They started apart as a servant entered, and Lady Eliza went out of the room and out of the house, disappearing among the trees. Though her heart was smiting her for her harshness, a power like the force of instinct in an animal fought against the idea of connecting all she loved with Whanland. She had called Gilbert an interloper, and an interloper he was, come to poison the last days of her life. She hurried on among the trees, impervious to the balm of the evening air which played on her brow; tenderness and fierceness dragged her in two directions, and the consciousness of having raised a barrier between herself and Cecilia was grievous. She seemed to be warring against everything. Of what use was it to her to have been given such powers of love and sympathy? They had recoiled upon her all her life, as curses are said to recoil, and merely increased the power to suffer.
She had come to the outskirts of the trees, and, from the place in which she stood, she could see over the wall into the road. The sound of a horse’s trotting feet was approaching from the direction of Kaims, and she remembered that it was Friday, the day on which the weekly market was held, and on which those of the county men who were agriculturally inclined made a point of meeting in the town for business purposes. The rider was probably Fullarton. He often stopped at Morphie on his way home, and it was likely he would do so now. She went quickly down to a gate in the wall to intercept him.
Yes, it was Robert trotting evenly homewards, a fine figure of a man on his sixteen-hand black. For one moment she started as he came into sight round the bend, for she took him for Speid. The faces of the two men were not alike, but, for the first time, and for an instant only, the two figures seemed to her almost identical. As he neared her the likeness faded; Fullarton was the taller of the two, and he had lost the distinctive lines of youth. She went out and stood on the road; he pulled up as he saw her, and dismounted, and they walked on side by side towards the large gate of Morphie.
‘Crauford has come back,’ he began, ‘and I have just seen him in Kaims. He is staying with Barclay; they seemed rather friendly when he was with me, but I am surprised. Why he should have come back I can’t think, for Cecilia gave him no doubt of her want of appreciation of him. In any case, it is too soon. You don’t like Barclay, I know, my lady.’
‘I can’t bear him,’ said Lady Eliza.
‘I have tolerated him for years, so I suppose I shall go on doing so. Sometimes it is as much trouble to lay down one’s load as to go on with it.’
‘I wish I could think as you do,’ said she.
‘Not that Barclay is exactly a load,’ he continued, pursuing his own train of thought, ‘but he is a common, pushing fellow, and I think it a pity that Crauford should stay with him.’
Lady Eliza walked on in silence, longing to unburden her mind to her companion, and shrinking from the mention of Gilbert’s name. He thought her dull company, and perhaps a little out of temper, and he was not inclined to go up to the house. She stood, as he prepared to remount his horse, laying an ungloved hand upon the shining neck of the black; his allusion to its beauty had made her doubly and trebly careful of it. Had he noticed her act, with its little bit of feminine vanity, he might have thought it ridiculous; but it was so natural—a little green sprig from stunted nature which had flowered out of season.
‘Fullarton, Gilbert Speid has proposed to Cecilia,’ she said.