Mackenzie was getting very uneasy. Every moment he expected Lavender would enter this confined little cabin; and was this the place for these two to meet, before a lot of acquaintances?
“Sheila,” he said, “it is too close for you here, and I am going to have a pipe with the gentlemen. Now if you wass a good lass you would go ashore again, and go up to the house, and say to Mairi that we will all come for luncheon at one o’clock, and she must get some fish up from Borvapost. Mr. Eyre, he will send a man ashore with you in his own boat, that is bigger than mine, and you will show him the creek to put into. Now go away, like a good lass, and we will be up ferry soon—oh, yes, we will be up directly at the house.”
“I am sure,” Sheila said to Johnny Eyre, “we can make you more comfortable up at the house than you are here, although it is a nice little cabin.” And then she turned to Mosenberg and said, “And we have a great many things to talk about.”
“Could she suspect?” Johnny asked himself, as he escorted her to the boat and pulled her in himself to the shore. Her face was pale, and her manner a trifle formal, otherwise she showed no sign. He watched her go along the stones till she reaches the path, then he pulled out to the Phœbe again and went down below to entertain his host of the previous evening.
Sheila walked slowly up the rude little path, taking little heed of the blustering wind and the hurrying clouds. Her eyes were bent down, her face was pale. When she got to the top of the hill, she looked, in a blank sort of way, all around the bleak moorland, but probably she did not expect to see any one there. Then she walked, with rather an uncertain step, into the house. She looked into the room, the door of which stood open. Her husband sat there, with his arms outstretched on the table and his head buried in his hands. He did not hear her approach, her footfall was so light, and it was with the same silent step she went into the room and knelt down beside him and put her hands and face on his knee, and said simply, “I beg for your forgiveness.”
He started up and looked at her as though she were some spirit, and his own face was haggard and strange. “Sheila,” he said in a low voice, laying his hand gently on her head, “It is I who ought to be there, and you know it. But I cannot meet your eyes. I am not going to ask for your forgiveness just yet; I have no right to expect it. All I want is this; if you will let me come and see you just as before we were married, and if you will give me a chance of winning your consent ever again, we can at least be friends until then. But why do you cry, Sheila? You have nothing to reproach yourself with.”
She rose and regarded him for a moment with her streaming eyes, and then, moved by the passionate entreaty of her face, and forgetting altogether the separation and time of trial he had proposed, he caught her to his bosom and kissed her forehead, and talked soothingly and caressingly to her as if she were a child.
“I cry,” she said, “because I am happy—because I believe all that time is over—because I think you will be kind to me. And I will be a good wife to you, and you will forgive me all that I have done.”
“You are heaping coals of fire on my head, Sheila,” he said, humbly. “You know I have nothing to forgive. As for you, I tell you I have no right to expect your forgiveness yet. But I think you will find out by-and-by that my repentance is not a mere momentary thing. I have had a long time to think over what has happened, and what I lost when I lost you, Sheila.”
“But you have found me again,” the girl said, pale a little, and glad to sit down on the nighest couch, while she held his hand and drew him toward her. “And now I must ask you for one thing.”