“I could trust ye, but I canna tell ye. I daurna—I maunna.”
“I see you will not trust me,” said Florimel, with a half pretended, half real offence.
“I wad lay doon my life—what there is o’ ’t—for ye, my leddy; but the verra natur’ o’ my trouble winna be tauld. I maun beir ’t my lane.”
It flashed across Lady Florimel’s brain, that the cause of his misery, the thing he dared not confess, was love of herself. Now, Malcolm, standing before her in his present dress, and interpreted by the knowledge she believed she had of his history, was a very different person indeed from the former Malcolm in the guise of fisherman or sailor, and she felt as well as saw the difference: if she was the cause of his misery, why should she not comfort him a little? why should she not be kind to him? Of course anything more was out of the question; but a little confession and consolation would hurt neither of them. Besides, Mrs Stewart had begged her influence, and this would open a new channel for its exercise. Indeed, if he was unhappy through her, she ought to do what she might for him. A gentle word or two would cost her nothing, and might help to heal a broken heart! She was hardly aware, however, how little she wanted it healed—all at once.
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?”