Lochinvar: A Novel

It was graying to the edge of dark upon one of the evenings towards the end of April, in the year 1688, when Walter Gordon, of Lochinvar in Galloway, and now for some time private in the Prince of Orange's Douglas regiment of dragoons, strode up the stairs of his cousin Will's lodging in the ancient Dutch city of Amersfort. The young man had come straight from duty at the palace, and his humor was not exactly gracious.

But Wat Gordon could not long remain vexed in spirit in the presence of his cousin Will's wife, Maisie Lennox. Her still, sweet smile killed enmity, even as spring sunshine kills the bite of frost. The little, low-roofed Dutch room, panelled with oak, had its windows open towards the sun-setting, and there in the glow of the west two girls were sitting. At sight of them Walter Gordon stopped suddenly in the doorway as he came bursting in. He had been expecting to see but one—his cousin's young wife, into whose pretty ear of patientest sympathy he might pour his fretful boyish disappointments and much-baffled aspirations.

Mistress Maisie Lennox, now for half a year Will Gordon of Earlstoun's wife (for by her maiden name she was still used to be called, and so she signed herself, since it had not yet become the custom for a women to take among her intimates the style of her husband's surname), sat on a high-backed chair by the oriel window. She had the kind of sunny hair which it is a pleasure to look upon, and the ripples of it made crisp tendrils about her brow. Her face underneath was already sweetening and gaining in reposefulness, with that look of matronhood which comes early to patient, gracious women, who would yet venture much for the man they love. And not once nor yet twice had Maisie Lennox dared all for those whom she loved—as has, indeed, elsewhere been told.

But, all unexpected of the hasty visitor, there was yet another fair girl looking up at him there in that quaint, dusky-shadowed room. Seated upon a low chair, and half leaning across the knees of Mistress Maisie, set wide apart on purpose, there reclined a maiden of another temper and mould. Slender and supple she was as willow that sways by the water-edges, yet returning ever to slim, graceful erectness like a tempered blade of Damascus; above, the finest and daintiest head in the world, profiled like Apollo of the Bow, with great eyes that were full of alternate darkness and tenderness, of tears and fire; a perfectly chiselled mouth, a thing which is rarer and more excellent than the utmost beauty of splendid eyes—and sweeter also; a complexion not milk and rose like that of Maisie Lennox, but of ivory rather, with the dusky crimson of warm blood blushing up delicately through it. Such was Kate McGhie, called Kate of the Dark Lashes, the only daughter of Roger McGhie of Balmaghie, a well-reputed Galloway gentleman in the country of Scotland.