n into her smiling mouth. Strength
seemed to come upon me with the sight like a giant's; I thought I could
have caught her up and run with her into the uttermost places in the
earth; and we spoke together all that time beyond belief for freedom and
sweetness.

It was the dark night when we came to the house door. She pressed my arm
upon her bosom. "Thank you kindly for these same good hours," said she,
on a deep note of her voice.

The concern in which I fell instantly on this address, put me with the
same swiftness on my guard; and we were no sooner in the chamber, and
the light made, than she beheld the old, dour, stubborn countenance of
the student of Heineccius. Doubtless she was more than usually hurt; and
I know for myself, I found it more than usually difficult to maintain my
strangeness. Even at the meal, I durst scarce unbuckle and scarce lift
my eyes to her; and it was no sooner over than I fell again to my
civilian, with more seeming abstraction and less understanding than
before. Methought, as I-read, I could hear my heart strike like an
eight-day clock. Hard as I feigned to study, there was still some of my
eyesight that spilled beyond the book upon Catriona. She sat on the
floor by the side of my great mail, and the chimney lighted her up, and
shone and blinked upon her, and made her glow and darken through a
wonder of fine hues. Now she would be gazing in the fire, and then again
at me; and at that I would be plunged in a terror of myself, and turn
the pages of Heineccius like a man looking for the text in church.

Suddenly she called out aloud, "O, why does not my father come?" she
cried, and fell at once into a storm of tears.

I leaped up, flung Heineccius fairly into the fire, ran to her side, and
cast an arm around her sobbing body.

She put me from her sharply. "You do not love your friend," says she. "I
could be so happy too, if you would let me!" And then, "O, what will I
have done that you should hate me so?"

"Hate you!" cries I, and held her firm. "You blind lass, can you not see
a little in my wretched heart? Do you think when I set there, reading in
that fool-book that I have just burned and be damned to it, I take ever
the least thought of any stricken thing but just yourself? Night after
night I could have grat to see you sitting there your lone. And what was
I to do? You are here under my honour; would you punish me for that? Is
it for that that you would spurn a loving servant?"