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'.
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