal night, or snow-clad wild and sky of stormy blackness, were alike welcome to her spirit.
As they talked they wandered up the garden, and had drawn near the spot where, in the side of the glen, was hollowed the cave of the hermit. They now turned toward the pretty arbor of moss that covered its entrance, each thinking the other led, but Malcolm not without reluctance. For how horribly and unaccountably had he not been shaken, the only time he ever entered it, at sight of the hermit! The thing was a foolish wooden figure, no doubt, but the thought that it still sat over its book in the darkest corner of the cave, ready to rise and advance with outstretched hand to welcome its visitor, had, ever since then, sufficed to make him shudder. He was on the point of warning Clementina lest she too should be worse than startled, when he was arrested by the voice of John Jack, the old gardener, who came stooping after them, looking a sexton of flowers.
"Ma'colm, Ma'colm!" he cried, and crept up wheezing.—"I beg yer leddyship's pardon, my leddy, but I wadna hae Ma'colm lat ye gang in there ohn tellt ye what there is inside."
"Thank you, John. I was just going to tell my lady," said Malcolm.
"Because, ye see," pursued John, "I was ae day here i' the gairden—an' I was jist graftin' a bonny wull rose-buss wi' a Hector o' France—an' it grew to be the bonniest rose-buss in a' the haill gairden—whan the markis—no the auld markis, but my leddy's father—cam' up the walk there, an' a bonny yoong leddy wi' his lordship, as it micht be yersel's twa—an' I beg your pardon, my leddy, but I'm an auld man noo, an' whiles forgets the differs atween fowk—an' this yoong leddy 'at they ca'd Miss Cam'ell—ye kenned her yersel' efterhin', I daur say, Ma'colm—he was unco ta'en wi' her, the markis, as ilka body cud see ohn luikit that near, sae 'at some said 'at hoo he hed no richt to gang on wi' her that gait, garrin' her believe, gien he wasna gaein' to merry her. That's naither here nor there, hooever, seein' it a' cam' to jist naething ava'. Sae up they gaed to the cave yon'er, as I was tellin' ye; an' hoo it was was a won'er, for I s' warran' she had been aboot the place near a tow-mon (twelvemonth), but never had she been intil that cave, an' kenned no more nor the bairn unborn what there was in 't. An' sae whan the airemite, as the auld minister ca'd him—though what for he ca'd a muckle block like yon an airy mite, I'm sure I never cud fathom—whan he gat up, as I was sayin', an' cam' foret wi' his han' oot, she gae a scraich 'at jist garred my lugs dirl, an' doon she drappit; an' there, whan I ran up, was she lyin' i' the markis his airms, as white's a cauk eemage; an' it was lang or he broucht her till hersel', for he wadna lat me rin for the hoosekeeper, but sent me fleein' to the f'untain for watter, an' gied me a gowd guinea to haud my tongue aboot it a'. Sae noo, my leddy, ye're forewarnt, an' no ill can come to ye, for there's naething to be fleyt at whan ye ken what's gauin' to meet ye."