Reyburn walked familiarly up and
down, now turning the music for her, now bending with a word in
Lilian's ear, now joining in the burden of the song:
As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in luve am I;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a' the seas gang dry--
Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi' the sun.
"What a being Burns was!" interrupted John, without looking up. "How
precisely he knew my feelings toward any one who would show me how to
escape this checkmate!" And Lilian sprang to her feet, upsetting her
workbasket, and ran to him and commenced talking hurriedly, while Mr.
Reyburn, whose eyes had been resting on her face for some time, kept
on singing after Helen ceased--
Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi' the sun.
And Helen, child as she was, looking at him and listening to him,
recognized a veiled meaning in the tone of the singing, and thought
she hated the singer.
That night, when all the others had gone, and Lilian's mother was
folding her work, and John was locking a window, and Helen closing the
piano, she saw Mr. Reyburn stoop over Lilian's hand as he said
good-night--stoop low, and press his lips upon its dimpled back. In
after years Helen might recall his manner of that moment and
understand it, half reverence, half passion, as it was, but now she
only saw Lilian turn white and tremble, and clasp her hand over her
eyes in a bewildered way when he had gone to his rooms on the other
side of the hall, and walk up stairs as though she feared to rouse an
echo.
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