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Braelands rode like a man possessed, furiously, until he reached the foot of the cliff on which Janet's and Christina's cottages stood. Then he flung the reins to a fisher-laddie, and bounded up the rocky platform. Janet was standing in the door of Christina's cottage talking to the minister.
Under her influence, he never would have endured it; but Archie Braelands smiled on, and coaxed, and sweetly dictated by Marion Glamis, was ready enough to do all that Marion wished. "Of course the old furniture must be sold," she said. "Why not? It will help to buy the new. We don't keep our old gowns and coats; why then our old chairs and tables?" "They have associations." "Nonsense, Archie!
I would not do it, not even for Sophy; for reason here or reason there, folks be to take care of themselves; and my man gets siller from Braelands, more than we can afford to lose." "You are taken with a fit of the prudentials, Isobel; and it is just extraordinary how selfish they make folk."
"I will not. Archie and I have agreed to marry next Christmas. She will move into her own house in time to hold her Christmas there." "I wouldn't insist on that, Marion. She has lived at Braelands nearly all her life. The Dower House is but a wretched place after it.
Archie would have been angry, maybe, and I could only feel that I must get away from Braelands. When aunt failed me, something seemed to drive me to Edinburgh, and then on to Glasgow; but it was all right, you see, I have saved you and Christina for the last hour," and she clasped Christina's hand and laid her head closer to Janet's breast.
Sophy would not think of noticing him now. It would not be proper." "What for not? He is as good a man as Archie Braelands, and if all reports be true, a good deal better." "Archie indeed! I'm thinking 'Master Braelands' would be more as it should be." "I'll never 'master' him. He is no 'master' of mine. What for does he have a Christian name, if he is not to be called by it?"
"And you will make a woman with a 'smirched' name Mistress of Braelands? Have you no family pride?" "I will wrong no woman, if I know it; that is my pride. If I wrong them, I will right them. However, I give myself no credit about righting Marion, her father made me do so." "My humiliation is complete, I shall die of shame." "Oh, no! You will do as I do make the best of the affair.
There is an old woman at Braelands that is as evil-hearted as if she had slipped out o' hell for a few years. Traill's girl was good and bonnie; she was too good, or she would have held her ain side better." "That may be; but there is a reason deeper than that. The man is wanting to marry the Glamis girl. He has already began a suit for divorce, I hear.
The street in which it stands has become not only poor, but busy, and the big garden that was round it when the home was settled on her was sold in Archie's father's time, bit by bit, for shops and a preserving factory. You cannot send her to the Dower House." "She cannot stay at Braelands. She charges the very air of any house she is in with hatred and quarrelling.
"For we'll give Braelands no occasion against either her or Andrew," she said. Then they undressed the weary woman and made her a drink of strong tea; and after a little she began to talk in a quick, excited manner about her past life. "I ran away from Braelands at the end of July," she said.
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