“Oh, and I loved him so! I loved him!”
“I know it, dear; I knew it all along.”
I thought her sobs would never cease till her heart was broken, so I questioned her again.
“Yes,” she said, gaspingly, “yes, I loved him when Muireall and I were in the South together. I met him a month or more before ever she saw him. He loved me, and I promised to marry him: but I would not go away with him as he wished: for he said his father would never agree. And then he was angry, and we quarrelled. And I—Oh! I was glad too, for I did not wish to marry an Englishman—or to live in a dreary city; but … but … and then he and Muireall met, and he gave all his thought to her; and she her love to him.”
“And now?”
“Now?… Now Muireall is dead.”
“Dead? O Morag, dead? Oh, poor Muireall that we loved so! But did you see her? was she alive when you reached her?”
“No; but she was alone. And now, listen. Here is a thing I have to tell you. When Ealasaid Cameron, that was my mother’s mother, was a girl, she had a cruel sorrow. She had two sisters whom she loved with all her heart. They were twins, Silis and Morag. One day an English officer at Fort William took Silis away with him as his wife; but when her child was heavy within her she discovered that she was no wife, for the man was already wedded to a woman in the South. She left him that night. It was bitter weather, and midwinter. She reached home through a wild snowdrift. It killed her; but before she died she said to Morag, ‘He has killed me and the child.’ And Morag understood. So it was that before any wind of spring blew upon that snow, the man was dead.”
When Morag stopped here, and said no more, I did not at first realise what she meant to tell me. Then it flashed upon me.
“O Morag, Morag!” I exclaimed, terrified. “But, Morag, you do not … you will not …”