Promises Fulfilled

'Then proudly, proudly up she rose,
Tho' the tear was in her e'e,
"Whate'er ye say, think what ye may,
Ye's get na word frae me!"'
SCOTCH BALLAD.

It was not merely that Margaret was known to Mr. Thornton to have
spoken falsely,--though she imagined that for this reason only
was she so turned in his opinion,--but that this falsehood of
hers bore a distinct reference in his mind to some other lover.
He could not forget the fond and earnest look that had passed
between her and some other man--the attitude of familiar
confidence, if not of positive endearment. The thought of this
perpetually stung him; it was a picture before his eyes, wherever
he went and whatever he was doing. In addition to this (and he
ground his teeth as he remembered it), was the hour, dusky
twilight; the place, so far away from home, and comparatively
unfrequented.

His nobler self had said at first, that all this
last might be accidental, innocent, justifiable; but once allow
her right to love and be beloved (and had he any reason to deny
her right?--had not her words been severely explicit when she
cast his love away from her?), she might easily have been
beguiled into a longer walk, on to a later hour than she had
anticipated. But that falsehood! which showed a fatal
consciousness of something wrong, and to be concealed, which was
unlike her.