but I cannot tell. Listen. I was reared in Scotland, not far beyond
the English border. My name was Jean Lindsay. My father had been a
fisherman as a young man, but came to Cornwall for his wife, and soon
after he brought her to Scotland and I was born, she died. He had a
farm in Scotland, and there I lived with my stepmother and stepbrothers
and sisters, who made life a misery for me until I was eighteen, and
then one day I met a gentleman. Oh, my lad, it was no wonder I loved
him; he was different from all the lads I had met in those parts,
young, handsome, laughter-loving, just the man to captivate a lassie's
heart. He married me, Scottish fashion, and on the day we were wed he
told me he had received a letter which urged him to go back to his home
at once. We were married secretly, my boy, because I was afraid for my
father and stepmother to know. They wanted me to wed a young farmer,
and would have forced me to do so but for him, and I could not--how
could I when I loved him and he loved me? And I believed in him too;
he was all the world to me. No one knew but he and me. But when we
were married and he came to the inn, he told the landlady I was his
wife."

The boy nodded. "And the letter, mother?" he said, "the letter, what
of that?"

"It urged him to go to his home," she replied. "You must remember, my
boy, that I was young and ignorant. I knew nothing of the ways of the
world, nothing of men, but I loved him devotedly. He was my king, my
life! When he had read the letter, he said he must leave the following
morning, and urged me to go back to my home and wait until he could
come and fetch me. I was to tell them, he said, that we were married,
and that thus I was free from the attentions of Willie Fearn, the
farmer they wanted me to wed."

The youth did not seem to understand her, but looked at her with wild
wonder in his eyes, trying to comprehend the story she was telling. It
seemed utterly unreal to him. He wondered whether she fully realised
what she was saying.

"Yes, mother," he said at length, "go on."

"What could I do but obey him?" she said. "I had promised before God
that I would, and I did. I went back to my father--he had wondered
where I had gone--and told him I had wedded a young Englishman named
Douglas Graham. I think my father thought that all was right, for,
while he spoke harsh words to me, he seemed presently to settle down to
the conviction that my husband wou