After all, can you take out of the life what is bred in the bone?--and Jean Cochrane was of a Covenanting stock, and her mother a very harridan of bigotry. Might there not have been some sense in the fear of his friends that he would no longer be loyal to the good cause, and was Jock Grimond's grudge against his marriage mere stupidity and jealousy? Everyone was securing his safety and adjusting himself to the new regime; there was hardly a Lowland gentleman who had irretrievably pledged himself to King James, and as for the chiefs, they would fight for their own hand as they had always done, and could only be counted on for one thing, and that was securing plunder. Was not he alone, and would not he soon be either on the scaffold or an exile? The Whigs would soon be reigning in their glory over Scotland, and it would be well with everyone that had their password. If he were out of the way, would there not be a strong temptation for her to make terms with her family and buy security by loyalty to their side? No doubt she was a strong woman, but, after all, she was only a woman, and was she able to stand alone and live forsaken at Glenogilvie, with friends neither among Cavaliers nor Covenanters? Could he blame her if she separated herself from a ruined cause and a discredited husband, for would she not be only doing what soldiers and courtiers had done, what everybody except himself was doing? Why should she, a young woman with life before her, tie herself up with a hopeless cause, and one who might be called commander-in-chief of James's army, but who had nothing to show for it but a handful of reckless troopers and a few hundred Highland thieves, a man whom all sensible people would be regarding as a mad adventurer? Would it not be a stroke of wisdom--the Whigs were a cunning crew, and he recalled that Lord Dundonald was an adroit schemer--to buy the future for herself and her child by selling him and returning to her old allegiance? There was enough reality in this ghost to give it, as it were, a bodily shape, and Graham, who had been flinging himself about, struck out with his fist as if at flesh and blood.
"Damn you, begone, begone!"
For a while he lay quietly and made as though he would have slept. Then the ghosts began to gather around his bed again as if the Covenanters he had murdered had come from the other world and were having their day of vengeance. It must have been Jean who met Livingstone in the orchard, and it must have been an assignation. There was no woman in Dudhope had her height and carriage, and the vision of her proud face that he had loved so well brought scalding tears to his eyes. For what purpose had she met Livingstone, if not to arrange some base surrender, if not to give information about him so that MacKay might find him more easily? Was it worse than that, if worse could be when all was black as hell? Livingstone had known her for years; it had been evident that he admired her; he was an attractive man of his kind. Nothing was more likely in that day, when unlawful love was not a shame, but a boast, than that he had been making his suit to Lady Dundee. Her husband was away, likely never to return; she was a young and handsome woman, and Livingstone had time upon his hands at Dundee.