“But that is impossible,” she said. “My papa would never think of living in England.”
For some time after he was silent. The two figures in front of them walked steadily on, an occasional roar of laughter from the deep chest of Mackenzie startling the night air, and telling of Ingram’s being in a communicative mood. At last Lavender said: “It seems to me a great pity that you should live in this remote place, and have so little amusement, and see so few people of tastes and education like your own. Your papa is so much occupied—he is so much older than you, too—that you must be left to yourself so much; whereas if you had a companion of your own age, who could have the right to talk frankly to you, and go about with you and take care of you.”
By this time they had reached the little wooden bridge crossing the stream, and Mackenzie and Ingram had got to the inn, where they stood in front of the door in the moonlight. Before ascending the steps of the bridge, Lavender, without pausing in his speech, took Sheila’s hand and said suddenly: “Now, don’t let me alarm you, Sheila, but suppose at some distant day—as far away as you please—I came and asked you to let me be your companion then and always, wouldn’t you try?”
She looked up with a startled glance of fear in her eyes, and withdrew her hand from him.
“No, don’t be frightened,” he said, quite gently. “I don’t ask you for any promise. Sheila, you must know I love you—you must have seen it. Will you not let me come to you at some future time—a long way off—that you may tell me then? Won’t you try to do that?”
There was more in the tone of his voice than in his words. The girl stood irresolute for a second or two, regarding him with a strange, wistful, earnest look; and then a great gentleness came into her eyes, and she put out her hand to him and said in a low voice, “perhaps.”
But there was something so grave and simple about her manner at this moment that he dared not somehow receive it as a lover receives the first admission of love from the lips of a maiden. There had been something of a strange inquiry in her face as she regarded him for a second or two; and now that her eyes were bent on the ground, it seemed to him that she was trying to realize the full effect of the concession she had made. He would not let her think. He took her hand and raised it respectfully to his lips, and then he led her forward to the bridge. Not a word was spoken between them while they crossed the shining space of moonlight to the shadow of the house; and as they went in-doors he caught but one glimpse of her eyes, and they were friendly and kind toward him, but evidently troubled. He saw no more that night.
So he had asked Sheila to be his wife, and she had given him some timid encouragement as to the future. Many a time within these last few days had he sketched out an imaginative picture of the scene. He was familiar with the passionate rapture of lovers on the stage, in books, and in pictures; and he had described himself (to himself) as intoxicated with joy, anxious to let the whole world know of his good fortune, and above all to confide the tidings of his happiness to his constant friend and companion. But now, as he sat in one corner of the room, he almost feared to be spoken to by the two men who sat at the table with steaming glasses before them. He dared not tell Ingram: he had no wish to tell him, even if he had got him alone. And as he sat there and recalled the incident that had just occurred by the side of the little bridge, he could not wholly understand its meaning. There had been none of the eagerness, the coyness, the tumult of joy he had expected; all he could remember clearly was the long look that the large, earnest, troubled eyes had fixed upon him, while the girl’s face, grown pale in the moonlight, seemed somehow ghost-like and strange.
CHAPTER VII.
AN INTERMEDDLER.
BUT in the morning all these idle fancies fled with the life and color and freshness of a new day. Loch Barvas was ruffled into a dark blue by the Westerly wind, and doubtless the sea out there was running in, green and cold, to the shore. The sunlight was warm about the house. The trout were leaping in the shallow brown streams, and here and there a white butterfly fluttered across the damp meadows. Was not that Duncan down by the river, accompanied by Ingram? There was a glimmer of a rod in the sunshine; the two poachers were after trout for Sheila’s breakfast.