her mind to submit to his will. And she was bursting with the effort to contain herself, and all her indignation and wrath. Her pride would not let her burst forth into cries and tears, but it was with the greatest watchfulness upon herself that she kept in these wild expressions of emotion, and the hot refusals that pressed to her lips—refusals to obey him, to be silenced by him, to be sentenced to unnatural confinement and banishment and dreary exile. Why should one human creature have such power of life and death over another? Her whole being revolted in a passion of restrained impatience and rage and fear.
“Well,” he said lightly, “which is it to be? Don’t trifle with your own comfort, Lily. Just give me the answer that you will see no more of young Lumsden. Give him no more encouragement; think of him no more. That is all I ask. Only give me your promise—I put faith in you. Think of him no more; that is all I ask.”
“All you ask—only that!” said Lily in her fury. “Only that! Oh, it’s not much, is it? not much—only that!” She laughed, too, with a sort of echo of his laugh; but somehow he did not find it to his mind.
“That is all,” he said gravely; “and I don’t think that it is very much to ask, considering that you owe every thing to me.”
“It would have been better for me if I had owed you nothing, uncle,” said Lily. “Why did you ever take any heed of me? I would have been earning my own bread and had my freedom and lived my own life if you had left me as I was.”
“This is what one gets,” he said, as if to himself, with a smile, “for taking care of other people’s children. But we need not fall into general reflections, nor yet into recriminations. I would probably not do it again if I had it to do a second time; but the thing I want from you at the present moment is merely a yes or no.”
“No!” Lily said almost inaudibly; but her tightly closed lips, her resolute face, said it for her without need of any sound.
“No?” he repeated, half incredulous; then, with a nod, flinging back his head: “Well, my dear, you must have your wilful way. Dalrugas will daily be growing bonnier and bonnier at this season of the year; and to-morrow you will get ready to go away.”
CHAPTER IV
“I have been a fool,” said Lily. “I have not said any thing that I meant to say. I had a great many good reasons all ready, and I did not say one of them. I just said silly things. He played upon me like a fiddle; he made me so angry I could not endure myself, and then I had either to hold my tongue or say things that were silly and that I ought not to have said.”
“Oh, dear me, dear me,” cried Robina, “I just thought you would do that. If I had only been behind the door to give ye a look, Miss Lily. Ye are too impetuous when you are left to yourself.”
“I was not impetuous; I was just silly,” Lily said. “He provoked me till I did not know what I was saying, and then I held my tongue at the wrong places. But it would just have come to the same whatever I had said. He’ll not yield, and I’ll not yield, and what can we do but clash? We’re to start off for Dalrugas to-morrow, and that’s all that we have to think of now.”
“Oh, Miss Lily!” cried Robina. She wrung her hands, and, with a look of awe, added: “It’s like thae poor Poles in ‘Elizabeth’ going off in chains to that place they call Siberée, where there’s nothing but snow and ice and wild, wild forests. Oh, my bonnie lamb! I mind the woods up yonder where it’s dark i’ the mid of day. And are ye to be banished there, you that are just in your bloom, and every body at your feet? Oh, Miss Lily, it canna be, it canna be!”
“It will have to be,” said Lily resolutely, “and we must make the best of it. Take all the working things you can think of; I’ve been idle, and spent my time in nothings. I’ll learn all your bonnie lace stitches, Beenie, and how to make things and embroideries, like Mary, Queen of Scots. We’ll be two prisoners, and Dougal will turn the key on us every night, and we’ll make friends with somebody like Roland, the page, that will make false keys and let us down from the window, with horses waiting; and then we’ll career across the country in the dead of night, and folk will take us for ghosts; and then—we’ll maybe ride on broomsticks, and fly up to the moon!” cried Lily, with a burst of laughter, which ended in a torrent of tears.
“Oh, my bonnie dear! oh, my lamb!” cried Beenie, taking the girl’s head upon her ample breast. It is not to be imagined that these were hysterics, though hysterics were the fashion of the time, and the young ladies of the day indulged in them freely at any contrariety. Lily was over-excited and worn out, and she had broken down for the moment. But in a few minutes she had raised her head, pushed Beenie away, and got up with bright eyes to meet her fate.
“Take books too,” she cried, “as many as you can, and perhaps he’ll let us keep our subscription to the library, and they can send us things by the coach. And take all my pencils and my colors. I’ll maybe turn into a great artist on the moors that Uncle Robert says are so bonnie. He went on about his sunsets and his moonlights till he nearly drove me mad,” cried Lily, “mocking! Oh, Beenie, what hard hearts they have, these old men!”
“I would just like,” cried the faithful maid, “to have twa-three words with him. Oh, I should like to have twa-three words with him, just him and me by our twa sels!”
“And much good that would do! He would just turn you outside in with his little finger,” said Lily in high scorn. But naturally Robina was not of that opinion. She was ready to go to the stake for her mistress, and facing Sir Robert in his den was not a bad version of going to the stake. It might procure her instant dismissal for any thing Beenie knew; he might tell old Haygate, the old soldier-servant, who was now his butler, and an Englishman, consequently devoid of sympathy, to put her to the door; anyhow, he would scathe her with satirical words and that look which even Lily interpreted as mocking, and which is the most difficult of all things to bear. But Beenie had a great confidence that there were “twa-three things” that nobody could press upon Sir Robert’s attention but herself. She thought of it during the morning hours to the exclusion of every thing else, and finally after luncheon was over, when Lily was occupied with some youthful visitors, Beenie, with a beating heart, put her plan into execution. Haygate was out of the way, too, the Lord be praised. He had started out upon some mission connected with the wine-cellar; and Thomas, the footman, was indigenous, had been Tommy to Robina from his boyhood, and was so, she said, like a boy of her own. He would never put her to the door, whatever Sir Robert might say. She went down accordingly to the dining-room, after the master of the house had enjoyed his good lunch and his moment of somnolence after it (which he would not for the world have admitted to be a nap), and tapped lightly, tremulously, with all her nerves in a twitter, at the door. To describe what was in Beenie’s heart when she opened it in obedience to his call to come in was more than words are capable of: it was like going to the stake.
“Oh, Beenie! so it is you,” the master said.
“’Deed, it’s just me, Sir Robert. I thought if I might say a word–”
“Oh, say a dozen words if you like; but, mind, I am going out, and I have no time for more.”
“Yes, Sir Robert.” Beenie came inside the door, and closed it softly after her. She then took up the black silk apron which she wore, denoting her rank as lady’s maid, to give her a countenance, and made an imaginary frill upon it with her hands. “I just thought,” she said, with her head bent and her eyes fixed on this useful occupation, “that I would like to say twa-three words about Miss Lily, Sir Robert–”
“Oh,” he said, “and what might you have to say about Miss Lily? You should know more about her, it is true, than any of us. Has she sent you to say that she has recovered her senses, and is going to behave like a girl of sense, as I always
