Chapter VII. Maggie - Page 2

also; wipe the fault quite out, and believe again and again. God bless them! You can write to Mary. Where a lover cannot go he can send, and you need not blunder into insults when you write your words. You have time to think and to rewrite. I shall have to part with you again, son Allan. I feel it very bitterly."

Allan did not answer at once. He sat looking at his father's bent face and heavy eyes. The blow had really aged him, for "'tis the heart holds up the body." And to-night John Campbell's heart had failed him. He realized fully that the absence and interval necessary to heal Mary's sense of wrong and insult might also be full of other elements equally inimical to his plans. Besides, he had a real joy in his son's presence. He loved him tenderly; it maimed every pleasure he had to give him up.

"What do you say, Allan? There has been a mistake, and we must make the best of the chances left us. Had you not better go away? Mary will forgive you sooner at a distance."

Allan bit his lips, and looked steadily at the kind, sorrowful face opposite him. Then he answered, "You are too good a father to deceive, sir. I will not do you that wrong, however angry you may be with me. I love another woman. I never can marry Mary without wronging both her and myself."

"That alters everything, Allan. How long have you loved this other woman?"

"Since I left home last March."

"You cannot be sure of a love only a few months old. Will you tell me who she is?"

Allan took a taper and lit every gas-jet in the room. "Look around, father, you will see her everywhere." He led him first to the picture still upon his easel--Maggie, in her long, brown merino kirk dress; with linen cuffs folded back over the tight, plain sleeves! and a small, turned down linen collar at the throat. She had a sea-shell in her open left palm, and she was looking at it, with that faint melancholy smile Allan always chose for her face! He asked for no criticism, and John Campbell made none. Silently the two men passed from picture to picture. Maggie always. Maggie baking the oat cakes. Maggie at the wheel. Maggie mending the nets. Maggie peering through misty gloom for the boats, out on the angry sea. Maggie bending over the open Bible. Maggie with a neighbor's baby cuddled up to her breast. Maggie rowing, with the wind blowing her fine hair like a cloud around her. Maggie knitting by the fireside, her face beaming with sisterly love on the pale dark face of her brother David. As Allan had said, "Maggie everywhere."

The elder man went back to look at several of the pictures; he stood long before the one on the easel. He sat down again, still silent; but Allan saw that there was no anger on his face.

"Well, father?"

"She is a grand looking woman. No one can deny that. A peasant woman,