He took the little
thing in his great grasp tenderly. Her lip trembled. She gazed at
him for an instant, full in the face, with a womanly, believing
expression.
"My poor Malcolm!" she said, "I am sorry for you."
She withdrew her hand, and again leaned over the bulwark. Her heart
was softened towards her groom brother, and for a moment it seemed
to her that some wrong had been done. Why should the one be a
marchioness and the other a groom? Then came the thought that now
all was explained. Every peculiarity of the young man, every gift
extraordinary of body, mind, or spirit, his strength, his beauty,
his courage, and honesty, his simplicity, nobleness, and affection,
yes, even what in him was mere doggedness and presumption,
all, everything explained itself to Florimel in the fact that the
incomprehensible fisherman groom, that talked like a parson, was
the son of her father. She never thought of the woman that was his
mother, and what share she might happen to have in the phenomenon
--thought only of her father, and a little pitifully of the half
honour and more than half disgrace infolding the very existence of
her attendant. As usual her thoughts were confused. The one moment
the poor fellow seemed to exist only on sufferance, having no
right to be there at all, for as fine a fellow as he was; the next
she thought how immeasurably he was indebted to the family of the
Colonsays.
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