“No, it is not enough.  It would be doing you a great wrong to marry you when I cannot speak, and I will not do it because I love you too much to do anything that would harm you.  Your world would think you had done a very foolish thing and it would be right.  I have thought it all over many times since something Aunt Janet said made me understand, and I know I am doing right.  I am sorry I did not understand sooner, before you had learned to care so much.”

“Kilmeny, darling, you have taken a very absurd fancy into that dear black head of yours.  Don’t you know that you will make me miserably unhappy all my life if you will not be my wife?”

“No, you think so now; and I know you will feel very badly for a time.  Then you will go away and after awhile you will forget me; and then you will see that I was right.  I shall be very unhappy, too, but that is better than spoiling your life.  Do not plead or coax because I shall not change my mind.”

Eric did plead and coax, however—­at first patiently and smilingly, as one might argue with a dear foolish child; then with vehement and distracted earnestness, as he began to realize that Kilmeny meant what she said.  It was all in vain.  Kilmeny grew paler and paler, and her eyes revealed how keenly she was suffering.  She did not even try to argue with him, but only listened patiently and sadly, and shook her head.  Say what he would, entreat and implore as he might, he could not move her resolution a hairs-breadth.

Yet he did not despair; he could not believe that she would adhere to such a resolution; he felt sure that her love for him would eventually conquer, and he went home not unhappily after all.  He did not understand that it was the very intensity of her love which gave her the strength to resist his pleading, where a more shallow affection might have yielded.  It held her back unflinchingly from doing him what she believed to be a wrong.

CHAPTER XV.  AN OLD, UNHAPPY, FAR-OFF THING

The next day Eric sought Kilmeny again and renewed his pleadings, but again in vain.  Nothing he could say, no argument which he could advance, was of any avail against her sad determination.  When he was finally compelled to realize that her resolution was not to be shaken, he went in his despair to Janet Gordon.  Janet listened to his story with concern and disappointment plainly visible on her face.  When he had finished she shook her head.

“I’m sorry, Master.  I can’t tell you how sorry I am.  I had hoped for something very different.  Hoped!  I have prayed for it.  Thomas and I are getting old and it has weighed on my mind for years—­what was to become of Kilmeny when we would be gone.  Since you came I had hoped she would have a protector in you.  But if Kilmeny says she will not marry you I am afraid she’ll stick to it.”

“But she loves me,” cried the young man, “and if you and her uncle speak to her—­urge her—­perhaps you can influence her—­”