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Updated: June 4, 2025
He led her into the parlour and up to the mirror. "Look," he cried, gaily. Kilmeny opened her eyes and looked straight into the mirror where, like a lovely picture in a golden frame, she saw herself reflected. For a moment she was bewildered. Then she realized what it meant. The lilies fell from her arm to the floor and she turned pale.
"I think that I cannot express my conclusion in any better words than Janet Gordon used when she said that Kilmeny cannot speak because her mother wouldn't. That is all there is to it. The trouble is psychological, not physical. Medical skill is helpless before it.
He knew everything about her life. She told him her simple history freely. She often mentioned her uncle and aunt and seemed to regard them with deep affection. She rarely spoke of her mother. Eric came somehow to understand, less from what she said than from what she did not say, that Kilmeny, though she had loved her mother, had always been rather afraid of her.
But Janet did not understand epigrams. She carefully removed a little dust from the polished surface, and frowned meditatively at the by no means beautiful reflection she saw therein. "I cannot think what made Kilmeny suppose she was ugly, Master." "Her mother told her she was," said Eric, rather bitterly. "Ah!" Janet shot a quick glance at the picture of her sister. "Was that it?
But then you never could guess what way a man's fancy would jump when he set out to pick him a wife. They guessed Neil Gordon didn't like it much. He seemed to have got dreadful moody and sulky of late and wouldn't sing in the choir any more. Thus the buzz of comment and gossip ran. To those two in the old orchard it mattered not a whit. Kilmeny knew nothing of gossip.
For his life he could not help laughing; and for his life he would not let Kilmeny see him laughing. A certain little whimsical wish took possession of him and he did not hasten to tell her the truth, as had been his first impulse. Instead, when he dared to look up he said slowly, "I don't think you are ugly, Kilmeny." "Oh, but I am sure you must," she wrote protestingly. "Even Neil does.
"You are talking very foolishly. It is not for you to say who shall or shall not be Kilmeny's friend. Now, you may just as well control yourself and go home like a decent fellow. I am not at all frightened by your threats, and I shall know how to deal with you if you persist in interfering with me or persecuting Kilmeny. I am not the sort of person to put up with that, my lad."
Their petals fell in silken heaps along the old paths or clung to the lush grasses among which Eric lay and dreamed, while Kilmeny played to him on her violin. Eric promised himself that when she was his wife her wonderful gift for music should be cultivated to the utmost.
William Black entertained no such idea; for his actual débuts were something like what long afterwards were called problem-novels, and In Silk Attire , Kilmeny , and the charming Daughter of Heth attempted a great deal besides mere amusement.
When Eric went to the old Connors orchard the next evening he found Kilmeny waiting for him on the bench under the white lilac tree, with the violin in her lap. As soon as she saw him she caught it up and began to play an airy delicate little melody that sounded like the laughter of daisies. When it was finished she dropped her bow, and looked up at him with flushed cheeks and questioning eyes.
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