They stood for a moment in deep enjoyment, then simultaneously
turned to each other.
"My lady," said Donal, "with such a sky as that out there, it hardly
seems as if there could be such a thing as our search to-night!
Hollow places, hidden away for evil cause, do not go with it at all!
There is the story of gracious invention and glorious gift; here the
story of greedy gathering and self-seeking, which all concealment
involves!"
"But there may be nothing, you know, Mr. Grant!" said Arctura,
troubled for the house.
"There may be nothing. But if there is such a room, you may be sure
it has some relation with terrible wrong--what, we may never find
out, or even the traces of it."
"I shall not be afraid," she said, as if speaking with herself. "It
is the terrible dreaming that makes me weak. In the morning I
tremble as if I had been in the hands of some evil power."
Donal turned his eyes upon her. How thin she looked in the last of
the sunlight! A pang went through him at the thought that one day he
might be alone with Davie in the huge castle, untended by the
consciousness that a living light and loveliness flitted somewhere
about its gloomy and ungenial walls. But he would not think the
thought! How that dismal Miss Carmichael must have worried her! When
the very hope of the creature in his creator is attacked in the name
of religion; when his longing after a living God is met with the
offer of a paltry escape from hell, how is the creature to live! It
is God we want, not heaven; his righteousness, not an imputed one,
for our own possession; remission, not letting off; love, not
endurance for the sake of another, even if that other be the one
loveliest of all.
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