Beenie found her young mistress radiant in the morning as she had left her radiant when she went to bed. The young girl’s countenance could not contain her smiles; they seemed to ripple over, to mingle with the light, to make sunshine where there was none. What could have happened to her in that social hour when Robina was at supper with her friends, usually one of the dullest of the twenty-four to lonely Lily? Whom could she have seen, what could she have heard, to light those lamps of happiness in her eyes? But Robina could not divine what it was, and Lily laughed and flouted, and reproached her with smiles always running over. “You were so busy with your supper you never looked what might be happening to me. You and Katrin and Dougal were so full of your cracks you had no eyes for a poor lassie. I might have been lost upon the moor and you would never have found it out. But I was not lost, you see, only wonderfully diverted, and spent a happy evening, and you never knew.”
“Miss Lily,” said Beenie, with tears, “never more, if I should starve, will I go down to my supper again!”
“You will just go down to your supper to-night and every night, and have your cracks with Dougal and Katrin, and be as happy as you can, for I am happy too. I am lonely no more. I am just the Lily I used to be before trouble came—oh, better! for it’s finer to be happy again after trouble than when you are just innocent and never have learned what it is.”
“The Lord bless us all!” cried Beenie solemnly, “the bairn speaks as if she had gone, like Eve, into the thickest of the gairden and eaten of the tree–”
“So I have,” said Lily. “I once was just happy like the bairn you call me, and then I was miserable. And now I know the difference, for I’m happy again, and so I will always be.”
“Oh, Miss Lily,” said Beenie, “to say you will always be is just flying in the face of Providence, for there is nobody in this world that is always happy. We would be mair than mortal if we could be sure of that.”
“But I am sure of it,” said Lily, “for what made me miserable was just misjudging a person. I thought I understood, and I didn’t understand. And now I do; and if I were to live to a hundred, I would never make that mistake again. And it lies at the bottom of every thing. I may be ill, I may be poor, I may have other troubles, but I can never, never,” said Lily, placing piously her hands together, “have that unhappiness which is the one that gives bitterness to all the rest—again.”
“My bonnie lady! I wish I knew what you were meaning,” Beenie said.
Lily kept her hands clasped and her head raised a little, as if she were saying a prayer. And then she turned with a graver countenance to her wondering maid. “Do you think,” she said, “that Dougal or Katrin—but I don’t think Katrin—writes to Uncle Robert and tells him every thing I do?”
“Dougal or Katrin write to Sir Robert? But what would they do that for?” said Beenie, with wide-open eyes.
“Well, I don’t know—yes, I do know. I know what has been said, but I don’t believe it. They say that Sir Robert’s servants write every thing to him and tell all I do.”
“You do nothing, Miss Lily. What should they write? What do they ken? They ken nothing. Miss Lily, Sir Robert, he’s a gentleman. Do you think he would set a watch on a bit young creature like you? He may be a hard man, and no considerate, but he is not a man like that.”
“That’s what I said!” cried Lily; “but tell me one thing more. Do they know—did he tell them why—what for he sent me here?”
A blush and a cloud came over her sensitive face, and then a smile broke forth like the sunshine, and chased the momentary trouble away.
“Not a word, Miss Lily, not a word. Was he likely to expose himsel’ and you, that are his nearest kin? No such thing. Many, many a wonder they have taken, and many a time they have tried to get it out of me; but I say it was just because of having no fit home for a young lady, and him aye going away to take his waters, and to play himself at divers places that were not fit for the like of you. They dinna just believe me, but they just give each other a bit look and never say a word. And it’s my opinion, Miss Lily, that they’re just far fonder of you, Mr. James’s daughter, than they are of Sir Robert, for Dougal was Mr. James’s ain man, and to betray you to your uncle, even if there was any thing to tell—which there is not, and I’m hoping never will be—is what they would not do. You said yourself you did not believe that Katrin would ever tell upon you; and I’m just as sure of Dougal, that is very fond of you, though he mayna show it. And then there’s the grand security of a’, Miss Lily, that there is nothing to tell.”
“To be sure, that is, as you say, the grand security of all!” Then Lily’s face burst into smiles, and she flung discretion to the winds. “Beenie,” she said, “you would never guess. I was very lonely at the window last night, wondering and wondering if I would just bide there all my life, and never see any body coming over the moor, when, in a moment, I saw somebody! He was standing among the heather at the foot of the tower.”
“Miss Lily!”
“Just so,” said the girl, nodding her head in the delight of her heart, “it was just—him. When every thing was at the darkest, and my heart was broken. Oh, Beenie! and it’s quite different from what I thought. I thought he was more for saving Uncle Robert’s fortune than for making me happy. I was just a fool for my pains. ‘If he stands out, we must just take it in our own hands; it must come to that; you must just prepare your mind for it, Lily.’ That was what he said, and me misjudging and making myself miserable all the time. That is why I say I will never be miserable again, for I will misjudge Ronald no more.”
“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