"
Elspeth leaned from him, back against the thorn-tree. She looked
somewhat disquietedly, somewhat questioningly, at this new laird.
Glenfernie, in his turn, laid upon himself both hands of control. He
thought:
"Do not peril all--do not peril all--with haste and frightening!"
He sat upon the green hillock and talked of country news. She met him
with this and that ... White Farm affairs, Littlefarm.
"Robin," said Alexander, "manages so well that he'll grow wealthy!"
"Oh no! He manages well, but he'll never grow wealthy outside! But
inside he has great riches."
_"Does she love him, then?"_ It poured fear into his heart. A magician
with a sword--with a great, evil, written-upon creese like that
hanging at Black Hill--was here before the palace.
"Do you love him?" asked Alexander, and asked it with so straight a
simplicity that Elspeth Barrow took no offense.
She looked at him, and those strange smiles played about her lips.
"Robin is a fairy man," she said. "He has ower little of struggle save
with his rhymes," and left him to make what he could of that.
"She is heart-free," he thought, but still he feared and boded.
Elspeth rose from the grass, stepped from beneath the blooming tree.
"I must be going. It wears toward noon."
Together they left the flower-set cape. The laird of Glenfernie looked
back upon it.
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