Sir Robert's Fortune: A NovelOliphant, Mrs. (Margaret)
General
Sir Robert's Fortune: A Novel
Oliphant, Mrs. (Margaret)
Fiction
“Eh, Miss Lily!” Beenie said again. Her mind was in a confusion even
greater than that of her young mistress; and she did not know what to
say. If Lily had misjudged him, so had she, and worse, and worse, she
said to herself! Beenie had not been made miserable, however, by the
mistake as Lily had been, and she was not uplifted by the discovery, if
it was a discovery; a cold doubt still hovered about her heart.
“I will tell you the truth. I will not hide any thing from you,” said
Lily. “He is at Kinloch-Rugas; he is staying in the very town itself. He
has come here for the fishing. He’ll maybe not catch many fish, but
we’ll both be happy, which is of more importance. Be as long as you like
at your supper, Beenie, for then I will slip out and take my walk upon
the moor, and Dougal and Katrin need never know any thing except that I
am, as they think already, a silly lassie keeping daft-like hours. If
they write that to Uncle Robert, what will it matter? To go out on the
moor at the sunset is not silly; it is the right thing to do. And the
weather is just like heaven, you know it is, one day rising after
another, and never a cloud.”
“’Deed, there are plenty of clouds,” said Beenie, “and soon we’ll have
rain, and you cannot wander upon the moor then, not if he were the
finest man in all the world.”
“We’ll wait till that time comes, and then we’ll think what’s best to
do; but at present it is just the loveliest weather that ever was seen.
Look at that sky,” said Lily, pointing to the vault of heavenly blue,
which, indeed, was not cloudless, but better, flushed with beatific
specks of white like the wings of angels. And then the girl sprang out
of bed and threw herself into Robina’s arms. “Oh, I’ve been faithless,
faithless!” she cried; “I’ve thought nothing but harm and ill. And I was
mistaken, mistaken all the time! I could hide my face in the dust for
shame, and then I could lift it up to the skies for joy. For there’s
nothing matters in this world so long as them you care for are good and
true and care for you. Nothing, nothing, whether it’s wealth or poverty,
whether it’s parting or meeting. I thought he was thinking more of the
siller than of true love. The more shame to me in my ignorance, the
silly, silly thing I was. And all the time it was just the contrary, and
true love was what he was thinking of, though it was only for an
unworthy creature like me.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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