part I am quite agreed to go on cheating Uncle Robert for as long as you

please.”

“It does not please me!” she said; “I would like to cheat nobody. It is a new thing to me--I did not think of that. Oh, Ronald, take me away! I laugh and I chatter, but my heart’s breaking. We are cheating every body--not Uncle Robert only, but Helen Blythe and every creature that knows me. What do I care how poor we are, or if I have to work for my living? I will work, oh, with a good heart! but take me away, take me away!”

Ronald held her hands in his and steadied her against her will. He had foreseen such an outburst, as well as the other manifestations of her agitated and disturbed life. He was ready to allow even that it was no wonder she became excited by times, that she had been more patient than he could have hoped. He was himself very cool, and could afford to be moderate and humor her. He held her hands in his, and restrained the violence of her feelings by that steady clasp. “My Lily, my Lily!” he said. The girl yielded to that restraining influence in spite of herself. She could almost have struck him in the vehemence of her passion and in the intolerable sensation of this sharp light upon the situation altogether; but the cool touch of his hands, his firm hold, his soothing voice, subdued her. The question between two people at such a crisis is almost entirely the question which is stronger, and on this occasion Ronald was certainly the stronger. When Lily’s passion ended in the natural flood of tears, she shed them on his shoulder, encircled by his arm, all her resistance quenched. And he was very kind to her; no one could have consoled her more lovingly, or more tenderly soothed the nervous and excited feelings which had got beyond her control. He was master of the situation, and felt it, but used his power in the most gentle way. And Lily said not a word more--what was there to be said? She had put herself in the wrong by her passion and by her tears. This was not the calm reason with which a woman ought to discuss the beginning of her life--with which, she said to herself, a man expected his wife to consider and discuss these affairs. She had neither been calm nor reasonable. She had been passionate, excited, perhaps hysterical. Lily was deeply ashamed of herself. She was humble toward him who must, she thought, be disappointed in her, and find her like the women in books, all folly and excitement, instead of a creature able to take all the circumstances into consideration. Nothing could have subdued her spirits like that sense of being in the wrong.

Later in the evening she endeavored to make up for her foolishness by returning to the mood of gayety with which she began the evening. She gave Ronald a little sketch of the humors of Rory, and the respect in which Dougal held that small and fiery personage. She told him about Katrin’s cows and her chickens, and the amusement which these living creatures had given during the long winter days to the little family at Dalrugas.

“But spring is coming,” he said.

“Oh, yes; spring is coming; the moor will soon be dry enough for walking, and many a ramble I will have. I am beginning,” said Lily, “to grow very fond of the moor. You see, it is all we have. It’s cross and market and college and court and all together to me. In the morning the bees will be busy among the whins--there is always a bud somewhere on a whin bush--and full of honey as they can hold; and then in the evening there is the sunset, and the hills all standing out against the west, with their old purple cloaks around them. What with the barnyard and what with the moor, there’s no want of diversion here.”

“My bonnie Lily,” he cried in sudden compunction, “not much diversion for the like of you!”

“What do you call the like of me? I am very well off. I have neighbors and all. There is Helen Blythe, poor thing, she is not so well off. The minister is a handful; he holds her night and day. And who was yon glum man, Ronald, and what had he to do with her? Her eyes were red, and she had been crying; and I am sure it was something about that man.”

“Alick Duff? Nonsense, Lily! He is a black sheep, if ever there was one. That was all a foolish story, we’ll suppose. A good little thing like the minister’s daughter should never be thrown away on him.”

“Perhaps she is a good little thing. We are all good little things till we show ourselves different. But her eyes were red and her cheeks were pale. I must see if I can comfort her,” said Lily half to herself. “And now, sir, if you are going away to-morrow, you should go to your bed, for you’ll have a weary day.”

“Yes, I shall have a weary day; but I could bear that and more to see my Lily,” Ronald said.

“Well, if you care for her at all, you would need to do that, for she must either be there or here,” Lily said. “It’s a pity I’m solid, that I cannot fly away like the birds, and tap at your window as the lady does in the ballad. What ballad? I don’t remember. Perhaps it was after she was dead. And does Mrs. Buchanan always make you comfortable and cook as well as Katrin? Oh, Katrin is very good for some things, though you think her an ill housekeeper for Uncle Robert. But never mind that. Tell me about Luckie Buchanan. I will wager you a silver bawbee, as Beenie says, that she does not send you up your bird as good as we do here.”

“Nothing is so good as it is here. You take me up too quick, Lily.”

“Me take you up quick? I do nothing but try to please you. But I know how it is, Ronald. You think shame of Luckie Buchanan. She burns your bird, and she does your chop in the frying-pan, and her kettle is not half boiled. Young men are very badly treated in their lodgings. I know very well. Uncle Robert’s men that came to see him were always complaining, and they were old men that could make their curries themselves and drive womenfolk desperate, whereas you’re only young and would think shame to look as if you cared. I wonder if she brushes your clothes right, and gives you nice burnished boots, as you like them to be,” said Lily, with a critical look at the sleeve of his coat, which she was smoothing down with her hand.

“You will make me think myself a terrible being, taken up with my own wants,” he said in a vexed tone.

“It is me that am taken up with your wants,” she said, “and what more right than that--a man’s wife! What is the good of her but to look after her man! And when I cannot do it for failure of circumstances, not good will, then I must just ask and plague you till you tell me there’s nothing more for me to do--till the term comes, and I go home to my place,” cried Lily, with a laugh, but with two tears, which she turned away her head that he might not see. “It’s my first place!” she cried. “You cannot wonder I am excited about it, Ronald; and I hope I will give you satisfaction--Beenie and me!”

Next morning Lily got up without, as appeared, any cloud on her face, and gave him his breakfast, and saw to the packing of his bag, and that his big coat was well strapped on to Sandy’s shoulders, who was to walk into the town with him and carry his small belongings. “You will not want it walking, but you will want it in the coach,” she said, “and be sure you keep yourself warm, for, though it’s March, the wind is terrible cold over the moor; and here is a scarf to put round your neck for the night journey. It will keep you warm, and it will mind you of me.”

“Do I want that to mind me of my Lily?” he said reproachfully.

“No, after I have been giving you such a taste of my humors, and you know I am not just the good thing you thought. But you might be more grateful for my bonnie scarf that I took out of the lavender to give you to wrap round your throat at night! And it is a very bonnie scarf,” said Lily; “look at the flowers worked upon it, the same on both sides, and as soft as a dove’s feathers that are of silver. You will put it round your neck and say Lily gave me this; and then at Whit-Sunday, when I take up my place, I will find it again, laid away in some drawer, and I will take it back, and it will belong then both to you and me.”

“That is a bargain,” he said, more moved by the parting than he had ever been; but Lily went with him to the head of the stairs, and there stood looking after him from the staircase window, to keep up some sort of transparent fiction for Dougal’s sake, with her eyes shining and a smile upon her mouth. She was resolved that this was how he should see her when he went away. There should be no more breakings down. She would importune him no more. She would not shed a tear. When he turned round to wave his hand before he disappeared under the bank, she was still smiling and calm. It was, perhaps, a little startling to Ronald, who had never seen her so reasonable before--and reasonableness, though so desirable, is sometimes a little alarming too.