Chapter 32

LEADING SWIFTLY TO THE APPALLING MARRIAGE.

The little minister bowed his head in assent when Babbie's cry,
"Oh, Gavin, do you?" leapt in front of her unselfish wish that he
should care for her no more.

"But that matters very little now," he said.

She was his to do with as he willed; and, perhaps, the joy of
knowing herself loved still, begot a wild hope that he would
refuse to give her up. If so, these words laid it low, but even
the sentence they passed upon her could not kill the self-respect
that would be hers henceforth. "That matters very little now," the
man said, but to the woman it seemed to matter more than anything
else in the world.

Throughout the remainder of this interview until the end came,
Gavin never faltered. His duty and hers lay so plainly before him
that there could be no straying from it. Did Babbie think him
strangely calm? At the Glen Quharity gathering I once saw Rob
Angus lift a boulder with such apparent ease that its weight was
discredited, until the cry arose that the effort had dislocated
his arm. Perhaps Gavin's quietness deceived the Egyptian
similarly. Had he stamped, she might have understood better what
he suffered, standing there on the hot embers of his passion.

"We must try to make amends now," he said gravely, "for the wrong
we have done."

"The wrong I have done," she said, correcting him. "You will make
it harder for me if you blame yourself. How vile I was in those
days!"

"Those days," she called them, they seemed so far away.

"Do not cry, Babbie," Gavin replied, gently. "He knew what you
were, and why, and He pities you. 'For His anger endureth but a
moment: in His favor is life: weeping may endure for a night, but
joy cometh in the morning.'"

"Not to me."

"Yes, to you," he answered. "Babbie, you will return to the
Spittal now, and tell Lord Rintoul everything."

"If you wish it."

"Not because I wish it, but because it is right. He must be told
that you do not love him."

"I never pretended to him that I did," Babbie said, looking up.
"Oh," she added, with emphasis, "he knows that. He thinks me
incapable of caring for any one."

"And that is why he must be told of me," Gavin replied. "You are
no longer the woman you were, Babbie, and you know it, and I know
it, but he does not know it. He shall know it before he decides
whether he is to marry you."

Babbie looked at Gavin, and wondered he did not see that this
decision lay with him.

"Nevertheless," she