“And when was it you became beautiful again?” Gavin asked, by no means in the mind to pay compliments.

“A year passed,” she continued, “before I saw him again.  In that time he had not asked for me once, and the gardener had kept me out of charity.  It was by an accident that we met, and at first he did not know me.  Then he said, ’Why, Babbie, I believe you are to be a beauty, after all!’ I hated him for that, and stalked away from him, but he called after me, ‘Bravo! she walks like a queen’; and it was because I walked like a queen that he sent me to an Edinburgh school.  He used to come to see me every year, and as I grew up the girls called me Lady Rintoul.  He was not fond of me; he is not fond of me now.  He would as soon think of looking at the back of a picture as at what I am apart from my face, but he dotes on it, and is to marry it.  Is that love?  Long before I left school, which was shortly before you came to Thrums, he had told his sister that he was determined to marry me, and she hated me for it, making me as uncomfortable as she could, so that I almost looked forward to the marriage because it would be such a humiliation to her.”

In admitting this she looked shamefacedly at Gavin, and then went on: 

“It is humiliating him too.  I understand him.  He would like not to want to marry me, for he is ashamed of my origin, but he cannot help it.  It is this feeling that has brought him here, so that the marriage may take place where my history is not known.”

“The secret has been well kept,” Gavin said, “for they have failed to discover it even in Thrums.”

“Some of the Spittal servants suspect it, nevertheless,” Babbie answered, “though how much they know I cannot say.  He has not a servant now, either here or in England, who knew me as a child.  The gardener who befriended me was sent away long ago.  Lord Rintoul looks upon me as a disgrace to him that he cannot live without.”

“I dare say he cares for you more than you think,” Gavin said gravely.

“He is infatuated about my face, or the pose of my head, or something of that sort,” Babbie said bitterly, “or he would not have endured me so long.  I have twice had the wedding postponed, chiefly, I believe, to enrage my natural enemy, his sister, who is as much aggravated by my reluctance to marry him as by his desire to marry me.  However, I also felt that imprisonment for life was approaching as the day drew near, and I told him that if he did not defer the wedding I should run away.  He knows I am capable of it, for twice I ran away from school.  If his sister only knew that!”

For a moment it was the old Babbie Gavin saw; but her glee was short-lived, and she resumed sedately: