then of the rocks or of the burns. I've seen him when the blood was running down off his hands, when the water would be draining out of the pockets of his 'knickerbogles'; and though he may have the sense to hearken to a whisper from me, I would be sorry to make a sound or do anything unchancy. He's as good-humoured a gentleman as Glenconan himself; but then he looks as ready to get up his back as Glenconan or a wild cat: and 'deed, were he once to set his teeth, I wadna trust him."
Which might not be an amiable trait in Mr Venables's character, but which nevertheless recommended him to his cousin rather than otherwise. Like most women with anything in them, perhaps she inclined by preference to a man with a spice of the devil; and in that respect Venables resembled her father, who was her ideal of chivalrous manhood. All the more so that, as she often told herself, there was something so winningly kind in those sparkling eyes of his, when involuntarily they seemed to soften as they met the glance of her own.
CHAPTER VI. AN EMBARRASSING INTERVIEW.
Had the young men been cross-examined, they must have frankly confessed that seldom before had they been so happy as at Glenconan. The days seemed to go gliding by like the swift and silent night-flight of the owl – though that is hardly an appropriate metaphor, since the merriment was sometimes noisy enough, and they chanced to be exceptionally fortunate in sunshine. We should rather say that the joyous Sun-god had greased the wheels of his chariot, and was getting over the ground at his best pace. But their temperaments were very opposite, and thence came a strange inconsistency. Leslie, though earnest and thoughtful, was somewhat indolent, and inclined to take life lazily. So long as he was happy in the day, he left the morrow to look after itself. Doubtless he might have great latent reserves of power, but it needed some strong stimulus to make him draw upon them; while Venables, who belonged apparently to the butterfly order of beings, was nevertheless profoundly interested in his own future. He was bound to make his own way in the world; he was determined to "arrive" sooner or later: so the most agreeable halts in the pilgrimage were simply sheer waste of time. He could never lie down upon a couch of rose-leaves, without the prick of a thorn making him inclined to spring up again. Conscience played the part of the metropolitan policeman, and was perpetually bidding him get up and move on.
How far he really cared for his cousin – how far, at least, he had fallen in love with her – was a point that he had not carefully considered. Had he been born to a handsome independence, he would have probably paid his court to her and proposed. But he shrank from the nuisance of thoughts that worried; and it was a standing trouble to him that he must spend labour and time to attain the easy position where he might indulge his love and his ambition. Even if he hurried uphill by the shortest conceivable cuts, how many inestimable opportunities might be missed in the meantime! That, however, was the more reason for hastening
