there was brief space now for nelly's buying pearlins and pinners, and sacques and mantles, and all a young matron's bravery, or for decorating a guest chamber for the ceremony. but lady carnegie was not to be balked for trifles. nanny swinton stitched night and day, with salt tears from aged eyes moistening her thread; and nelly did not swerve from her compact, but acted mechanically with the others as she was told. with a strange pallor on the olive of her cheek, and swollen, burning lids, drooping over sunk violent lines beneath the hot eyeballs, and cold, trembling hands, she bore staneholme's stated presence in these long, bleak march afternoons. he never addressed her particularly, although he took many a long, sore look. few and formal then were the lover's devoirs expected or permitted.
the evening was raw and rainy; elderly gentlemen would have needed "their lass with a lantern," to escort them from their chambers. the old city guard sputtered their gaelic, and stamped up and down for warmth. the chairmen drank their last fee to keep out the cold—and in and out of the low doorways moved middle-aged [page 178]women barefooted, and in curch and short gown, who, when snooded maidens, had gazed on the white cockade, and the march of prince charlie stuart and his highlandmen. down the narrow way, in the drizzly dusk, ran a slight figure, entirely muffled up. fleet of foot was the runner, and blindly she held her course. twice she came in contact with intervening obstacles—water-stoups on a threshold, gay ribbons fluttering from a booth. she was flying from worse than death, with dim projects of begging her way to the north, to the brother she had parted from when a child; and ghastly suggestions, too, like lightning flashes, of seizing a knife from the first butcher's block and ending her misery.
hasty steps were treading fast upon her track. she distinguished them with morbid acuteness through the speed of her own flight. they were mingled steps—a feeble hurrying footfall, and an iron tread. she threaded a group of bystanders, and, weak and helpless as she was, prepared to dive into a mirk close. not that black opening, nelly carnegie, it is doomed to bear for generations a foul stain—the scene of a mystery no scottish law-court could clear—the begbie murder. but it was no seafaring man, with cain's red right hand, that rushed after trembling, fainting nelly carnegie. the tender arms in which she had lain as an infant clutched her dress; and a kindly tongue faltered its faithful, distressed petition—
"come back, come back, miss nelly, afore the leddy finds out; ye hae nae refuge, an' ye're traced already by mair than me."
but in a moment strong hands were upon her, holding [page 179]her like a fluttering moth, or a wild panting leveret, or a bird beating its wings; doing her no violence, however, for who would brush off the down, or tear the soft fur, or break the ruffled feathers? she struggled so frantically that poor old nanny interposed—
"na, sir; let her be; she'll gae hame wi' me, her ain born serving-woman. and oh, staneholme, be not hard, it's her last nicht."
that was nelly carnegie's marriage eve.
on the morrow the marriage was celebrated. the bridegroom might pass, in his manly prime and his scarlet coat, although a dowf gallant; but who would have thought that nelly carnegie in the white brocade which was her grandmother's the day that made her sib to rothes—nelly carnegie who flouted at love and lovers, and sported a free, light, brave heart, would have made so dowie a bride? the company consisted only of lady carnegie's starched cousins, with their husbands and their daughters, who yet hoped to outrival nelly with her gloomy lauderdale laird.
the hurried ceremony excused the customary festivities. the family party could keep counsel, and preserve a discreet blindness when the ring dropped from the bride's fingers, and the wine stood untasted before her, while lady carnegie did the honours as if lonely age and narrow circumstances did not exist.
