He would not try to see Cecilia again, but he would write to her, and she should know how little he had understood his real position when he had asked for her love—how he had believed himself secure against the stirring-up of a past which no one was sufficiently certain of to bring against him; which was even indefinite to himself. She should hear that he had meant to tell her all he knew, and that he believed in her so firmly as never to doubt what the result would have been. He would bid her good-bye, irrevocably this time; for she should understand that, whatever her own feelings, he would not permit her to share his false position before a world which might try to make her feel it. He thought of the lady in the Leghorn bonnet, who had sat on the red sofa at the Miss Robertsons’ house, and whose chance words had first made him realize the place Cecilia had in his heart. How she and her like would delight to exercise their clacking tongues in wounding her! How they would welcome such an opportunity for the commonplace ill-nature which was as meat and drink to them! But it was an opportunity he would not give them.
So he sat on, determining to sacrifice the greater to the less, and, in the manliness of his soul, preparing to break the heart of the woman he loved—to whose mind the approval or disapproval of many ladies in Leghorn bonnets would be unremarkable, could she but call herself his.
In less than a week he had left the country, and, following an instinct which led him back to the times before he had known Scotland, was on his way to Spain.
END OF BOOK I
BOOK II
[CHAPTER XIX
SIX MONTHS]
IT was six months since Gilbert Speid had gone from Whanland. Summer, who often lingers in the north, had stayed late into September, to be scared away by the forest fires of her successor, Autumn. The leaves had dropped, and the ice-green light which spreads above the horizon after sunset on the east coast had ushered in the winter.
Christmas, little observed in Scotland, was over; the New Year had brought its yearly rioting and its general flavour of whisky, goodwill, and demoralization. Many of the county people had resorted to their ‘town-houses’ in Kaims, where card-parties again held their sway, and Mrs. Somerville, prominent among local hostesses, dispensed a genteel hospitality.
The friendship between Barclay and Fordyce was well established, for the young gentleman had paid the lawyer a second visit, even more soothing to his feelings than the first. In the minds of these allies Gilbert’s departure had caused a great stir, for Crauford was still at Kaims when his rival summoned Barclay, and informed him that he was leaving Whanland for an indefinite time. But, though Fordyce had no difficulty in deciding that Speid’s action was the result of his being refused by Cecilia Raeburn, Kaims fitted a new and more elaborate explanation to the event each time it was mentioned. The matter had nothing to do with the young lady, said some. Mr. Speid was ruined. Anyone who did not know of his disastrous West Indian speculations must have kept his ears very tight shut. And this school of opinion—a male one—closed its hands on the top of its cane, and assumed an aspect of mingled caution and integrity. This view was generally expressed in the street.