“At last,” said Ronald, coming upstairs with his light-springing foot three steps at a time, “at last, Lily, I have settled with Dougal, and I am starting to-morrow morning: at eight, he says, but nine will do. And this for a little while, my darling, will be my last night in the nest.”

The room had undergone a wonderful change since it had first been Lily’s bower. It had changed much while she was there alone, but the change was much greater within the last week than all that had happened before. It had become a home: there were two chairs by the fire, there was an indefinable consciousness in every thing of two minds, two people, the union and conjunction which make society. It was all warm, social, breathing of life, no suggestion in it of loneliness or longing, or unsatisfied thought, or the solitude which breathes a chill through every comfort. Lily, sitting alone, had been, it was very clear, left but for a moment. This sentiment cannot, indeed, expand stone walls, yet the once dull and chilly drawing-room, with its deep small windows, seemed to possess a widened circle, a fuller atmosphere. Into this already had there pushed a care or two, the reflection of the diversities of two minds as well as their union? If so, it only helped to widen the sphere still further, to make it more representative of the world. Lily looked up from the book she had taken up in her husband’s absence with a change of countenance and sudden exclamation.

“You are going to-morrow? Not we?” she cried.

“My bonnie Lily, you were always reasonable—how could it be we? I’m thankful, though, that you meant it to be we, for it was not a happy thought that my own lassie, my wife of a week old, was pushing me away, back with the first loosening of the frosts, into the world.”

“You never thought that, you never could have thought that!” cried Lily, divided between indignation and a tumult of new feeling that rose in her. And then she covered her face with her hands. “Are you going to leave me here, Ronald, my lane, my lane?” she cried, with a tone of anguish in her voice.

He was behind her, drawing her head upon his shoulder, soothing her in every way he knew. “Oh, Lily, my darling, don’t say I have beguiled you! What could it be else, what could it be? I might have held out by myself and kept away. I might have sworn I would never go near you, for your sweet sake. Would you rather I had done that, Lily? Is it not better to belong to each other, my darling, at any cost, so as to be ready in a moment to take advantage of a bright day when it comes?”

“Of a bright day when it comes?” she said, suddenly taking her hands from her face. A chill as if of the ice outside came upon Lily. She was as white as the snow, and cold, and trembled. “Is that all—is that all that is between you and me, Ronald?” she cried.

“Now, Lily, my dearest, how can you ask such a question? Is that all? Nothing is all! There are no bounds to what is between you and me; but because we have to be parted for a time that was not a reason for always keeping apart, was it, Lily? I thought, my darling, you agreed with me there. We have had a happy honeymoon as ever any pair had, happier, I think, than ever any blessed man but me. And now I must go out to the bleak world to work for my bonnie wife. Oh, it will be a bleak world no longer; it will all be bright with the thought that it is for my bonnie Lily. And you will just wait and keep your heart in a kist of gold, and lock it with a silver key.”

“Ah, that was what she says she should have done before——” cried Lily with a sharp ring of pain in her voice. Then she subdued herself and looked up into his face. “I am ready to share whatever you have, Ronald. I want no luxuries, no grand house. I want no time to get ready. I’ll be up before you to-morrow and my little things in a bundle and ready to follow you, if it was in a baggage-wagon or at the plough’s tail!”

“I almost wish it was that,” he said, eager for any diversion. “If I had been a ploughman lad, coming over the hills to Nannie O; with a little cot to take her to as soon as she could be my own!” These were echoes of the songs Lily had sung to him, and he to her, in their hermitage when shut in by the snow.

“But just up under the roof in a high house in the old town, or one of the new ones out to the west of Princes Street—that new row, with a nice clean stair and a door to it to shut it in: to me that would be as good as any little cot upon the ploughed fields.” Lily spoke eagerly, turning round to him with hands involuntarily clasped.

“A strange place,” he said, “for Sir Robert Ramsay’s heir.”

“Oh, what am I caring for Sir Robert Ramsay! If he was ill and wanted me, I would be at his call night and day—he is my uncle, whatever happens; but because he is rich and can leave me a fortune! that is nothing, Ronald, to you and me.”

He made no immediate reply, but smoothed the little curls of her hair upon her forehead, which was at once an easier and a much more pleasant thing to do.

“Besides,” she said, “I have known plenty of kent folk, as good as you or me, who lived, and just liked it very well, up a common stair.”

“I would not like my Lily, coming out of George Square, to set up in life like that.”

“Would you like your Lily,” she cried again, turning upon him with glowing cheeks, “to sit alone and pingle at her seam and eat her heart away, even at George Square, where she might see you whiles, or, worse still, here at Dalrugas,” she said, springing from her seat with energy, “to be smoored in the snow?”

He followed her round to the window, and stood holding her in his arm and looking at her admiringly. “You will never be smoored in the snow, my Lily! The fire in you is enough to melt it into rivers all about.”

“Rivers that will carry me—where?” she cried in a tone half of laughter, half of despair.

“Listen to me, my darling,” he said. “We will be practical: there is always the poetry to fall back upon. For one thing, I’ve no house, even if it were up a common stair or in the highest house of the old town, to take you to. Houses, as you know as well as me, can only be got at the term. There is no chance now till Whit-Sunday of finding one. We must just be patient, Lily; we can do no more. It is not you, my darling, that will suffer the most. Think of me in all the old places that will mind me of you at every moment, and seeing all the folk that know you, and even hearing your name——”

“Oh,” cried Lily, and then suddenly she fell a-crying, leaning on her husband, “I would like to hear your name now and then just to give me heart, and to see the folk that know you, and the old places——”

“My bonnie Lily!” he cried.

Perhaps this outburst did her good. She cried for a long time, and all the evening an occasional sob interrupted her voice, like the lingering passion of a child. But Lily, like a child, had to yield to that voice of the practical, the voice of reason. She said no more at least, but sadly assisted at the packing of the portmanteau, which had been brought across the snow somehow from the cottage in which Ronald had found refuge before the storm and all its privileges began.

“I am not going with him,” she said to Robina, when these doleful preparations were over. “You see, there are no preparations made, and you cannot get a house between the terms. You might have minded me of that, Beenie. What is the use of being a person of experience if you cannot tell folk that are apt to forget?”

“I ought to have minded, my bonnie dear,” said Beenie with penitence.

“And it’s a long time till Whit-Sunday; but we’ll need to have patience,” Lily said.

“So we will, my darling bairn,” Beenie replied.

“You say that very cut and dry. You are not surprised; you look as if you had known it all the time.”

“Eh, Miss Lily, my dear, how could I help but ken? Here’s a young gentleman that has little siller, and no the mate that Sir Robert would choose.”

“I wish,” cried Lily, “that Sir Robert was at the bottom of the sea! No, no, I’m wishing him no harm, but, oh, if he only had nothing to do with me!”

“The only thing ye canna do in this world is to change your blood and kin,” said Beenie; “but, oh, Miss Lily, ye must just be real reasonable and think. If he were to take you away, it would spoil a’. He has gotten you for his ain, and you have gotten him for your ain, and nothing can come between you two. But he hasna the siller to give ye such a down-sitting as you should have, and nae house at all possible at this time of the year. No, I’m no way surprised. I just knew that was how it had to be, and Katrin too. It would be just flyin’ in the face of Providence, she says, to take ye away off to Edinburgh, without a place for the sole of your foot, when ye have a’ your uncle’s good house at your disposition, and good living and folk about you that tak’ a great interest in you. Katrin herself she canna bide the thought of losing her bonnie leddy. ‘If Miss Lily goes, I’ll just take my fit in my hand and go away after her,’ she says. But what for should ye go? It will be far more comfortable here.”

“Comfortable!” said Lily in high disdain, “and parted from my husband!” The word was not familiar to her lips, and it brought a flush of color over her face.

“Oh, whisht, my bonnie leddy,” Beenie cried.

“Why should I whisht? for it is true. I might not have said it before, but I will say it now, for where he is I ought to be, and whatever he has I ought to share, and what do I care for Dougal’s birds and Katrin’s fine cooking when my Ronald (that has aye a fine appetite for his dinner,” cried Lily in a parenthesis, with a flash of her girlish humor) “is away?” The last words were said in a drooping tone. Her mood changed like the changing skies. Even now she had irruptions of laughter into the midst of her trouble, which was not yet trouble, indeed, so long as he was still not absolutely gone; and who could tell what might happen before morning, the chill morning of the parting day?

Lily was up and astir early on that terrible morning. There had been a hope in her mind that Providence would re-tighten the bonds of the frost and bring the snow blinding and suffocating to stop all possibility of travel; but, alas! that was not the case: bands of faint blue diversified the yellow grayness of the clouds, and the early sun gave a bewildering glint over the moor, making the snow garment shrink a little more and show its rents and crevasses. Every thing was cheerfully astir in the yard, the black pony rearing as Sandy backed him into the shafts of the cart, snorting and shaking his head for joy at thought of the outing, and the sniff of the fresh, exhilarating air into which, as yet, there had come little of the limpness of the thaw. There was an air out of doors partly of pleasure in the excitement of the departure, or at least in the little commotion about something which is an agreeable break in the monotony of all rural solitudes. Dougal looked on and criticised with his hands in his pockets and gave Sandy directions as if this were the first time the boy had ever touched the pony which had been his charge for more than a year; and Katrin, too, stood at the door watching all these preparations, though the air was cold as January air could be. Upstairs there was a very different scene. Lily had tried to insist upon driving to the town to see her husband off, a proposal which was crushed by both Ronald and Robina with horror. “Expose yoursel’ to the whole countryside!” Beenie cried.

“Expose myself! and me his wife! Who should see him off if not his wife?” said Lily. And then Ronald came behind her and drew her against his breast once more.

“My bonnie Lily! We need not yet flourish that before the world. You are as safe here as a bird in its nest. Why should we set everybody talking about you and me? Sir Robert will hear soon enough and there is no need to send him word. There’s nobody to penetrate our secret and publish it if you will be patient a little till better things can be.”

“Our secret!” said Lily, springing from his hold with a great cry.

“A secret that is well shared by those that care for my Lily; but we need not flourish it before the world.” Lily’s color rose from pale to red, then faded. She stood apart from him, her countenance changing; her pride was deeply wounded that she should be supposed to be desirous of flourishing any thing before the world. It was an injury to her and a scorn, though this was no moment to resent it, and the sharp impression only mingled with the anguish of parting a sense of being wronged and misjudged, which was very hard to bear. “I may come down to the door, I suppose,” she said, in a voice from which she tried to banish every tone of offence.

“No, my darling,” he said, “not even to the door. I could not say farewell to my Lily with strangers looking on. I will like to think when I am gone of every thing round you here, all the old chairs and tables even, where my Lily and I have had our honeymoon.” Oh, there was nothing to complain of in the warmth of his farewell. No man could have loved his young wife better, or have held her close to him with deeper feeling. “I will soon be back, I will soon be back!” he cried. His eyes were wet like hers. It was as great a thing for him to tear himself away as it was for her to remain behind and see him go. But then Lily could only stand trembling and weeping at the head of the stairs, that nobody might see, and catch a distorted glimpse through the window over the door of the cart, into which he got with Sandy, while Dougal still murmured that “a stoot gentleman would have done better to walk,” and to see him hold out his hand to sulky Dougal, and to Katrin, who had her apron at her eyes, and Beenie, who was sobbing freely! They could stand there and cry, but she might not go down stairs lest she should flourish her story before the world. And why should she not, after all, flourish it before the world? Is a marriage a thing to be hid? When the little cart drove away, the pony, very fresh after his long confinement, executing many gambols, Lily went back to her window, from which she could see them disappear under the high bank, coming out again lower down. The deep road was so filled up with snow that the moment of disappearance was a very short one, and then she could trace for a long time along the road the little dark object growing less and less, till it disappeared altogether. The pony’s gambols, which, though he was too far off to be distinctly visible, still showed in the meandering of his progress and sudden changes of pace, the head of one figure showing over the other, the gradual obliteration in the gray of distance, kept all her faculties occupied. It seemed hours, though it was but a very little time, when Lily let her head droop on the arm of the old-fashioned sofa and abandoned herself to the long-gathering, long-restrained torrent and passion of tears.

It was a heavy, dreary day. When you begin life very early in the morning, it ought to be for something good, for some natural festivity or holiday, in the light of which the morning goes brightening on to some climax, be it a happy arrival for which the moments are counted or a birthday party. But to begin with a parting and live the livelong day after it, every hour more mournful and more weary, is a melancholy thing. This used to be very common in the old days, when travelling was slower, and night trains not invented, and night coaches not much thought of. It added a great deal to the miseries of a farewell: in the evening there is but little time before the people who are left behind; they have an excuse for shutting themselves up, going to bed, most likely, if they are young, sleeping before they know, with to-morrow always a new day before them. But Lily had to live it all out, not excused by Beenie or her other faithful retainers a single hour or a single meal. They brought her her dinner just as though he had not shared it with her yesterday, and pressed her to eat, and made a grievance of the small amount she swallowed. “What is the use,” Katrin said majestically, “of taking all this trouble when Miss Lily turns her back upon it and will not eat a morsel?” “Oh, try a wee bit, Miss Lily,” Beenie cried, adding in her ear, with a coaxing kindness that was insupportable: “Do you think he would relish the cauld snack he’ll be getting on the road if he thought his bonnie leddy was not touching bite or sup?”

“Go away, or you will drive me daft!” said Lily. “He will just clear the board of every thing that’s on it and never think of me. Why should he, with such a fine appetite as he has? Do I want him to starve for me?” she cried, with a laugh. But the result was another fit of tears. In short, Lily was as silly as any girl could be on the day her lover left her. She was not even as she had been for a moment, and was bound to be again, a young wife astonished and disappointed at being left behind, not knowing how to account for this strange, new authority over her which had it in its power to change the whole current of her life. She had never looked at Ronald in that light or thought of him as a power over her, a judge, a law-giver, whose decisions were to be supreme. She was astonished to find herself subdued before him now, her own convictions put aside; but this was not the channel in which for the moment her thoughts were running. She was weeping for her lover, for the happiness that was over, for him who was away, and dreaming dreams to herself of how the coach might be stopped by the snow, or some accident happen that would still bring him back. She imagined to herself his step on the stair and the shriek of joy with which she would rush to welcome him. This was the subject of her thoughts, broken into occasionally by divergences to other points, by outbursts of astonishment, of disappointment, almost of resentment, but always returning as to the background and foundation of every thing. The other thoughts lay in waiting for her, biding their time. It was the dreadful loss, the blank, the void, the silence, that afflicted her now. Ronald gone, who for this week, which had been as years, as a whole life, her life, the real and true one, to which all the rest was only a preface and preliminary, had been her companion, almost herself! It was of this that her heart was full. Without him, what was Lily now? She had been often a weary, angry, dull, disappointed little girl before, but there were always breaks in which she felt herself, as she said, her own woman and was herself all the Lily there was. But now she had merged into another being; she was Lily no longer, but only a broken-off half of something different, something more important, all throbbing with enlarged and bigger life. This consciousness was enough for the girl to master during that endless, dreary, monotonous day.