'Going away? Where?' she said, rather breathlessly.
'I want to make a clean break off from the kind of life I have been leading,' said he, 'and I know the surest way. I mean to enlist into one of the Highland regiments that's most likely to be ordered off on foreign service.'
'Ronald!'
She seized his hand and held it.
'Ronald, you will not do that!'
Well, he was startled by the sudden pallor of her face; and bewildered by the entreaty so plainly visible in the beautiful eyes; and perhaps he did not quite know how he answered. But he spoke quickly.
'Oh, of course I will not do that,' he said, 'of course I will not do that, Miss Douglas, so long as you are in Glasgow. How could I? Why, the chance of seeing you, even at a distance—for a moment even—I would wait days for that. When I made up my mind to enlist, I had no thought that I might ever have the chance of seeing you. Oh no; I will wait until you have gone back to the Highlands—how could I go away from Glasgow and miss any single chance of seeing you, if only for a moment?'
'Yes, yes,' she said eagerly, 'you will do nothing until then, anyway; and in the meantime I shall see you often——'
His face lighted up with surprise.
'Will you be so kind as that?' he said quickly. And then he dropped her hand. 'No, no. I am so bewildered by the gladness of seeing you that—that I forgot. Let me go my own way. You were always so generous in your good nature that you spoiled us all at Inver-Mudal; here—here it is different. You are living with your sister, I suppose? and of course you have many friends, and many things to do and places to visit. You must not trouble about me; but as long as you are in Glasgow—well, there will always be the chance of my catching a glimpse of you—and if you knew what it was—to me——'