“Ah, Kenneth! This fine talk I do not understand. It’s sheer nonsense to tell such idle clavers about me. Am I not just a plain Highland lassie, as unskilled in flattering speeches as in furbelows and patches? Gin you will play me a spring on the pipes I’ll maybe can dance you the fling, but of French minuets I have small skill.”
“Call me dreamer if you will. By Helen’s glove, your dreamer might be the envy of kings. Since I have known you life has taken a different hue. One lives for years without joy, pain, colour, all things toned to the dull monochrome of gray, and then one day the contact with another soul quickens one to renewed life, to more eager unselfish living. Never so bright a sun before, never so beautiful a moon. ’Tis true, Aileen. No fear but one, that Fate, jealous, may snatch my love from me.”
Her laughter dashed my heroics; yet I felt, too, that back of her smiles there was belief.
“I dare say. At the least I will have heard it before. The voice iss Jacob’s voice, but——”
I blushed, remembering too late that my text and its application were both Volney’s.
“’Tis true, even if Jacob said it first. If a man is worth his salt love must purify him. Sure it must. I am a better man for knowing you.”
A shy wonder filled her eyes; thankfulness too was there.
“Yet you are a man that has fought battles and known life, and I am only an ignorant girl.”
I lifted her hand and kissed it.
“You are my queen, and I am your most loyal and devoted servant.”