"
"Lizzy never mootit sic a thing?"
"Never."
"I was sure o' that!--Noo I 'll awa' to Kirkbyres--God help
me! I wad raither face Sawtan an' his muckle tyke.--But dinna ye
expec' ony news. Gien yon ane kens, she's a' the surer no to tell.
Only ye sanna say I didna du my best for ye."
It was the hardest trial of the will Malcolm had yet had to
encounter. Trials of submission he had had, and tolerably severe
ones: but to go and do what the whole feeling recoils from is to be
weighed only against abstinence from what the whole feeling urges
towards. He walked determinedly home. Stoat saddled a horse for him
while he changed his dress, and once more he set out for Kirkbyres.
Had Malcolm been at the time capable of attempting an analysis
of his feeling towards Mrs Stewart, he would have found it very
difficult to effect. Satisfied as he was of the untruthful--even
cruel nature of the woman who claimed him, and conscious of a strong
repugnance to any nearer approach between them, he was yet aware
of a certain indescribable fascination in her. This, however, only
caused him to recoil from her the more--partly from dread lest it
might spring from the relation asserted, and partly that, whatever
might be its root, it wrought upon him in a manner he scarcely
disliked the less that it certainly had nothing to do with the
filial. But his feelings were too many and too active to admit of
the analysis of any one of them, and ere he reached the house his
mood had grown fierce.
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