But all this vague shyness and shrinking had changed at their last interview, when Margaret, in generous impetuosity, and terror lest he should think she considered herself raised above him by her fortune, had taken the matter into her own hands and made all the vague ties definite. What an extraordinary sensation it was to feel that she belonged to him--she, Margaret Leslie, to him, Rob Glen! She could not realize or understand it, but felt, with a sense of giddiness through her whole being, that something existed which bound her to him forever. Yes, no doubt, when you came to think of it, that was what it meant. She had not been aware of it at first, but this no doubt was how it was. And Ludovic’s questioning had made it all so much more real. After what her brother had said, there was no avoiding the certainty. Between Rob Glen and herself was an invisible link, woven so closely that nothing could undo it. How changed all the world was! Once it lay free and bright and open before her, with but one restriction, and that her natural obedience to her father and loyalty to her home. Now, with a giddiness and dazzling in her eyes, she felt how different it all was. She had no longer any home, and the world was closed up to her by that figure of Rob Glen. She did not know that she objected to him, or disliked his presence, but it made everything different. And chiefly it made her giddy, so that she herself and the whole universe seemed to be going round and round--Rob Glen. She was not sure, even--but all was confusion in her mind--that she thought of him now just as she had thought of him in those old, old times, when he had sat among the potatoes and made his picture; when he had seemed so clever, such a genius, such a poet, making a common bit of paper into a landscape, in which the sun would shine and the wind blow forever. That side of the subject was dim to her now. Rob was no longer an artist doing wonders before her eyes, but a man whose touch made her shrink, yet held her fast; one whom she was more shy of, yet more bound to, than to anybody else in the world; from whom she would like to steal a little farther off, if she could do it unnoticed, yet move a step nearer to, should he find her out. This strange jumble of feeling seemed to be brought to a climax by the thought that she was going away to-morrow. To-night--there was no avoiding the necessity--she must go again and meet him, and explain everything to him, and part with him. What might he say, or make her do and say? She could not wound his feelings by refusing, by letting him see that she shrank from him. She felt that she must yield to him, not to hurt his feelings. A mingled sense of sympathy and gratitude, and (though the word is so inadequate) politeness, made it seem terrible to Margaret to withdraw from her lover.