Of course, my relatives did not really like me. How could they? They
were busy in their big world and did not know what to do with a girl who
ought to have been important and was not. I am sure that in secret they
were relieved when I was sent back to Muircarrie.
After that the life I loved went on quietly. I studied with Angus, and
made the book-walled library my own room. I walked and rode on the moor,
and I knew the people who lived in the cottages and farms on the estate.
I think they liked me, but I am not sure, because I was too shy to seem
very friendly. I was more at home with Feargus, the piper, and with
some of the gardeners than I was with any one else. I think I was lonely
without knowing; but I was never unhappy. Jean and Angus were my nearest
and dearest. Jean was of good blood and a stanch gentlewoman, quite
sufficiently educated to be my companion as she had been my early
governess.
It was Jean who told Angus that I was giving myself too entirely to the
study of ancient books and the history of centuries gone by.
"She is living to-day, and she must not pass through this life without
gathering anything from it."
"This life," she put it, as if I had passed through others before, and
might pass through others again. That was always her way of speaking,
and she seemed quite unconscious of any unusualness in it.
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