“Do you recollect, sweet Lily, when the good King Charles kissed your cheek in Holyroodhouse, and vowed, on a king’s word, to find a husband for you?”
“I do; and how a malapert page sounded in my ear that he would save his Majesty the trouble.”
“And have I not kept my word—ha, lady mine? The great Argyle and all his men will hardly, I think, undo the links that bind us to each other;” and inspired, as it seemed, by the pleasant thought, the youth took the lady’s hand in his, and pressed it warmly and frequently to his lips.
Elspeth looked on in amazement at the familiarity of intercourse in which the lady indulged her cousin, and which was equally repugnant to her natural and acquired feelings on the subject.
“Pshaw! you foolish man, desist!” cried Lilias, blushing and laughing at the same time, when Maurice attempted to substitute her rosy lips for the hand he had been so fervently kissing. “What will Elspeth think?”
“Think, Lady Lilias!” said Elspeth bitterly; “think! I cannot think; but I can feel for the impropriety—the sinful levity—into which, for the first time, I see my mistress fallen.”
The fair neck of Lilias crimsoned as she listened to the taunt. For a moment a frown gathered on her brow, before which the nurse’s countenance fell; but it died away in a moment, and, with a beseeching smile, which lay nestled among rosy blushes, she stretched out her hand and said,—
“Forgive me, Elspeth, we are married!”
This brief annunciation had a striking effect on the individual to whom it was addressed. She clasped together her withered hands, and continued for a few moments gazing wildly in the faces of the startled pair, seemingly anxious to discover there some contradiction of what she had just heard; and then uttering a loud long shriek, dashed her face against the wooden board, and groaned audibly.
The terrified Lilias tried to raise the old woman’s head from the table, but she for some time resisted the kindly effort. At length, raising her pale and now haggard features to those of the lady, she exclaimed,—