But the heart is master not
servant, and cannot be commanded. She loved him not and there was an end
of it.
Next, Lady Ogilvie hinted at danger to me from him. Well, if he wanted a
fight, a fight he should have. There's no Englishman living thinks more of
Scotsmen than I do, but I have never thought enough of the best Scot
breathing to run away from him. As for Donald, unless I was an idiot and
he a better actor than Mr. Garrick, he would far sooner have driven his
dirk into himself than into me. That matter could rest. There would be no
fighting that night, and I never put on my breeches till it's time to get
up.
Where her ladyship was wrong was in supposing, as clearly she did, that
Margaret's love affairs interested me otherwise than as being Margaret's.
I loved her, loved her dearly, all the more dearly because hopelessly. I
had no qualifications which would enable me to speak my love. At my best
nothing but a poor yeoman, I was now not even that, I was a declared rebel
in a rebellion that had failed. And if I had had every qualification that
rank and wealth could give me, it would still have been the same.
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