Jean looked up at the sound of the heavy steps ringing upon the floor, and, throwing down her heavy book, darted forward; but, seized with a sudden access of shyness, stopped and drew back before she had come up to the visitors, and stood looking at them – herself a very pleasant image, impetuous yet timid, her figure suddenly arrested in all its swiftness of motion, her lips in their meaning of speech. The sight of Peter Oliphant, so unexpected an apparition, made her dumb.
"We have come, Mistress Jean," said Mr Melville, "to speak a word with Sir Walter, so please you, and by your brother's ain desire."
"By his – ain desire!" Jean looked at the pair before her. The well-known figure of the minister, and the other, so much more interesting, still in all the novelty of recent discovery, a personage not precisely like the young Ansters of her acquaintance, wanting something, possessing something, a different kind of being. Indeed the rustic young gentlemen were but little superior even in breeding to this handsome yeoman, with his greater maturity and higher consciousness of life and its struggles. They were good to laugh with, to mock at, to dance with on the very few occasions when such an opportunity occurred. But she had met with a reality of life in the person of this modest yet ardent young man, who reddened when he looked at her, which Jean had never encountered before. At Sir Walter's own desire! was it on account of herself, for some reason connected with that meeting, which some one must have betrayed and reported? This idea had no time to grow, but it flashed upon her suddenly, almost choking her with the sudden rise and hurried pulsation of her heart.
"We will but bide a moment with your permission till Maister Neil comes forth to bid us to the knight's presence," said the minister. "And it will not be long, seeing the hour was fixed by himsel'."
"There is somebody with him," said Jean: and then her awe of the situation yielding a little as she grew familiar with it, she laughed and added, "It is one you do not love."
"And who may that be?" said Melville. His question was answered in a way much more significant than any reply of hers. The curtain over the door of Sir Walter's sitting-room was audibly thrust back, without, however, revealing immediately the person coming forth: and a voice said, speaking to the old knight within, "My lord shall hear every word of your good intentions, every word! it is the thought of a true kinsman, whatever comes. Be sure my lord shall hear: and farewell, sir, and the blessing of God."
The new-comer paused to draw the curtain back to its usual folds, covering the door, and then he turned round, and with a hasty exclamation of surprise became aware of the group in the hall. He was more conspicuous in his dress as a clergyman than was the minister of Carnbee, with something on his dark head that suggested a tonsure, though no such mark of the beast was permitted in Scotland, and wearing the cassock of a priest. He came forward, however, with much appearance of cordiality, "Ah, Brother Melville, it's long since we met! If we've both come on the same ghostly errand, I wot our penitent will get something confused in his Belief."
"I come on no ghostly errand," said Mr Melville, "but concerning the affairs of this fleeting world: which have their importance too, as you will agree with me."
"That do I – and whiles more bewildering still," said the Curate of Pittenweem, rubbing his hands. "We have no doubt the luck, my kind neighbour, to take different views on that subject too."
"It may be so," Melville replied gravely, but he added no more. He had no inclination to disclose his hand, as his opponent had done involuntarily by those last words behind the curtain. Low of Pittenweem looked at him fiercely, but without any visible change of tone.
"And how's all with you, Pate?" he said with a smile. "I heard a bonnie story the other day of one of these wild soldier fellows that are just a pest on the roads, and how he was scared away and took the road west, meddling with no person: for fear of a certain muckle rider, bigger than himself, from the Over-Kellie gait."
"Oh, and it was me, Sir John!" cried Jean; "and the loon was after me on my pony, till there came in sight – " Jean stopped suddenly, crimson all over, half with annoyance at herself for having spoken, half because of the smiling glance which Low directed from her to Peter Oliphant, and back again – a smile which developed into a low laugh of malice, and which filled her with unaccountable shame.
"There came in sight – the palladin, the grand knight" – he said these words to the accompaniment of his laugh, till every line of Peter's rustic dress, the blue bonnet in his hand, the heavy shoes on his feet, seemed to come out under the sarcastic look, as if the curate had been holding up a candle to show their roughness. And then he turned away, still laughing softly to himself, and rubbing his hands. "I will not interrupt such braw company," he said. "Good day to you, Mistress Jean: and I wish ye, madam, a good fulfilment to all your virtuous wishes; and one of those days ye can tell your mother, Pate, I'll come in for a crack, and to hear the country news. Brother Melville, we'll probably not be so long, you and me, this time of meeting again."
"Maybe not, Maister Low," said Melville.
"Wherever the – is, there will the eagles be gathered together," said the other, going lightly towards the door, with a wave of his hand and a nod of his head. Mr Melville drew a long breath.
"That is no canny forerunner," he said, "Peter, my good lad, for you and me; but I will haste and see if the auld knight is weariet, or if he'll see you still. Bide here for me."
When Peter was left alone with the young lady, there was a pause of much embarrassment between these two young people, so suddenly brought together by malicious suggestion, and by the involuntary flash of thought that went from one to another, in the unlikely and unexpected combination, in which all suddenly, in a moment, they had been placed. Jean, who was full of saucy words at other times and in other company, at this moment, when she would have given all her small possessions for the power to throw one jibe at him, could not find a word to say. It was Peter, whose grave mood had more solidity and could better resist the excitement of the situation, who was the first to speak. "I have a charge from my mother, Mistress Jean, with her duty – which is maybe more than is due from her to you; but my mother, Lady Jean, though she is the best woman in the world, was but a farmer's daughter, and cannot get out of her head that the Laird's daughter is a Princess in the land."
"I have no quarrel with her for that," said Jean, restored to herself; "but if I am a Princess you will maybe live to be the King. Here we are, us two, and it's between us, Maister Peter. You are the just heir; but I am the more just if it were not that I am a lassie, and whose fault is that? I am sure it is by no will of mine."