There was no response: he had received her communication—that was all.
"I have told you everything: surely you understand: what—what message am I to take?" Käthchen exclaimed, in trembling appeal.
"I have heard what you had to say," he answered her, with a studied reserve that seemed to Käthchen's anxious soul nothing less than brutal, "and of course I am sorry if there has been any misunderstanding, or any suffering, anywhere. But these things are past. And as for the present, I do not gather that you have been commissioned by Miss Stanley to bring one solitary word to me—one expression of any kind whatsoever. Why should I return any reply?—she has not spoken one word."
"Oh, you ask too much!" Käthchen exclaimed, in hot indignation. "You ask too much! Do you think Mary Stanley would send for you? She is as proud as yourself—every bit as proud! And she is a woman. You are a man: it is your place to have the courage of yielding—to have the courage of offering forgiveness, even before it is asked. If I were a man, and if I loved a woman that I thought loved me, I would not stand too much on my dignity, even if she did not speak. And what do you want—that she should say she is sorry? Mr. Ross, she is ill! I tell you, she is ill. Come and judge for yourself what all this has done to her!—you will see only too clearly whether she has been sorry or not. And that superstition of hers, about there being a fatality attending her family—that they cannot help inflicting injury and insult on you and yours—who can remove that but yourself? No," she said, a little stiffly, "I have no message from Mary Stanley to you; and if I had, I would not deliver it. And now it is for you to say or do what you think best."
"Yes, yes; yes, yes," he said, after a moment's deliberation. "I was thinking too much of the Little Red Dwarf; I was thinking too much of that side of it. I will go back to Lochgarra, and at once. And this is Thursday; the steamer will be coming down from Glasgow to-day; that will be the easiest way for us to go back."
There was a flash of joy and triumph—and of gratitude—in Käthchen's sufficiently pretty eyes.
CHAPTER IX.
THE BANABHARD.
The big steamer was slowly and cautiously making in for Lochgarra Bay—slowly and cautiously, for though the harbour is an excellent one after you are in it, the entrance is somewhat difficult of navigation; and Donald Ross and Kate Glendinning were seated in the after part of the boat, passing the time in talking. And of course it was mostly of Miss Stanley they spoke.
"For one thing, you ought to remember," said Käthchen, "the amount of prejudice against you she has had to overcome. If you only knew the character she received of you the very first evening we arrived here! I wonder if you would recognise the picture—a terrible outlaw living in a lonely island, a drunken, thieving, poaching ne'er-do-well, a malignant conspirator and mischief-maker: Mr. Purdie laid on the colours pretty thickly. By the way, I wish you would tell me the cause of that bitter animosity Mr. Purdie shows against you and all your family——"