"Listen, Mysie, I read a song yesterday. It's the sort of thing I'd have written about you:
"In the passionate heart of the rose, Which from life its deep ardor is feeing. And lifts its proud head to disclose Its immaculate beauty and being. I can see your fine soul in repose, With an eye lit with love and all-seeing, In the passionate heart of the rose, All athrob with its beauty of being."
He quoted, and Mysie's pulse leapt with every word, as the low soothing wooing of his voice came in soft tones like a gentle breeze among clumps of briars.
"Isn't it a beautiful song, Mysie?" he said. "The man who wrote that must have been thinking of someone very like you," and as he said this, he gave her hand a tender squeeze. Mysie thrilled to his touch and her heart leapt and fluttered like a bird in a snare, her breath coming in short little gasps, which were at once a pain and a joy.
"Dinna say that," she said, a note of alarm in her voice as she tried to withdraw her hand.
But he only held it closer, and bent his lips over it, his manner gentle but firm.
"Ay, it is true, Mysie; but I am so stupid I can't do anything of that kind. I'm merely an ordinary sort of chap."
Mysie did not answer, and once again silence fell between them, broken only occasionally by the cry of the birds or the bleating of a sheep.
"I believe I'm in love with you, Mysie," he said at last. "You've grown very beautiful. Could you care for me, Mysie?" he asked, looking at her in the soft moonlight, a smile on his lips, his voice keeping its seductive wooing tone, and his eyes kindling.
Mysie's experience of life had been gleaned from the love stories of earls and lords marrying governesses and ladies' maids after a swift and very eventful courtship. Already she saw herself Peter's wife, her carriage coming at her order, everyone serving her and she the queen of all the district. Illiterate but romantic, she was swept off her feet at the first touch of passion, and the flattery of being recognized!
She did not answer. She did not know what to say; and Peter stole his arm about her waist, so tempting, so sweet to touch, and they passed beneath the shadow of the trees as they entered the little wooded copse. The moonlight filtered down through the trees, working silvery patterns upon the pathway. The silence, heavy and scented, was broken only by the far-away wheepling of a wakeful whaup and the grumbling of the burn near by, which bickered and hurried to be out in the open again on its way to the river.