It may be asked whence it arose that Duncan should
now be willing to quit his claim to any paternal property
in Malcolm, confessing that he was none of his blood.
One source of the change was doubtless the desire
of confidences between himself and Lady Florimel,
another, the growing conviction, generated it may
be by the admiration which is born of love, that the
youth had gentle blood in his veins; and a third, that
Duncan had now so thoroughly proved the heart of Malcolm
as to have no fear of any change of fortune ever alienating
his affections, or causing him to behave otherwise
than as his dutiful grandson.
It is not surprising that such a tale should have
a considerable influence on Lady Florimel’s
imagination: out of the scanty facts which formed
but a second volume, she began at once to construct
both a first and a third. She dreamed of the young
fisherman that night, and reflecting in the morning
on her intercourse with him, recalled sufficient indications
in him of superiority to his circumstances, noted
by her now, however, for the first time, to justify
her dream: he might indeed well be the last scion
of a noble family.
I do not intend the least hint that she began to fall
in love with him. To balance his good looks,
and the nobility, to keener eyes yet more evident
than to hers, in both his moral and physical carriage,
the equally undeniable clownishness of his dialect
and tone had huge weight, while the peculiar straightforwardness
of his behaviour and address not unfrequently savoured
in her eyes of rudeness; besides which objectionable
things, there was the persistent odour of fish about
his garments—in itself sufficient to prevent
such a catastrophe. The sole result of her meditations
was the resolve to get some amusement out of him by
means of a knowledge of his history superior to his
own.
Before the close of the herring fishing, one of those
movements of the spiritual waters, which in different
forms, and under different names, manifest themselves
at various intervals of space and of time, was in
full vortex. It was supposed by the folk of Portlossie
to have begun in the village of Scaurnose, but by the
time it was recognized as existent, no one could tell
whence it had come, any more than he could predict
whither it was going. Of its spiritual origin
it may be also predicated with confidence that its
roots lay deeper than human insight could reach, and
were far more interwoven than human analysis could
disentangle.
