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Updated: May 12, 2025
Nelly Carnegie," ejaculated honest Lady Staneholme, "although he is my ain that made you his, sair, sair against your woman's will, and so binged up blacker guilt at his doorstane, as if the lightest heritage o' sin werena' hard to step ower. But, God forgive me! It's old Staneholme risen up to enter afresh upon his straits, and may He send him pardon and peace in His ain time."
Staneholme had resolved never to control the wife he had forced into his arms, beyond the cold, daily intercourse which men will interchange with a deadly foe, as well as with a trusty frere; never to approach her side, nor attempt to assuage her malice nor court her frozen lips into a smile. This was his purpose, and he abode by it.
But the sun had sunk behind the moor where the broom was only budding, and the last sea-mew had flown to its scaur, and the smouldering whins had leaped up into the first yellow flame of the bonfires, and the more shifting, fantastic, brilliant banners of the aurora borealis shot across the frosty sky, before the first faint shout announced that Staneholme and his lady had come home.
The March sun shone clear and cold on grey Staneholme, standing on the verge of a wide moor, with the troubled German Ocean for a background, and the piping east wind rattling each casement.
Joan and Madge and Mysie, with their blooming cheeks, and their kissing-strings new for the occasion, stared as if their strange sister was but half endowed with mother wit; and Lady Staneholme hesitated until Adam Home uttered his short, emphatic "As she pleases, mother," while the flush flew to his forehead, and his firm lip shook.
Young Home of Staneholme had knowledge of the filigree circle through which Nelly was wont to insert her restless fingers, and Lady Carnegie furthered his advances; so that although Nelly hated him as she did the gloomy Nor' Loch, she received his escort to and from the Assembly Rooms, and walked with him her single minuet, as inevitably as she lilted Allan Ramsay's songs, or scalded her mouth with her morning's porridge.
Well might good old Lady Staneholme rejoice, and hush her bold grandson, for the change was not evanescent or its effects uncertain.
So Staneholme bought the grand new family coach of which the Homes had talked for the last generation; and Lady Carnegie curtsied her supercilious adieus, and hoped her son and daughter would be better keepers at home for the future.
Was this colourless, motionless young girl, in her dusty, disarranged habit, and the feather of her hat ruffled by the wind, the gay Edinburgh beauty who had won Staneholme! What glamour of perverse fashion had she cast into his eyes! "Wae's me, will dule never end in this weary warld?
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