She met him with parted lips and a straight, fearless look.
"Will you take half the flowers, Glenfernie, and put them for
Elspeth?"
"No. I cannot go there now!"
"I thought you would not. Now I am Elspeth. I love her. I would give
her gladness--serve her. She says, 'Let him alone! Do you not know
that his own weird will bring him into dark countries and light
countries, and where he is to go? Is your own tree to be made thwart
and misshapen, that his may be reminded that there is rightness of
growth? He is a tree--he is not a stone, nor will he become a stone.
There is a law a little larger than your fretfulness that will take
care of him! I like Glenfernie better when he is not a busybody!'"
Alexander stared at her in anger. "Differences where I thought to find
likeness--likenesses where I thought to find differences! He deceived
me, fooled me, played upon me as upon a pipe; took my own--"
"Ha!" said Gilian. "So you are going a-hunting for more reasons than
one?--Elspeth, Elspeth! come out of it!--for Glenfernie, after all,
avenges himself!"
Alexander, looking like his father, spoke slowly, with laboring
breath. "Had one asked me, I should have said that you above all might
understand. But you, too, betray!" With a sweep of his arms abroad, a
gesture abrupt and desolate, he turned. He quitted the sunny bare
space, the kirkyard and the woman sitting with her basket of marigolds
and pansies.
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