But Staneholme came again in broad light, the next day—the next—and the next, with half excuses and vague talk of business. Lady Carnegie did not interdict his visits, or blame his weakness and inconsistency, for they were seemly in the eyes of the world—which she honoured, after herself, although she washed her hands of the further concerns of these fools.

And Nelly talked to him with a grave friendliness, like one restored from madness or risen from another world. "Staneholme, you've never kissed the wean, and it's an ill omen," she said, suddenly, watching him intently as he dandled the child; and as if jealous of any omission regarding it, she appeared satisfied when he complied with her fancy.

"The curtain is drawn, and the shadow is on you; but is that a scar on your brow, Staneholme, and where did you get it?"

"A clour from a French pistol;" it was but skin deep—he was off his camp-bed in a few days.

He stooped forward, as he spoke slightingly, and pushed back the hair that half obscured the faint blue seam.

"Whisht!" said Nelly, reprovingly, "dinna scorn sickness; that bit stroke might have cost Lady Staneholme her son and my bairn his father;" and she bent towards [Page 198]him in her turn, and passed her fingers curiously and pityingly over the healed wound, ignorant how it burned and throbbed under her touch. "When the bairn is grown, and can rin his lane, Staneholme," Nelly informed him in her new-found freedom of speech, "I will send him for a summer to Staneholme; I'll be lonesome without him, but Michael Armstrong will teach him to ride, and he'll stand by Lady Staneholme's knee." Staneholme expressed no gratitude for the offer, he was fastening the buckle of his beaver. The next time he came he twisted a rose in his hand, and Nelly felt that it must indeed be Beltane: she looked at the flower wistfully, and wondered "would the breezes be shaking the bear and the briar roses on the sea-braes at Staneholme, or were the grapes of southern vines bonnier than they?" He flung down the flower, and strode to her side.

"Come hame, Nelly," he prayed passionately; "byganes may be byganes now. I've deserted the campaign, I've left its honours and its dangers—and I could have liked them well—to free men, and am here to take you hame."

Nelly was thunderstruck. "Hame!" she said, at last, slowly, "where you compelled me to travel, where I gloomed on you day and night, as I vowed; I, who would not be a charge and an oppression to the farthest-off cousin that bears your name. Are you demented?"

"And this is the end," groaned Staneholme, in bitterness; "I dreamt that I would win at last. I did not love you for your health and strength, or your youth and beauty. I declare to you, Nelly Carnegie, your face is fairer to me, [Page 199]lying lily white on your pillow there, than when it was fresh like that rose; and when others deserted you and left you forlorn, I thought I might try again, and wha kent but the ill would be blotted out for the very sake of the strong love that wrought it?"

A dimness came across Nelly's eyes, and a faintness over her chok............