For the potency of a thought it is perhaps even better that it should not be logically displayed to the intellect; anyhow the germ of all this, undeveloped into the definite forms I have given, sufficed to the determining of Florimel’s behaviour. I do not mean that she had more than the natural tendency of womankind to enjoy the emotions of which she was the object; but besides the one in the fable, there are many women with a tendency to arousing; and the idea of deriving pleasure from the sufferings of a handsome youth was not quite so repulsive to her as it ought to have been. At the same time, as there cannot be many cats capable of understanding the agonies of the mice within reach of their waving whiskers, probably many cat-women are not quite so cruel as they seem. “_Can’t_ you trust me, Malcolm?” she said, looking in his eyes very sweetly, and bending a little towards him; “--_Can’t_ you trust me?” At the words and the look it seemed as if his frame melted to ether. He dropped on his knees, and, his heart half stifled in the confluence of the tides of love and misery, sighed out between the pulses in his throat: “There’s naething I could na tell ye ’at ever I thoucht or did i’ my life, my leddy; but it’s ither fowk, my leddy! It’s like to burn a hole i’ my hert, an’ yet I daurna open my mou’.” There was a half angelic, half dog-like entreaty in his up-looking hazel eyes that seemed to draw hers down into his: she must put a stop to that. “Get up, Malcolm,” she said kindly, “what would my father or Mrs Courthope think?” “I dinna ken, an’ I maist dinna care; atween ae thing an’ anither, I’m near-han’ distrackit,” answered Malcolm, rising slowly, but not taking his eyes from her face. “An’ there’s my daddy!” he went on, “--maist won ower to the enemy--an’ I daurna tell even him what for I canna bide it!--_Ye_ haena been sayin’ onything till him-- hiv ye, my leddy?” “I don’t quite understand you,” returned Florimel, rather guiltily, for she had spoken on the subject to Duncan. “Saying anything to your grandfather? About what?” “Aboot--aboot--_her_, ye ken, my leddy.” “What her?” asked Florimel. “Her ’at----The leddy o’ Gersefell.” “And why----? What of her? Why, Malcolm! what can have possessed you? You seem actually to dislike her!” “I canna bide her,” said Malcolm, with the calm earnestness of one who is merely stating an incontrovertible fact, and for a moment his eyes, at once troubled and solemn, kept looking wistfully in hers, as if searching for a comfort too good to be found, then slowly sank and sought the floor at her feet. “And why?” “I canna tell ye.” She supposed it an unreasoned antipathy. “But that is very wrong,” she said, almost as if rebuking a child. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself. What!--dislike your own mother?” “Dinna say the word, my leddy,” cried Malcolm in a tone of agony, “or ye’ll gar me skirl an’ rin like the mad laird. He’s no a hair madder nor I wad be wi’ sic a mither.”