‘It would, of course,’ she admitted, with a sigh; ’but I am rather suspicious of everybody.  I am afraid I am not at all in a wholesome frame of mind.’

She looked so lovely as she uttered these words, her sweet face wearing a somewhat pensive, troubled look, that her lover felt that nothing would ever induce him to give her up.  They had now left the town behind, and were on the brow of the hill where four roads meet.  To the right stood the cosy homestead of Mossgiel, and to the left the whole expanse of lovely country, hill and field and wood, which had so often filled the soul of Burns with the lonely rapture of the poet’s soul.  Gladys never passed up that way without thinking of him, and it seemed to her sometimes that she shared with him that deep, yearning depression of soul which found a voice in the words—­

  ‘Man was made to mourn.’

The road was quite deserted.  Its grassy slopes were white with the gowan, and in the low ragged hedges there were clumps of sweet-smelling hawthorn.  All the fields were green and lovely with the promise which summer crowns and autumn reaps; and it was all so lovely a world that there seemed in it no room for care or sadness or any dismal thing.  Being thus alone, with no witness to their happiness but the birds and the bees, the pair of lovers ought to have found it a golden hour; but something appeared still to stand between them, like a gaunt shadow keeping them apart.

’I have been awfully miserable, Gladys.  You see, I didn’t know what to do; you are so different from any girl I have ever met.  I never know exactly what will please you and what will aggravate you.  Upon my word, you have no idea what an amount of power you have in those frail little hands.’

Gladys smiled and coloured a little.  She was not quite insensible to flattery; she was young enough to feel that it was rather pleasant, on the whole, to have so much power over a big handsome fellow like George Fordyce.

‘I wish you would not talk so much nonsense,’ she said quickly; but her tone was more encouraging, and with a sudden inspiration George followed up his advantage.  He put his arm round the slender waist, to the great amazement of Castor and Pollux, who, finding the firm hand relax on the reins, had no sort of hesitation about coming to an immediate stop.

‘But, all the same, I’m going to keep hold of these little hands,’ he said passionately, ’because they hold my happiness in their grasp, and I’m not going to allow them to torture me very much longer.  How soon can you be ready to marry me, Gladys?’

’To marry you!  Oh, not for ages.  Let me go.  Just look at the ponies!  They are utterly scandalised,’ she cried, her sweet face suffused with red.  But he did not release her until he had stolen a kiss from her unwilling lips, a kiss which seemed to him to bridge entirely the slight estrangement which had been between them.

She sat very far away from him, and, gathering up the reins again, brought Castor and Pollux to their scattered senses; but her face was not quite so grim and unreadable as before.  After all, it was something to be of so much importance to one man.  The very idea of her power over him had something intoxicating in it, thus proving her to be a very woman.