"Should you be sorry if I were to die one of these days, Barbara,"
inquired the Ranger, "like one of those flowers?"
"Sorry! have I ever appeared ungrateful, Robin? When first I came here,
you used to be so kind me:--indeed, you are always kind--only I fear
lately you are displeased with me about something or other. You have
avoided me--are you angry, Robin?"
"Indeed I am not; nor do I forget how often you have driven away the
'shadows' that used to come over me."
"And do you--I mean, do you esteem me as much as ever?"
Robin looked earnestly into her face, and then taking her hand, gently
replied:-"I do esteem you, as you term it, more than ever; but I also love you.
When a little helpless thing, I took you from your father's arms: I
loved you then as a parent would love a child. When Lady Cecil took you
under her care, and I saw you but seldom, my heart leaned towards the
daughter of my best friend with a brother's love. And when, as I have
just said, the sunlight of your smile, and the gentleness of your young
girlish voice, dispelled much melancholy from my mind, I thought--no
matter what. But now the case is altered--you see in me a mere lump, a
deformed creature, a being unseemly to look upon, a wretch----!"
"Robin Hays, you wrong yourself," interrupted Barbara; "I do not see you
thus, nor think you thus. The raven is not a beautiful bird, nor hath it
a sweet voice, yet it was welcomed and beloved of the prophet Elijah."
"So it was, Barbara; but why?--because it was useful to him in his
hour of need. Think you that, in the time of his triumph and prosperity,
he would have taken it to his bosom, as if it had been a dove?"
"I do not see why he should not," she said: "God is so good, that he
never takes away one beauty without bestowing another; and the raven's
glossy wing might be, to some, even more beautiful than the purple
plumage of the dove: at all events, so excellent a man would not be
chained by mere eye-beauty, which, after all, passeth quickly. Though I
think it was very uncourteous of Mr. Fleetword to say, in my hearing,
Robin, that the time would come when Mistress Constance would be as
plain-favoured as old Dame Compton, whose countenance looks like the
worm-eaten cover of Solomon Grundy's Bible."