“I have done what I ought to do.  My cousin is very good; he is very fond of me; he will break his heart if I do not marry him.  And I do like him very well, too.  Perhaps in some years it will be a pleasure to me to be his wife.”

“Coquette,” he interrupted, “you do not blame me for being unable to help you.  I am going to tell you why I cannot.  Many a time have I determined to cell you.”

“Ah, I know,” she said.  “You will tell me something you have done.  I do not wish to hear it.  I have often seen you about to tell me a secret, and sometimes I have wondered, too, and wished to know; but then I did think there was enough trouble in the world without adding to it.”

Someone came along the road, came as if to sit on the seat with them—­a woman with a coarse, red face and unsteady black eyes, full of mischievous amusement.

Lord Earlshope rose and faced the stranger.

“You had better go home,” he said to her.  “I give you fair warning, you had better go home.”

“Why,” said the woman, with a loud laugh.  “You have not said as much to me for six years back!  My dear,” she added, looking at Coquette, “I am sorry to have disturbed you; but do you know who I am?  I am Lady Earlshope!”

“Coquette,” said Earlshope, “that is my wife.”

When the woman had walked away, laughing and kissing her hand in tipsy fashion, Coquette came a step nearer, and held out her hand.

“I know it all now,” she said, “and am very sorry for you.  I do now know the reason of many things, and I cannot be angry when we are going away from each other.  Good-bye.  I will hear of you sometimes through Lady Drum.”

“Good-bye, Coquette,” he said, “and God bless you for your gentleness, and your sweetness, and your forgiveness.”

It was to Lady Drum that Coquette made her confession that day.

“I do love him better than everything in the world—­and I cannot help it.  And now he is gone, and I shall never see him again, and I would like to see him only once to say I am sorry for him.”

Coquette returned to Airlie, and tried to find peace in homely duties in the village.  As time went on the Whaup pressed for the marriage day to be named, but he could not awake in her hopes for the future.  Then, one dull morning in March, as she walked by herself over the Moor, Lord Earlshope was by her side, saying:  “Coquette, have you forgotten nothing, as I have forgotten nothing?” And she was saying:  “I love you, dearest, more than ever.”

“Listen, Coquette, listen!” he said.  “A ship passes here in the morning for America; I have taken two berths in it for you and me; to-morrow we shall be sailing away to a new world, and leaving all these troubles behind.  You remember that woman—­nothing has been heard of her for two years.  I have sought her everywhere.  She must be dead.  And so we shall be married when we get there.  The yacht will be waiting off Saltcoats to-night; you must go down by yourself, and the gig shall come for you, and we shall intercept the ship.”