Part 2 What Occurred in Glencaid Chapter 9 The Verge of a Quarrel

And so she was Naida Gillis, poor old Gillis's little girl! He stopped
suddenly in the road, striving to realize the thought. He had never
once dreamed of such a consummation, and it staggered him. His thought
drifted back to that pale-faced, red-haired, poorly dressed slip of a
girl whom he had occasionally viewed with disapproval about the
post-trader's store at Bethune, and it seemed simply an impossibility.
He recalled the unconscious, dust-covered, nameless waif he had once
held on his lap beside the Bear Water. What was there in common
between that outcast, and this well-groomed, frankly spoken young
woman? Yet, whoever she was or had been, the remembrance of her could
not be conjured out of his brain. He might look back with repugnance
upon those others, those misty phantoms of the past, but the vision of
his mind, his ever-changeable divinity of the vine shadows, would not
become obscured, nor grow less fascinating. Let her be whom she might,
no other could ever win that place she occupied in his heart. His mind
dwelt upon her flushed cheeks, her earnest face, her wealth of glossy
hair, her dark eyes filled with mingled roguery and thoughtfulness,--in
utter unconsciousness that he was already her humble slave. Suddenly
there occurred to him a recollection of Silent Murphy, and his strange,
unguarded remark. What could the fellow have meant? Was there,
indeed, some secret in the life history of this young girl?--some story
of shame, perhaps? If so, did Hampton know about it?