She advanced a step to meet him, timid, yet with that confidence which social superiority gives: for Dick, I am bound to confess, though I love him, was not one of those wonderful beings who bear the exterior of a fine gentleman even in a workman’s clothes. He was not vulgar in any respect, being perfectly free from every kind of pretension, and with all the essence of fine manners—that politeness of the heart which neither birth nor education by themselves can give; but though, as I have said, his dress was to a certain degree copied from Valentine’s—who possessed the je ne sais quoi in perfection—and was quite well made and unobtrusive, yet I am obliged to allow that Dick had not that mysterious something which makes a gentleman. You could have found no fault with his appearance, and to look at his candid countenance was to trust him; but yet he had not the je ne sais quoi, and Violet knew that, conventionally speaking, she was addressing one who was “not a gentleman” this fact gave her a degree of freedom in calling him which she would scarcely have felt with a stranger of her own class. But more than that, Violet had recognised Dick. It was some years since she had seen him, but she remembered him. Not all at once, it is true. When he appeared first, before he saw her, she had felt as he did, that she had seen his face before; but ere he passed again, she had made out where and how it was that she had seen him; for it must be recollected that Violet’s heart was full to overflowing with thoughts of Val, of whom this stranger, so suddenly and strangely appearing, was a kind of shadow in her mind. The whole scene, in which she had seen this stranger, came before her as by a flash of light, after five minutes’ pondering within herself—for from the first glance she had felt that he was somehow associated with Valentine. What could bring him here, this boatman from the Thames? Her heart was breaking for news of her young lover, so dismally parted from her, whom she must never see again (she thought); but only to hear his name, to know where he was, would be something. She would not have betrayed herself to “a gentleman,” to one of Val’s friends and equals; but of “Mr Brown”—she remembered even his name by good fortune—she might make her inquiries freely. So, urged by the anguish in her poor little breast, Vi took this bold step. She had been sitting thus for hours crying all alone, and thinking to herself that this horrible blank was to go on for ever, that she would nevermore hear of him even—and I have not the heart to blame her for appealing thus to the first possibility of help. She made a step forward and looked at him with a pitiful little smile. “Perhaps you do not remember,” she said, “but I think I am sure it is you. I never forget people whom I have once seen. Did not you row us once, on the Thames, at Eton—my father and——”

“Oh yes, ma’am, to be sure!” cried Dick. “I knew that I had seen you before.” He was a little confused, after his experience with Lady Eskside, how he ought to address a lady, but after reflection decided that “ma’am” must always be right; for had he not heard the Queen herself addressed by the finest of fine ladies as “Ma’am”?

“Yes; and I remember you,” said Vi. Then she made a pause, and with a wistful glance at him, and a sudden flush which went as quickly as it came, added—“I am Mr Ross’s cousin.”

“I recollect now,” cried Dick. “He was so set on it that you should see everything. I think he was a bit better when I left.”

“Better!” cried Violet, clasping her hands together; “was he——” She was going to say, was he ill? and then reflected that, perhaps, it was best not to betray to a stranger how little she knew of him. So she stood looking up in his face, with great eyes dilated. Her eyes had been pathetic and full of entreaty even when poor Vi was at her happiest. Now there is no telling how beseeching those pretty eyes were, with the tears stealing into them, making them bigger, softer, more liquid and tender still. This look quite made an end of poor Dick, who felt disposed to cry too for company, and was aware of some strange, unusual movements in his own good heart.

“Don’t you fret,” he said soothingly; “I brought the old lady the news this morning. He had an accident, and his illness was sudden. But it had nothing to do with the accident,” he added. “Don’t be frightened, ma’am. It’s some fever, but not the worst kind; and the doctor told me himself that he’d pull through.”

“Oh, Mr Brown!” cried poor Vi. She dropped down upon a fallen tree, and began to cry, so that he could scarcely look at her for pity.

“Indeed you must not be frightened,” said Dick. “I am not anxious a bit, after what the doctor told me. Neither is the old lady up there at the Castle—Lady Eskside. She is going with me to-morrow morning to help to nurse him. Mother has him in hand,” Dick added with a little pride, “and he’s very safe with her. Don’t fret like this—now don’t! when I tell you the doctor says he’ll pull through!”

“Oh Val, Val, my Val!” cried poor little Violet. It was not because she was frightened; for at her age—unless experience has taught otherwise—getting better seems so necessary, so inevitable a conclusion to being ill. She was not afraid of his life; but her heart was rent with pity, with tenderness, with that poignant touching remorse, to which the innocent are liable. All that had gone before, all that Valentine had suffered, seemed to come back to her. It was not her fault, but it was “our” fault. She seemed to herself to be involved in the cause of it, though she would have died sooner than harm him. Her lips began to quiver, the tears rained through the fingers with which she tried to hide her piteous streaming eyes. “Oh Val, Val, my Val!” she cried. It was “our” fault; her father had done it, and even good Sandy had had his share; and herself, who had twined her foolish little life with his, so that even parting with her had been another complication in Valentine’s woes. She seemed to see him looking up at her in the moonlight, bidding her good-bye. Oh, why did he think of her? why did he take that trouble for her? She scarcely heard Dick’s anxious attempts at consolation. She was not thinking of the future, in which, no doubt—how could she doubt it?—Valentine would get better; but of the past and of all that made him ill. Her tears, her abandonment to that sorrow, her attempts to command herself, went to Dick’s heart. He stood looking at her, wondering wistfully for the first time in his life over the differences in men’s lots. If he (Dick) were to fall ill, his mother, no doubt, would be grieved; but Dick knew that it would create no commotion in the world; would not “upset” any one as Val’s illness did. Naturally, the good fellow felt, Mr Ross was of much more importance than he was, or could ever be; but still——

“Oh, how foolish you must think me!” cried Violet, drying her eyes. “It is not that I am frightened. It is because I know all that made him ill. Oh, Mr Brown, tell me about it—tell me everything! He is my cousin, and he has always been like my—brother. He used to bring me here when I was a child. You can’t think how everything here is full of him—and then all at once never to hear a word!” Between every broken sentence the tears fell in little bright showers from Violet’s eyes.

Dick sat down on the same fallen tree, but at a respectful distance, and told her all he knew—which was not everything, for his mother had not entered into details, and he knew little about the incident on the river, and her share in it. Violet listened, never taking her eyes from his face, which was hard upon Dick, yet not undelightful to him. He had gone through a great many experiences that morning. But even Lady Eskside’s strange emotion, her curiosity about himself, and agitated manner, had not the same effect as this still more unexpected and strange encounter. He sat, at first rather awkwardly, upon the edge of his end of the tree, with his face turned towards her, but not always bold enough to look at her. The slant of the sunbeam, which was gradually dying off the scene, fell in the middle between them like a rail of gold, separating them from each other. Across this heavenly line of separation her eyes shone like stars, often bewildering Dick, though he kept pretty straight in his narrative, taking as little account as possible of the occasional giddiness that came over him, and the dazzling sensation in his eyes. Violet, interrupting him now and then by a brief question, sometimes crying softly under her breath, gave her entire attention to every word; and Esk ran on through all, with a murmur as of a third person keeping them company; and the wood contributed those numberless soft sounds which make up the silence of nature, enveloping them in an atmosphere of her own. Dick was not much given to poetry, but he felt like something in a fairy tale. It was an experience altogether new and strange; for hitherto there had been no enchantments in his life. How different it was to her and to him! To the young man, the first thrill of romance, the first touch of magic—the beginning of all sweet delusions, follies, and dreams; to the girl, an imperfect, faltering narrative, filled out by imagination, a poor, blurred picture—better, far better, indeed, than nothing, and giving her for the moment a kind of miserable happiness, but in itself nothing. It is frightful to think at what a disadvantage people meet each other in this world. Dick’s life, which had all been honest prose up to this moment, became on the spot, poetry; but, poor fellow, he was nothing but prose, poor prose to Vi, to whom these woods were full of all the lyric melodies of young life. She listened to him without thinking of him, drinking in every word and not ungrateful, any more than she was ungrateful to the fallen tree, or the beech boughs that sheltered her. Nay, she had a warmer feeling, a sense of grateful friendship, to Dick.

“Mr Brown,” she said, when his tale was done, “I am very, very thankful to you for telling me. I should never have known but for you. For I ought to say that my people and Val’s people—I mean my cousin’s—are not quite—quite good friends. I must not say whose fault it is,” said Vi, with a suppressed sob; “and I don’t see Lady Eskside now—so without you I should not have known. Mr Brown! would you mind writing—a little note—just two lines—to say how he is when you get back?”

“Mind!” said Dick. “If you will let me——”

“And you can tell him when he gets well,” cried the girl, her voice sinking very low, her eyes leaving Dick’s face, and straying into the glow of sunshine (as he thought) between the two great trees—“you can tell him that you met me here; and that I was thinking of him, and was glad—glad to hear of him——” To show her gladness, Violet let drop two great tears which for some time had been brimming over her eyelids. “It is dreadful to be parted from a friend and to hear no word; but now that I know, it will not be so hard. Mr Brown, you will be sure to send just two lines, two words, to tell me——”

Here her voice faltered, and lost itself in a flutter of suppressed sound—sobs painfully restrained, which yet would burst forth. She did her very best, poor child, to master them, and turning to Dick with a pathetic smile, whispered as well as she could—“I can’t tell you how it all is. It is not only for Val being ill. It is everything—everything that is wrong! Papa, too—but I can’t tell you; only tell him that you met Violet at the linn.”

“I will tell him everything you have said. I will write, if you like, every day,” cried poor Dick, his heart wrung with sympathy—and with envy as well.

“Would that be too much?” she asked, with an entreating look. “Oh, if it would not be too much! And, Mr Brown, perhaps it will be best to send it to mamma. I cannot have any secrets, though I may be unhappy. If you will give me a piece of paper, I will write the address, and thank you—oh, how I will thank you!—all my life.”

Dick, who felt miserable himself, he could scarcely tell why, got out his note-book, with all the rough little drawings in it of the brackets at Rosscraig. He had not known, when he put them down, how much more was to befall him in this one brief afternoon. She wrote the address with a little hand which trembled.

“My hand is so unsteady,” she said. “I am spoiling your book. I must write it over again. Oh, I beg your pardon; my hand never used to shake. Tell Val—but no, no. It is better that you should not tell him anything more.”

“Whatever you bid me I will tell him. I will do anything, everything you choose to say,” said Dick, in his fervour. She gave a surprised wistful look at him, and shook her head.

“I must think for both of us,” she said; “and Val is very hasty, very rash. No, you must not say anything more. Tell him I am quite well if he asks, and not unhappy—not very unhappy—only anxious to know; and when he is well,” she said, with a reluctant little sigh, “you need not mind writing any more. That will be enough. It is a terrible thing when there are quarrels in families, Mr Brown.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Dick, who knew nothing about families, nor about quarrels, but followed with a curious solemnity the infantine angelical wisdom and gravity of her face.

“A terrible thing when people try to hurt each other who ought to love each other; and some of us must always pay for it,” said poor Violet, in deep seriousness—“always, always some one must suffer; when it might be so different! If you are going back to Rosscraig, you should go before the sun sets, for it is far, when you don’t know the way.”

“And you?” said Dick, rising in obedience to this dismissal, yet longing to linger, to prolong the conversation, and not willing to allow that this strange episode in his life had come to an end.

“My way is not the same as yours,” she said, holding out her hand with gentle grandeur, like a little princess, sweet and friendly, but stooping out of a loftier region, “and I know every step. Good-bye, and thank you with all my heart. You must keep this path straight up past the firs. I am very, very glad I was here.”

“Good-bye, Miss Violet,” said Dick. It gave him a little pleasure to say her name, which was so pretty and sweet; and he was too loyal and too respectful to linger after this farewell, but walked away as a man goes out of a royal presence, not venturing to stay after the last gracious word has been said. He could not bear to go, but would not remain even a moment against her will. When he had gone a little way he ventured to turn back and look—but nothing was visible except the trees. She had disappeared, and the sunshine had disappeared; it seemed to Dick’s awakened fancy as if both must have gone together. The last golden arrow of light was gliding from the opposite bank of the river, and the glade between the bushes lay dim in the greyness of the evening. What a change it made! He went on with a sigh. Violet had gone back to the foot of the tree, and was waiting there till he should be out of sight; and Dick divined that this was the case, and that she wanted no more of him. Well! why should she want any more of him? She was a lady, quite out of Dick’s way, and she had been very sweet to him—as gracious as a queen. Between this impersonation of sweet youth, and the other figure, old Lady Eskside, with her dignity and agitated kindness, Dick was wonderfully dazzled. If all ladies were like these, what a strange sort of enchantment it must be to spend one’s life in such society. Dick had never known any woman but his mother, whom he loved, and upon whose will he had often been dependent, but to whom he was always in some degree forbearing and indulgent, puzzled by her caprices, and full of that tender patience towards her which has in its very nature something of superiority; and to find himself suddenly in the society of these two ladies, one after the other, both taking him into their confidence, betraying their feelings to him, receiving, as it were, favours at his hand, had the most curious effect upon his mind.

Dick had never felt so melancholy in his life as when Violet thus sent him away; and yet his head was full of a delicious intoxication, a sense of something elevated, ethereal, above the world and all its common ways. Should he ever see her again, he wondered? would she speak to him as she had done now, and ask his help, and trust to his sympathy? Poor Dick had not the remotest idea that these new sensations in his mind, this mixture of delight and of melancholy, this stirring up of all emotions, which made his long walk through the woods feel like a swallow-flight to him, had anything to do with the vulgar frenzy he had heard of, which silly persons called falling in love. He had always felt very superior and rather contemptuous of this weakness, which young men of his class feel, no doubt, in its more delicate form, like others, but which is seldom spoken of among them in any but that coarse way which revolts all gentle natures. So he was totally unwarned and unarmed against any insidious beginnings of sentiment, and would have resented indignantly the idea that his tender sympathy with this little lady, who had opened her heart to him, had anything whatever in it of the character of love. How could it have?—when the very foundation of this strange sweet revelation to him of an utterly new kind of intercourse and companionship, was the love, or something that he supposed must be love, between Mr Ross, his patron, and this little princess of the woods? What a lucky fellow Mr Ross was, Dick thought, with the tenderest, friendliest version of envy that ever entered a man’s bosom! and then it occurred to him, with a little sigh, to think that the lots of men in this world were very different; but he was not, he hoped, so wretched a fellow as to grudge his best friend any of the good things that were in his share. Thus he went back to Rosscraig with his mind entirely filled with a new subject—a subject which made him less sensitive even than he was before to any new light upon his own position. He looked at Violet’s writing in his note-book with very bewildering feelings when he got at night to the luxurious room where he was to sleep. She had written the address very unsteadily, then crossed it out, and repeated it with great care and precision—Mrs Pringle, Moray Place, Edinburgh. Though it slightly chilled him to think that this was her mother’s name, not her own, yet the sense of having this little bit of her in his breast-pocket was very delightful and very strange. He sat and looked at it for a long time. On the page just before it were these notes he had made of the brackets in the great drawing-room. These were the tangible evidences of this strange mission of his, and sudden introduction into a life so different from his own. It just crossed his mind to wonder whether these scratches on the paper would be all, whether he might look them up years hence to convince himself that it was not a dream. And then poor Dick gave a great sigh, so full and large, expanding his deep bosom, that it almost blew out his candles; whereupon he gave a laugh, poor fellow, and said his prayers, and got to bed.

As for Lady Eskside, she showed more weakness that particular evening than had been visible, I think, all her life before. She could not sleep, but kept Mrs Harding by her bedside, talking, giving her mysterious but yet intelligible confidences. “You’ll set to work, Marg’ret, as soon as I’m gone, to have all the new wing put in order, the carpets put down, and the curtains put up, and everything ready for habitation. I cannot quite say who may be coming, but it is best to be ready. My poor old lord’s new wing, that gave him so much trouble! It will be strange to see it lived in after so many years!”

“Indeed, and it will that, my lady,” said Mrs Harding, discreet and cautious.

“It will that! I don’t suppose that you take any interest,” said Lady Eskside, “beyond just the furniture, and so forth?—though you’ve lived under our roof and ate our bread these thirty years!”

Mrs Harding was a prudent woman, and knew that too much interest was even more dangerous than too little. “The furniture is a great thought,” she said demurely, “to a person in my position, my lady. If you’ll mind that I’m responsible for everything; and I canna forget it’s all new, and that there is aye the risk that the moths may have got into the curtains. I’ve had more thought about these curtains,” said the housekeeper, with a sigh, “than the Queen hersel’ takes about the state.”

“You and your moths!” said my lady, with sharp scorn. “Oh, Marg’ret Harding, it’s little you know about it! If there was any way of keeping the canker and the care out of folk’s hearts! And what is it to you that I’m standing on the verge of, I don’t know what—that I’ve got the thread in my hand that’s failed us so long—that maybe after all, after all, my old lord may get his way, and everything be smooth, plain, and straight for them that come after us? What’s this to you? I am a foolish old woman to say a word. Oh, if my Mary were but here!”

“My lady, it’s a great deal to me, and I’m as anxious as I can be; but if I were to take it upon me to speak, what would I get by it?” said Mrs Harding, driven to self-defence. “The like of us, we have to know everything, and never speak.”

“Marg’ret, my woman, I cannot be wrong this time—it’s not possible that I can be wrong this time,” said Lady Eskside. “You were very much struck yourself when you saw the young—when you saw my visitor. I could see it in your face—and your husband too. He’s not a clever man, but he’s been a long time about the house.”

“He’s clever enough, my lady,” said the housekeeper. “Neither my lord nor you would do with your owre clever men, and I canna be fashed with them mysel’. Now, my man, if he’s no that gleg, he’s steady; and I’m aye to the fore,” said Mrs Harding, calmly. This was a compensation of nature which was not to be overlooked.

“You see, you knew his father so well,” said Lady Eskside, with an oracular dimness which even Mrs Harding’s skill could scarcely interpret; and then she added softly, “God bless them! God bless them both!”

“My lady,” said the housekeeper, puzzled, “you’ll never be fit to travel in the morning, if you don’t get a good sleep.”

“That’s true, that’s true; but yet you might say, God bless them. The Angel that redeemed us from all evil, bless the lads,” murmured the old lady, under her breath. “Good night. You may go away, you hard-hearted woman; I’ll try to sleep.”