'Pale and wan was she when Glenlogie gaed ben,
But red rosy grew she whene'er he sat doun.
Glenlogie.
Just here the front door banged, and a manly step sounded on the stair.
Francesca sat up straight in a big chair, and dried her eyes hastily
with her poor little wet ball of a handkerchief; for she knows that
Willie is a privileged visitor in my studio. The door opened (it was
ajar) and Ronald Macdonald strode into the room. I hope I may never have
the same sense of nothingness again! To be young, pleasing, gifted,
and to be regarded no more than a fly upon the wall, is death to one's
self-respect.
He dropped on one knee beside Francesca, and took her two hands in his
without removing his gaze from her speaking face. She burned, but did
not flinch under the ordeal. The colour leaped into her cheeks. Love
swam in her tears, but was not drowned there; it was too strong.
“Did you mean it?” he asked.
She looked at him, trembling, as she said, “I meant every word, and far,
far more. I meant all that a girl can say to a man when she loves him,
and wants to be everything she is capable of being to him, to his work,
to his people, and to his--country.”
Even this brief colloquy had been embarrassing, but I knew that worse
was still to come and could not be delayed much longer, so I left the
room hastily and with no attempt at apology--not that they minded my
presence in the least, or observed my exit, though I was obliged to leap
over Mr. Macdonald's feet in passing.
I found Mr. Beresford sitting on the stairs, in the lower hall.
“Willie, you angel, you idol, where did you find him?” I exclaimed.
“When I went into the post-office, an hour ago,” he replied, “I met
Francesca. She asked me for Macdonald's Edinburgh address, saying she
had something that belonged to him and wished to send it after him.
I offered to address the package and see that it reached him as
expeditiously as possible. 'That is what I wish,” she said, with
elaborate formality. 'This is something I have just discovered,
something he needs very much, something he does not know he has
left behind.' I did not think it best to tell her at the moment that
Macdonald had not yet deserted Inchcaldy.”
“Willie, you have the quickest intelligence and the most exquisite
insight of any man I ever met!”
“But the fact was that I had been to see him off, and found him detained
by the sudden illness of one of his elders. I rode over again to take
him the little parcel. Of course I don't know what it contained; by its
size and shape I should judge it might be a thimble, or a collar-button,
or a sixpence; but, at all events, he must have needed the thing, for
he certainly did not let the grass grow under his feet after he received
it! Let us go into the sitting-room until they come down,--as they will
have to, poor wretches, sooner or later; I know that I am always being
brought down against my will. Salemina wants your advice about the
number of her Majesty's portraits to be hung on the front of the
cottage, and the number of candles to be placed in each window.”
It was a half-hour later when Mr. Macdonald came into the room, and,
walking directly up to Salemina, kissed her hand respectfully.
“Miss Salemina,” he said, with evident emotion, “I want to borrow one of
your national jewels for my Queen's crown.”
“And what will our President say to lose a jewel from his crown?”
“Good republican rulers do not wear coronets, as a matter of principle,”
he argued; “but in truth I fear I am not thinking of her Majesty--God
bless her! This gem is not entirely for state occasions.
'“I would wear it in my bosom,
Lest my jewel I should tine.”'
It is the crowning of my own life rather than that of the British
Empire that engages my present thought. Will you intercede for me with
Francesca's father?”
“And this is the end of all your international bickering?” Salemina
asked teasingly.
“Yes,” he answered; “we have buried the hatchet, signed articles of
agreement, made treaties of international comity. Francesca stays over
here as a kind of missionary to Scotland, so she says, or as a feminine
diplomat; she wishes to be on hand to enforce the Monroe Doctrine
properly, in case her government's accredited ambassadors relax in the
performance of their duty.”
“Salemina!” called a laughing voice outside the door. “I am
won'erful lifted up. You will be a prood woman the day, for I am now
Estaiblished!” and Francesca, clad in Miss Grieve's Sunday bonnet,
shawl, and black cotton gloves, entered, and curtsied demurely to the
floor. She held, as corroborative detail, a life of John Knox in her
hand, and anything more incongruous than her sparkling eyes and mutinous
mouth under the melancholy head-gear can hardly be imagined.
“I am now Estaiblished,” she repeated. “Div ye ken the new asseestant
frae Inchcawdy pairish? I'm the mon' (a second deep curtsy here).
“I trust, leddies, that ye'll mak' the maist o' your releegious
preevileges, an' that ye'll be constant at the kurruk.--Have you given
papa's consent, Salemina? And isn't it dreadful that he is Scotch?”
“Isn't it dreadful that she is not?” asked Mr. Macdonald. “Yet to my
mind no woman in Scotland is half as lovable as she!”
“And no man in America begins to compare with him,” Francesca
confessed sadly. “Isn't it pitiful that out of the millions of our own
countrypeople we couldn't have found somebody that would do? What do
you think now, Lord Ronald Macdonald, of these dangerous international
alliances?”
“You never understood that speech of mine,” he replied, with prompt
mendacity. “When I said that international marriages presented more
difficulties to the imagination than others, I was thinking of your
marriage and mine, and that, I knew from the first moment I saw you,
would be extremely difficult to arrange!”