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If the burn had only been navigable so that he might have towed the graceful creature home and laid her up under the very walls of the House! It would have perfected the place in his eyes. He made her snug for the night, and went to report her arrival. Great was Lady Florimel's jubilation.
"The insolence of the fellow!" said Caley, loud enough for her mistress to hear notwithstanding the noise of the rattling windows. "A pretty pass we are come to!" But already Florimel's mood had begun to change. She felt that she had done her best to alienate men on whom she could depend, and that she had chosen for a confidante one whom she had no ground for trusting.
But they had not time to discuss him now, as Clementina insisted on Florimel's putting an immediate stop to his cruelty. When they reached the spot, there was the groom again seated on his animal's head, with a new proposition in the sand before him. "Malcolm," said his mistress, "let the mare get up. You must let her off the rest of her punishment this time." Malcolm rose again to his knee.
For at that moment his lordship's horse, a high bred but timid animal, sprang away from the side of Florimel's, and there stood Kelpie on her hind legs, pawing the air between him and his lady, and Florimel, whose old confidence in Malcolm was now more than revived, was laughing merrily at the discomfiture of his attempt at love making.
"How dare you ask me to take back what I once gave?" "Ye cudna hae kent what ye was doin' whan ye gae 't, my leddy. Tak it back, an tak a hunnerweicht aff o' my hert." He actually mentioned his heart! was it to be borne by a girl in Lady Florimel's mood? "I beg you will not annoy me," she said, muffling her anger in folds of distance, and again sought her book.
"If your ladyship never had another true friend, Mr Lenorme is one," added Malcolm. "What opportunity can you have had for knowing?" said Florimel. "I have been sitting to him every morning for a good many days," answered Malcolm. "he is something like a man!" Florimel's face flushed with pleasure. She liked to hear him praised, for he loved her.
Now nothing would have better pleased Lady Clementina than that Liftore and Lizzy should meet in Florimel's presence, but she recoiled altogether from the small stratagems, not to mention the lies, necessary to the effecting of such a confrontation.
And this I know for myself, that not once, ever since that man came to us, has he done a selfish thing or one to be ashamed of. I could give you proof after proof of his devotion." Florimel's warmth did not reassure Clementina; and her uneasiness wrought to the prejudice of Malcolm. She was never quite so generous towards human beings as towards animals.
Then he turned again to his narrative, and told how his father, falsely informed that his wife and child were dead, married Florimel's mother; how his mother, out of compassion for both of them, held her peace; how for twenty years she had lived with her cousin Miss Horn, and held her peace even from her; how at last, when, having succeeded to the property, she heard he was coming to the House, the thought of his nearness yet unapproachableness in this way at least he, the, child of both, interpreted the result so worked upon a worn and enfeebled frame, that she died.
But suddenly there was a great broken sound somewhere in the air; and the next moment a storm came tearing over the face of the sea, covering it with blackness innumerably rent into spots of white. Presently it struck the shore, and a great rude blast came roaring through the grating, carrying with it a sheet of rain, and, catching Florimel's hair, sent it streaming wildly out behind her.
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