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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 40141 ***
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+   1. Page scan source:
+      http://books.google.com/books?id=N48nAAAAMAAJ
+      (New York Public Library)
+
+   2. The diphthong oe is represented by [oe].
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                              RED ROWANS
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                              RED ROWANS
+
+
+
+
+                                  BY
+
+                           MRS. F. A. STEEL
+
+                AUTHOR OF "MISS STUART'S LEGACY," ETC.
+
+
+
+
+
+                               New York
+                          MACMILLAN AND CO.
+                              AND LONDON
+                                 1895
+                        _All rights reserved_
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                           Copyright, 1894,
+                         By MACMILLAN AND CO.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                      RED ROWANS: A LOVE STORY.
+
+
+
+
+                              PROLOGUE.
+
+             "Love took up the Harp of Life and
+              .... smote the Chord of Self."
+
+
+"Am I really like yon?"
+
+A small brown hand pointed peremptorily to a finished drawing on a
+sketcher's easel hard by, and a pair of blue eyes frowned somewhat
+imperiously at a young man, who, with one knee on the ground, was
+busily searching in the long grass for a missing brush, while palette
+and colours lay beside him ready to be packed up. The frown, however,
+was lost on the back of his head, for he gave a decisive denial,
+without turning round to look at the questioner.
+
+The girl's eyes shifted once more to the drawing, and an odd, wistful
+curiosity came to her face as she took a step nearer to the easel.
+What she saw there was really rather a clever study of herself as she
+had been standing a few moments before, erect, yet with a kind of
+caress towards the branch full of scarlet rowan berries, which one
+round firm arm bent down from the tree above, against her glowing
+face. There was a certain strength in the treatment; the artist had
+caught something of the glorious richness of colouring in the figure
+and its background, but the subject had been too much for him, and he
+admitted it frankly. In truth, it would have needed a great painter to
+have done Jeanie Duncan justice as she stood under the rowan tree that
+autumn evening, and Paul Macleod was at best but a dabbler in art.
+Still, it was a truthful likeness, though the nameless charm which
+belongs to one face and not to another of equal beauty of form--in
+other words, the mysterious power of attraction--had escaped pencil
+and brush. There was nothing spiritual in this charm; it was
+simply the power which physical beauty has sometimes to move the
+imagination--almost the spiritual nature of men; and, such as it was,
+it breathed from every curve of Jeanie Duncan's face and form. She was
+very young, not more than seventeen at the most, and, as yet, in that
+remote Highland glen, where every girl, regardless of her appearance,
+had a jo, the pre-eminence of her own good looks had never dawned upon
+her. So there was no mock humility in the words which followed on
+rather a long pause.
+
+"I'll no be sae bonnie, I'm thinking."
+
+Something in her tone struck through even her companion's absorption;
+for Paul Macleod was given to forgetting his world over trivialities.
+He looked up sharply, rose hastily, stepped across to where she stood,
+and laid his hand on her shoulder in easy familiarity.
+
+"Why, Jeanie, what's the matter now?"
+
+She moved away impatiently from his touch, and, as if from habit, her
+arm, showing white under the russet bedgown she wore, went up to the
+branch above her head. And there she stood once more with the ripe red
+berries against her ripe red lips.
+
+"I'm sayin' I'll no be sae bonnie as yon."
+
+"Your eyes are not quite so blue, certainly; your cheeks not quite so
+pink, your hair not quite so golden, nor your----"
+
+"That's enough, sir; ye needn't fash yourself more. I'm no for sale by
+public roup. I was sayin' myself that I'll no be near sae bonnie as
+yon."
+
+The rowan berries were being viciously stripped from their stems, and
+allowed to fall in a defiant patter on the ground; yet there were
+audible tears in the young voice.
+
+"You little goose! I didn't know you were so vain, Jeanie," he began.
+
+"I'm no vain," she interrupted, sharply. "It's no that, Mr. Paul. I
+dinna care--at least no much--but if a lassie's bonnie----" she paused
+suddenly and let the branch go. It swung back, sending a red shower of
+overripe berries pattering round the girl and the man.
+
+"Well, Jeanie! If a lassie's bonnie?" repeated Paul Macleod, watching
+the rapid changes in her vivid face with amused admiration; "if a
+lassie's bonnie, what happens?"
+
+She confronted him with a certain dignity new to his experience of
+her.
+
+"Ye ken fine, Mr. Paul, the difference it makes to a lassie if she is
+real bonnie. Wasn't it yourself was lilting the 'Beggar-Maid' at me
+the morn?"
+
+"Gracious Heavens, Jeanie! Ambitious as well! On which of the crowned
+heads of Europe have you set your young affections? Tell me, that I
+may kill him!"
+
+His arm slipped easily to her waist, and he bent to look in the face
+which fell as it were before his touch. Yet it was paler than it had
+been; for Jeanie Duncan neither giggled nor blushed.
+
+"It's no matter where I set my heart," she said, curtly, "when I'm no
+bonnie."
+
+"Who said so? Not I," he remarked, coolly.
+
+"You said my eyes were no sae blue, my lips no sae red, my hair----"
+
+"Thank heaven they're not! Why, Jeanie! You must surely know that you
+are a thousand times more beautiful than that--that chromo-lithograph
+over there, which is only fit for a second-class Christmas number or
+an undergraduate's room!"
+
+She withdrew herself from his arm, looking at him doubtfully, ready to
+flare up in an instant.
+
+"You're no pokin' fun at me?"
+
+"Poking fun! Why"--his voice deepened suddenly, he stretched his hand
+towards her again--"you are simply the most beautiful woman I have
+ever seen."
+
+There was no mistaking the ring of reality in his tone, and yet there
+was nothing emotional about it. He seemed to be asserting the fact as
+much for his own benefit as for hers; and she also was lost in
+herself, in her own eagerness, as she looked again at the portrait.
+
+"But it's real bonnie, Mr. Paul! Will it be as bonnie as the
+Beggar-Maid?"
+
+"Still harping upon kings!" he said, coming back to her lightly. "Take
+my advice, Jeanie, and be content with commoners."
+
+"But if I'm no content?"
+
+"Uneasy lies the head! Don't you remember my reading that to you the
+other day?"
+
+She flashed round on him in an instant, superb in her quick response,
+her quick resentment.
+
+"I mind mony a thing ye've read, mony a thing ye've said, mony a thing
+ye've done. I've a deal to mind; too much, may be."
+
+It came as a shock to Paul Macleod. For his heart had, as yet, an
+uncomfortable knack of acknowledging the truth. His head, however,
+came to the rescue as usual, by swift denial that those long days
+spent in painting Jeanie's portrait under the rowan tree were hardly
+wise.
+
+"One can't have too much of a good thing, and it has been pleasant,
+hasn't it?"
+
+"Mither says it's bin a sair waste o' time," replied the girl,
+evasively.
+
+"I haven't wasted mine," retorted the young man airily. "Just look at
+that masterpiece! And I've been as good as a quarter's schooling to
+you, little one; think of the information I've imparted to my model,
+the books I've lent, the--the things I've taught----"
+
+"Aye. You've taught me a deal. I ken that fine."
+
+He gave an impatient toss of his head as he turned away to pack up his
+belongings; the girl helping him silently as if accustomed to the
+task.
+
+Not a soul was in sight, though a wreath of blue peat smoke behind a
+neighbouring clump of firs showed the near presence of a cottage. Save
+for this one sign there was no trace of humanity in the scene except
+those two in the foreground; both in their way types of youth, health,
+and beauty--of physical nature at its best. But the solitude was not
+silent. A breeze coming up with sunsetting rustled the rowan leaves,
+and surged among the silver firs, in echo, as it were, to the long
+hush of distant breakers on a rocky shore which came rhythmically to
+mingle with the nearer rush of the burns streaking the hillside; while
+far and near the air was filled with the wailing cry of lambs newly
+separated from the ewes; most melancholy and depressing of all sounds,
+especially when the sadness of coming night settles over earth and
+sky, sending the shadows to creep up the hillsides and drive the
+sunshine before their purple battalions. A veritable battle, this, of
+assault and defence; each point of vantage, each knoll held by the
+besieged until, surrounded by the enemy, the sunlight dies by inches,
+gallantly, hopelessly, and the struggle begins again higher up.
+
+The girl and boy--for Paul Macleod was still in the early
+twenties--felt oppressed by their surroundings, and after the manner
+of youthful humanity they resented a feeling which had no foundation
+in themselves. Were they not happy, alive to the uttermost, ready to
+face the unknown, eager for the experience which the world seemed to
+find so dreary? Why should they be saddened by things which were not
+as _they_ were; which had had their day, or did not care to have it?
+
+"Come with me as far as the gate, Jeanie," he said, impatiently. "Ah!
+I know you don't generally, but you might to-day. Then you can lock
+it. If any of old Mackenzie's lambs were to get through to their
+mothers he would lay the blame on you."
+
+"Why not to you, Mr. Paul?"
+
+He laughed rather contemptuously. "Because the road leads to your
+croft, not mine; besides, no one ever lays blame to me. I never get
+into trouble, somehow. I have all the luck that way, it seems, while
+my brother--who is really no worse, I suppose--is always in hot water.
+I never saw such a fellow."
+
+"They're saying," began Jeanie--half to cover the fact that she had
+taken the first step down the sheep track--"that the laird----" she
+stopped abruptly and looked furtively at her companion.
+
+"You may as well tell me what they are saying, Jeanie," he remarked,
+coolly. "You always have to in the end, you know, and so there is no
+use in making a fuss."
+
+She was not a girl to be at every one's command, but sooner or later
+most women find it pleasant to be under orders, for a time, at any
+rate; doubtless as the result of that past slavery of which we hear so
+much nowadays. The feeling will be eradicated in the next generation
+or so, but it must be allowed for in this.
+
+"They're sayin' Gleneira will have to sell the place, and"--she looked
+at the face beside her critically, as if to judge how far she might
+go--"they're sayin' it's a pity you were no the laird, Mr. Paul, for
+you love every stick and stone about, and he is never coming near it
+at all, at all."
+
+The young man walked on in silence.
+
+"Did ye know that I've never seen the laird, Mr. Paul, though me an'
+mither has lived at the croft since I can mind anything; but, then,
+she is no going down the strath, and he is no carin' for the fishin',
+as you are; you're knowin' every stone in the river, I'm thinkin'."
+
+He turned to her with a quick laugh as if to dismiss the subject. "And
+every face beside it; for I like pretty things, and some of them are
+pretty. I'll tell you what it is, Jeanie, Gleneira's the most
+beautiful place I ever saw; and you are the most beautiful girl in it.
+Beggar-Maids haven't a chance, so I shall expect to be invited to your
+nuptials with King Cophetua; a poor laird's Jock like myself can't
+compete with a crowned head." The bitterness of his tone had more to
+do with the prospect of having to let Gleneira go, than to the
+manifest difficulty of appropriating Jeanie Duncan without offending
+his head or her heart.
+
+"There's better worth having than crowns, maybe," said the girl,
+doggedly.
+
+"Right! crowned heads may be penniless; let us say an old monarch wi'
+siller."
+
+"There's better worth having than siller, maybe."
+
+Paul looked at her curiously. Apparently it was not for nothing that
+he had amused his sitter by reciting the almost endless repertoire of
+old ballads and songs in which he had taken delight since his earliest
+boyhood. For it was part of his rather complex nature that he should
+admire the romance and sentiment in which, with the easily adopted
+cynicism of a clever lad, he professed to disbelieve. It suited him as
+a refuge from himself; and yet the fact that Jeanie Duncan had
+accepted this admiration as a proof of eternal truth did not displease
+him.
+
+"Better worth than siller!" he echoed, wilfully provoking the answer
+which he knew would come. "Why! there is nothing better worth than
+siller--in the end."
+
+"Aye, there is," she put in confidently, "there's love. You've tell't
+me the sang, many a time;--It's love that gar's the world gang round."
+
+Was it? They stood at the gate together, she holding it open for him
+to pass, and the question came upon him suddenly. The old question
+which comes to most men. Was it worth it? Should he, or should he not,
+go the commonplace way of the world, and take what he could get? Yes,
+if he could take it without bringing something into his life for ever,
+which in all human probability he would not care to keep--_for ever_.
+Even memory was a tie; and yet--his heart beat quicker, and the
+knowledge that passion was beginning to disturb the balance of his
+reason came home to him, bringing with it the same quick denial with
+which he had met his own doubt as to the wisdom of the past. It was
+his way of defending the emotional side of his nature.
+
+"Take care, Jeanie!" he said, seizing on the first commonplace detail
+which met his eye, "that gate is newly tarred; you'll dirty your
+hands."
+
+For the first time the girl challenged him deliberately.
+
+"I'm no carin'," she said defiantly, "my hands is used to dirt. I'm
+not like you. It'll no hurt me."
+
+She closed the gate behind him sturdily, fastening the padlock, and
+then without another word turned to go. In so doing she roused in an
+instant all his obstinacy, all the imperious contrariety which would
+not tolerate the decision of another, even though it tallied with his
+own.
+
+"Are you going without saying good-bye, Jeanie? That's rude," he
+began, stretching his hand over the gate, and once more wilfully
+provoking a situation. "Nonsense! The least you can do is to shake
+hands, and say thank you for all the benefits----"
+
+He paused, and the next instant had vaulted over the gate and was
+kissing away her tears and calling everything to witness that he had
+not meant to be unkind, that she was the dearest little girl in
+creation. Both of which assertions were absolutely true to him at the
+time; she had looked too bewilderingly sweet in her sudden burst of
+grief for prudence.
+
+For the next half-hour, if there be another motive power besides Love
+behind the veiled mystery of Life bidding the world go round, these
+two young people did not trouble themselves about it. The descending
+mists crept down to meet the shadows, the shadows crept up to meet the
+mists, but sea and sky and land were full of light for the boy and
+girl absorbed in the vast selfishness of passion. So lost in the
+glamour with which the great snare for youth and freedom is gilded,
+that neither of them thought at all of the probable ending to such a
+fair beginning. Jeanie, because to her this new emotion was something
+divine; Paul, because her estimate of it aided a certain
+fastidiousness which, in the absence of better motives, had served
+hitherto to keep him fairly straight. So, in a measure, the idyllic
+beauty of the position as they sate, side by side on a lichen-covered
+stone looking into each other's eyes, and supremely satisfied with
+each other's appearance, served to make Paul Macleod's professions
+more passionate than they would have been had she been less innocent.
+
+It was not until with a wrench he had acknowledged that it really was
+time for her to be going home, and he was striding down the road
+alone, that a chill came over him with the question--
+
+"_Que diable allait il faire dans cette galere?_"
+
+It was one which, like a floating log after the rapids are past,
+always came to the surface of Paul Macleod's life when the turmoil of
+emotion was over. This time it brought an unpleasant surprise with it,
+for to tell truth he had imagined himself secure against assault. He
+had considered the situation calmly; had, so to speak, played with it,
+asserting his power of evading its natural consequences if he chose,
+of accepting them if he considered it worth while. And now, with his
+heart still beating, his face still flushed, and with Jeanie's kisses
+still tingling on his lips, it was no use denying that he had been
+taken by storm. And it annoyed him. Suddenly the thought that it was
+just the sort of scrape his brother would have fallen into came to
+enhance the odd contempt which Paul Macleod's head always had for his
+heart. The certainty, however, that he shared that brother's extremely
+emotional nature was so unwelcome that it served for a time to
+strengthen him in denial of his own weakness of will. After all,
+impulse was the essence of passion. Had he not, recognising this,
+voluntarily bade reason and prudence step aside. Would not any man
+have been a fool to think twice of the future with Jeanie Duncan's
+face ready to be kissed? It was worth something; in a way it was worth
+all the rest of the world put together. So the serio-comedy might have
+ended as such serio-comedies usually do but for the merest triviality;
+nothing more nor less than the perception that he had tarred his hands
+in vaulting over the gate! The offending stains sobered him, as no
+advice, no reasoning, no reproof, could have done. To begin with,
+there was no possibility of denying to himself that, be Love what it
+may, he, Paul Macleod, would never in a calm moment of volition have
+dirtied his hands in that fashion. He hated to be touched or soiled by
+common things, without, as it were, a "by your leave." Then there was
+a prophetic tinge in the consequences of his setting barriers at
+defiance which appealed to his imagination. After all, would it be
+worth while to carry about for the rest of your life an indelible mark
+of a past pleasure, which could scarcely fail to become a disagreeable
+reminiscence, no matter what was the _denouement_ of the present
+situation? Marriage? Hardly that. Not only was he too poor to marry
+for love, but was it by any means certain that such love as this was
+worth the sacrifice of freedom. On the other hand, the only possible
+alternative was, to begin with, such shocking bad form. The Macleods
+of Gleneira had always kept straight in Gleneira itself. Besides, if
+he harmed the girl in any way, he knew perfectly well that the regret
+would be a tie to him all his life. That was the worst of having an
+imagination. Other men might do it; he could not, if only for his own
+sake. Then there was Jeanie, to think of poor little Jeanie, who
+didn't even grasp the fact that she was in danger--who would----
+
+Ah! Was it worth while? The question came back insistently, as, with a
+plentiful supply of the salt butter recommended by the housekeeper at
+Gleneira, he tried to get rid of the tar. He was no milksop, though he
+liked delicate surroundings, and found a certain refinement necessary
+to his comfort, but, if he had no objections to soiling his hands in
+obedience to his own sovereign will and pleasure, he was always eager
+to have them clean again. And so it was with his life.
+
+Poor little Jeanie Duncan! She in her innocent self-abandonment would
+have welcomed anything which would have marked her as his indelibly.
+And yet a real regard for her prompted his calculations. If he had
+held her cheaper he would not have dreaded the remorse which would be
+a tie to him all his life. It never occurred to him that this
+squeamishness had come too late, or that the fine-weather flirtation
+had in itself done the mischief; that the injury to an innocent girl
+lies in the mind only.
+
+"Tell Donald that I shall want the light cart at five to-morrow
+morning. I have to catch the Oban steamer," he said to the astonished
+housekeeper as he sate down to his solitary dinner; for he had come to
+Gleneira with the intention of spending long-leave in pottering about
+the old place with gun and rod.
+
+So while Jeanie Duncan slept the sleep of perfect content, her lover
+drove past the cottage in the grey mist of a rainy autumn morning
+feeling intensely virtuous; and all the more so because his heart
+really ached, even at the sight of the tarred gate. And no doubt
+nine-tenths of the men he knew would have applauded his resolution in
+running away, patted him on the back, told him he was a very fine
+fellow, and said that but for his self-control the affair might have
+ended miserably. Perhaps they would have been right; though, as a
+matter of fact, Paul Macleod was running away from the natural
+consequence of his own actions.
+
+Jeanie Duncan read his note of farewell with a scared white face. It
+was gentle, regretful, kindly, and it killed her belief in Love for
+ever. And unfortunately Love had not come to her in its sensual guise.
+It had represented to her all the Truth, and Goodness, and Beauty in
+the world. So she lost a good deal; and naturally enough a great
+restlessness and desire for something to fill the empty space took
+possession of her. Finally, when Spring drew on, and the first broods
+were trying their wings, she--to use the phrase adopted by those who
+tired of life in the remote glens--"thought of service in Glasgow."
+Vague euphemism for much seeing of that unseen world beyond the hills.
+
+But while Paul Macleod in his travels carried with him the
+consciousness of virtue, she had for memory the knowledge that she had
+been weighed in the balance and found wanting.
+
+Two very different legacies from the same past.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER I.
+
+
+Within the long, low cottage the black smoke-polished rafters rose in
+inky darkness above the rough whitewashed walls, and the mud floor
+showed the traces of past leaks in many a hill and hollow. The two
+tiny windows were set breathlessly agape, and through the open door a
+flood of hot bright sunshine threw a bar of mote-speckled light across
+the room, gilding the heads of the scholars who sat swinging their
+legs on the benches and sending a sort of reflected glint from the
+white wall up into the sombre shadow of the roof. Such was the
+Episcopal Grant-in-Aid School of Gleneira one July day, some ten years
+after Paul Macleod had driven down in the mist to catch the Oban
+steamer.
+
+Without, was a pale, heat-blanched sky set in tall spectral-looking
+hills which had lost contour and individuality in a haze, blending
+rock and heather, grass and fern, hollows and heights, into one
+uniform tint of transparent blue. Between the mountains there was a
+little level growth of green corn flecked by yellow marigolds, white
+ox-eyes, and scarlet poppies; then a stretch of dusty road, ending in
+cool shadows of sycamore and pine, beside the school-house garden.
+
+A wonderful garden this. Of Liliputian size, yet holding in its tiny
+clasp a specimen of almost every plant that grows and blows. Three
+potato haulms, four cabbages, a dozen onions, half a yard of peas; a
+tuft of parsley, two bronze-leaved beet-roots, a head of celery. This,
+flanked by a raspberry cane, a gooseberry bush, and supported by an
+edge of strawberry plants, constituted the kitchen garden. Beyond, in
+the trim box-edged border leading to the school-house door, were
+pansies, roses, geraniums, lilies, and peonies; every conceivable
+flower, each family represented by one solitary scion. Last, not
+least, the quaint drops of the Dielytra; which the children with
+awestruck voices call "The Bishop." For when you strip away the pink,
+sheathing petals, is there not inside a man in full white lawn
+sleeves? And is not a man in lawn sleeves a disturbing element in a
+remote Highland glen, where half the people are rigid Presbyterians?
+Here in this little garden the bees hum lazily and the butterflies
+come and go; sometimes one, misled by the stream of sunshine pouring
+through the open door, floats in among the yawning scholars, rousing
+them to momentary alertness and a faint wonder as to the ultimate fate
+of the wanderer; whether he will philosophically give up the
+enterprise or, foolishly persistent, lose himself amid the
+smoke-blackened rafters.
+
+The passing interest, however, dies down again into the sleepy stolid
+indifference which is the outward and visible sign of that inward
+desire for freedom felt by each child in the school. No keen longing,
+but simply a dull wish to be out on the hillside, down by the burn,
+under the trees; anywhere away from catechisms, collects, or shoes and
+stockings. The last being the worst infliction of all to these wild
+little Highland colts accustomed for six days of the week to bare
+feet, since the coarse knitted hose and hobnailed boots belonging to
+the seventh are a direful aggravation of the tortures of Sunday
+school; while even the glorious gentility bestowed by a pair of side
+springs is but poor compensation for the discomfort to the wearer.
+
+Perhaps that was the reason why each pair of legs on the benches
+swayed helplessly to the rhythm of a singularly unmelodious hymn which
+the scholars were singing, led by the master in a muffled nasal chant.
+The tune itself was old and quaint, having in its recurring semitones
+a barbaric monotony which a lighter phrase here and there showed was
+not so much due to the composition in itself as to its present
+interpreter. The words were still more quaint, forming a sort of
+Litany of the Prophets, with innumerable verses and many vain
+repetitions.
+
+Nevertheless, it was an evident favourite with the children; partly,
+it may be hoped, from its own intrinsic merits, mostly, it is to be
+feared, from the startling novelties in Scripture history which it was
+capable of promulgating when, as in the present case, the schoolmaster
+was engaged in his secondary profession of postmaster.
+
+As the tune rose and fell, there came every now and again a pause, so
+sudden, so absolute that a passer-by on the dusty road might well have
+asked himself if some direful catastrophe had not occurred. Nothing of
+the sort. A glance within would have shown him everything at its
+usual; the scholars in rows, from the kilted urchin of four--guiltless
+of English--to whom school is the art of sitting still, to the girl of
+fourteen, blissfully conscious of a new silk handkerchief and the
+admiration it excites in the bashful herd-boy on the opposite bench.
+In the corner, at a table with a slanting desk, the master was busy
+sorting the letters which Donald Post, as he is called, has just
+brought in; the latter meanwhile mopping his hot face and disburdening
+his bag of minor matters in the shape of tea, sugar, and bread, and
+himself of the budget of news he has accumulated during his
+fourteen-mile walk; in an undertone, however, for the hymn goes on.
+
+"_Whair is noo' the pro-phet Dan'l?_" droned the master, followed by a
+wavering choir of childish trebles and gruff hobbledehoy voices,
+"_Whair is noo' the pro-phet Dan'l?_"
+
+The exigencies of the tune necessitated a repetition of the momentous
+question again and yet again, the tune dying away into a pause, during
+which the master's attention wandered to a novel superscription on a
+letter. The children held their breath, the hum of the bees outside
+became audible, all nature seemed in suspense awaiting the answer.
+
+"I'm thinking it will be from Ameriky," hazarded the master
+thoughtfully to Donald Post, and, the solution seeming satisfactory,
+he returned with increased energy to the triumphant refrain
+
+"_Safe intil the Pro-mised Land_."
+
+The children caught it up _con amore_ with a vague feeling of relief.
+A terrible thing indeed, to Presbyterians or Episcopalians alike, if
+the Prophet Daniel had been left hanging between heaven and another
+place! So great a relief, that the gay progress of the tune and the
+saint was barely marred by the master's renewed interest in a
+postcard; which distraction led him into making an unwarrantable
+statement that--
+
+"_He went up in a fiery char-yot_."
+
+True, the elder pupils tittered a little over the assertion, but the
+young ones piped away contentedly, vociferously. The Promised Land
+once attained, the means were necessarily quite a secondary
+consideration; and mayhap to their simple imaginings a fiery chariot
+was preferable to the den of lions.
+
+"_Where is noo' the twal A-postles?_" led off the master again, after
+a whispered remark to Donald Post, which provoked so interesting a
+reply that the fate of the twelve remained trembling in the balance
+long enough for the old refrain to startle the scholars from growing
+inattention.
+
+"_Safe intil the Promised Land_."
+
+The sound echoed up into the rafters. Truly a blessed relief to reach
+the haven after delays and difficulties.
+
+"_They went through_"--began the master. But whether in orthodox
+fashion it would have been "_great tri-bu-la-tion_," or whether, on
+the principle of compensation, the den of lions would have been
+allowed twelve saints, will never be known. The mote-speckled beam of
+sunshine through the door was darkened by a slight girlish figure, the
+children hustled to their feet with much clatter of the unaccustomed
+boots and shoes, and the schoolmaster, drowning his last nasal note
+under a guilty cough, busied himself over a registered letter. For
+Miss Marjory Carmichael objected on principle to the Litany of the
+Prophets.
+
+The rather imperious frown, struggling with an equally obstinate smile
+which showed on the newcomer's face, vanished at the sight of Donald
+Post.
+
+"Any for me?" she asked eagerly. It was a charming voice, full of
+interest and totally devoid of anxiety. An acute ear would have told
+at once that life had as yet brought nothing to the speaker which
+would make post-time a delight or a dread. She had for instance no
+right to expect a love-letter or a dun; and her eagerness was but the
+desire of youth for something new, her expectancy only the girlish
+belief in something which must surely come with the coming years. For
+the rest, a winsome young lady with a pair of honest hazel eyes and
+honest walking boots.
+
+"'Deed no, Miss Marjory," replied the schoolmaster, selecting a thin
+envelope and holding it up shamelessly to the light--a bold stroke to
+divert attention from the greater offence of the hymn, "Forbye ain wi'
+the Glasky post-mark that will just be ain o' they weary circulars,
+for as ye may see for yoursel', Miss Marjory, the inside o't's
+leethographed."
+
+"Thank you, Mr. McColl," said the girl, severely, as she took the
+letter, "but if you have no objection I should prefer finding out its
+contents in a more straightforward fashion."
+
+"Surely! Surely!" Mr. McColl, having got a little more than he
+expected, gave another exculpatory cough, and looked round to Donald
+Post for moral support. Perhaps from a sense that he often needed a
+like kindness, this was an appeal which the latter never refused, and
+if he could not draw upon real reminiscence for a remark or anecdote
+bearing on the point, he never had any hesitation in giving an
+I. O. U. on fancy and so confounding his creditors. On the present
+occasion, however, he was taken at a disadvantage, being engaged in
+trying to conceal from Marjory's uncompromising eyes a bottle of
+whiskey which formed a contraband item in his bag; consequently he had
+only got as far as a preliminary murmur that "there wass a good mony
+wass liking to be reading their ain letters but that it was James
+Macniven"--when the schoolmaster plucked up courage for further
+defence.
+
+"Aye! Aye! 'tis but natur'l to sinfu' man to be liking his ain. Not
+that they circulars interestin' readin', even if a body is just set on
+learnin' like Miss Marjory. And I'm thinkin' it will only be from a
+wine mairchant likely. It's extraordinair' the number of circulars
+they'll be sending out; but the whiskey is a' the same. Bad, filthy
+stuff, what will give parral--y--ses to them that drinks it."
+
+This second bid for favour, accompanied as it was by an unfortunate
+glance for support at Donald--who was struggling unsuccessfully with
+the neck of the black bottle--proved too much for Marjory's dignity,
+and the consequent smile encouraged Mr. McColl to go on, oblivious
+apparently of his last remark.
+
+"And it's whiskey we shall all be wanting, and plenty of it, to drink
+the young laird's health. But I was forgetting you could scarcely have
+heard the news, Miss Marjory, since it is only coming in the post just
+now. It is the laird, Miss Marjory, that is to be home to-morrow by
+the boat!"
+
+The girl forgot an incipient frown in sheer surprise. "Here! Captain
+Macleod?"
+
+"Aye! it's the machine is to meet him at the ferry, the light cart for
+his traps, and the house to be ready." In his desire for importance
+Mr. McColl in the last words had given himself away completely, for
+Marjory lived at Gleneira Lodge with her cousin, the factor.
+
+"The house to be got ready! Impossible! Mrs. Cameron had heard nothing
+when I came out. Where did the news come from?" Marjory's voice,
+especially to those who knew and loved her, as these good folks did,
+never admitted of refusal, so the postmaster coughed again between the
+thumps of the office stamp, which he had begun to use in a hurry.
+
+"It will be Mistress Macniven that was telling Donald Post, and Donald
+Post he will be telling it to me." The words came in a sort of
+sing-song, echoed by Donald himself in a croon of conviction.
+
+"Hou-ay! it was Mistress Macniven wass tellin' it to me, and it iss me
+that iss tellin' it to Mr. McColl, and it is fine news--tamn me, but
+it is fine news whatever."
+
+A twinkle came to Marjory's eyes, for in her character of Grand
+Inquisitress to the Glen, such startling language was too evidently a
+drag across the trail.
+
+"But where did Mrs. Macniven hear it?"
+
+"Aye! aye!" assented Donald, rising to go abruptly, "that is what it
+will be, but she was tellin' it to me, whatever."
+
+"I don't believe a word of it," continued the girl; "Captain Macleod
+would have written to my cousin, I know. It is just idle gossip."
+
+This was too much for the postmaster, who posed, as well as he might,
+for being an authority on such questions. In the present instance he
+preferred the truth to incredulity.
+
+'"Deed, Miss Marjory," he said, with unblushing effrontery, "it'll
+just be one o' they postcards."
+
+"Hou-ay!" echoed Donald, softly. "She'll be yon o' they postcards,
+whatever."
+
+"A postcard! What postcard?"
+
+Mr. McColl handed her one with the air of a man who has done his duty.
+"Will you be taking it with you, or shall I be giving it to Donald,
+here?"
+
+Marjory looked at him with speechless indignation; at least, she
+trusted that was her expression, though the keen sense of humour,
+which is the natural heritage of the Celt, struggled with her dignity
+at first.
+
+"I am really ashamed of you, Mr. McColl," she said at last, with
+becoming severity. "Of you and Mrs. Macniven; you ought to know better
+than pry into other folks' secrets."
+
+But now that the cat was out of the bag, the postmaster showed fight.
+"'Deed, and I'm no for seeing it was a secret at all! It is a penny
+people will be paying if they're needin' secrets. And the laird is not
+so poor, but he would put a penny to it if he was caring; though yon
+crabbed writin' they teach the gentlefolk nowadays, is as most as gude
+as an envelope. Lorsh me! Miss Marjory, but my laddies would be
+gettin' tawse for a postcard like yon. It was just awful ill to read."
+
+"To read! Mr. McColl, I really am surprised at you! It is most
+dishonourable to read other people's letters," protested the girl,
+with great heat.
+
+"Surely! Surely! but yon's a postcard."
+
+From this position he refused to budge an inch, being backed up in it
+by Donald, who, being unable to read, was busy in stowing away various
+letters in different hiding-places in his person, with a view to their
+future safe delivery at the proper destination. "It was a ferry useful
+thing," he said, "was postcards, and if Miss Marjory would mind it
+wass, when old Mistress Macgregor died her sons wass sending to Oban
+for the whiskey to come by the ferry. But it wass the day before the
+buryin' that a postcard wass coming to say the whiskey was to be at
+the pier. But young Peter's cart wass going to the ferry to fetch the
+whiskey and he was meeting Peter and telling him of the postcard. So
+if it had not been for the postcaird it wass no whiskey they would be
+having to Mistress Macgregor's funeral, whatever." A judicious
+mingling of fact and fiction which outlasted Marjory's wrath. She put
+the cause of offence in her pocket, remarking pointedly that as Donald
+had such a budget of important news to retail, that would most likely
+be the quickest mode of delivery, and then turned to her task of
+giving the children their usual Sunday lesson, which she began with
+such a detailed homily on the duty towards your neighbour, that Mr.
+McColl took the excuse of Donald's departure to accompany him into the
+garden, and remain there until she passed on to another subject.
+
+For Marjory Carmichael ruled the Glen absolutely; perhaps because she
+was the only young lady in it. Girls there were and plenty, but none
+in her own class of life, and the result on her character had been to
+make her at once confident and unconscious of her own powers. She was
+not, for instance, at all aware what a very learned young person she
+was, and the fact that she had been taught the differential calculus
+and the theory of Greek accents affected her no more than it affects
+the average young man of one-and-twenty. The consequence being a
+restfulness which, as a rule, is sadly wanting in the clever girls of
+the period, who never can forget their own superiority to the mass of
+their female relations. Having been brought up entirely among men, her
+strongest characteristic was not unnaturally an emotional reserve, and
+up to the present her life had been pre-eminently favourable to the
+preservation of that bloom which is as great a charm to a girl as it
+is to a flower, and which morbid self-introspection utterly destroys.
+To tell the truth, however, she was apt to be over contemptuous of
+gush, while her hatred of scenes was quite masculine. In fact, at
+one-and-twenty, Marjory knew more about her head than her heart,
+chiefly because, as yet, the call on her affections had been very
+small. Her father, a shiftless delicate dreamer, brought up by a
+brother years his senior, had married against that brother's wish, the
+offence being aggravated by the fact that the bride with whom he ran
+away was his brother's ward. One of those calm but absolutely hopeless
+quarrels ensued which come sometimes to divide one portion of a family
+from the other, without apparently much regret on either side. The
+young couple had the butterfly instinct, and lived for the present.
+They also had the faculty for making friends in a light airy fashion,
+and after various vicissitudes, borne with the gayest good temper,
+some one managed to find him a post as consul in some odd little
+seaport in the south, where sunshine kept them alive and contented
+until Marjory chose to put in an appearance and cost her mother's
+life. The blow seemed to make the husband still more dreamy and
+unpractical than ever, and, when cholera carried him off suddenly four
+years afterwards, he made no provision whatever for the child's
+future, save a scrawl, written with difficulty at the last moment,
+begging his brother to look after Marjory for the sake of old times.
+
+Perhaps it was the best thing he could have done, since nothing short
+of despair would have affected Dr. Carmichael, who had by this time
+become so absorbed in the effort to understand life that he had almost
+forgotten how to feel it. People wondered why a man, who had gained a
+European reputation for his researches, should have cared to linger on
+in a remote country district like Gleneira, and some went so far as to
+hint that something more than mere displeasure at his brother's
+disobedience lay at the bottom of his dislike to the marriage and his
+subsequent misanthropy.
+
+Be that as it may, his first look at little Marjory's curly head was
+absolutely unemotional, and he remarked to his housekeeper that it was
+a good thing she seemed to take more after her mother than her father,
+who had always been a cause of anxiety. For the rest, it was a pity
+she was not a boy. Orphans should always be boys; it simplified
+matters so much for the relations. However, Mrs. Campbell, the
+housekeeper, must make the best of it, and bring her up as a girl. He
+could not.
+
+But Marjory took a different view of the situation, and before six
+months had passed it dawned upon the Doctor that, as often as not, she
+was trotting round with her doll in his shadow as he paced the garden,
+or sitting in a corner of his study intent on some game of her own.
+
+She was a singularly silent unobjectionable child at such times; at
+others, if he might judge from the sounds that reached him, quite the
+reverse. He laid down his pen to watch her as she sate in the sunshine
+by the window one day, and heard her instantly tell her doll, that if
+she was naughty and disturbed Dr. Carmichael she must be sent into the
+garden. Another day he came upon her in his chair poring over a Greek
+treatise in an attitude which even he recognised as a faithful copy of
+his own. Finally, he discovered that she had taught her doll to draw
+geometrical figures such as she often saw on the papers littered about
+the room. This palpable preference for him and his occupations being
+distinctly flattering, he began to take more notice of her, and try
+experiments with her memory. So, by degrees, becoming interested in
+her quick intelligence, he deliberately began to educate her, as he
+would have educated a boy, with a view to her making her own living in
+the future. As indeed she would have to do, in the event of his death;
+since years before her advent he had sunk all his private means in an
+annuity, and the expenses of his scientific work did not allow of his
+saving much. The prospect neither pleased nor displeased the girl. It
+came simply, naturally, to her, as it does to a boy. On the other
+hand, she certainly worked harder than any boy would have done, partly
+because she took it for granted that the tasks set her by Dr.
+Carmichael were very ordinary ones, and partly because of that
+feminine tolerance of mere drudgery which makes it so difficult to
+compare the intellectual work of a man and a woman. For while you can
+safely assume that an undergraduate has not worked more than so many
+hours or minutes a day, it is quite possible that a girl student may
+have sate up half the night over a trivial exercise. The primal curse
+on labour, it must be remembered, was not extended to the woman, who
+had a peculiar ban of her own.
+
+So, by the time she was seventeen, Marjory Carmichael was learned
+beyond her years in Greek and Latin, and displayed a genius for
+mathematics which fairly surprised her uncle. Then he died suddenly,
+leaving her to the guardianship of a distant relation and ardent
+disciple in Edinburgh, who was instructed to spend what small sum
+might remain, after paying just debts, on completing the girl's
+education, and starting her, not before the age of twenty-one, in a
+career; preferably teaching, which he considered the most suitable
+opening for her. She was strong, he said, in the letter in which he
+informed Dr. Kennedy of his wishes, and singularly sensible for a
+girl, despite a distressing want of proportion in her estimate of
+things. Being neither sentimental nor sensitive, she was not likely to
+give trouble. So far good, but at the very end of the letter came a
+remark showing that the old man was not quite the fossil he pretended
+to be. It ran thus: "All this concerns her head only; of her heart I
+know nothing. Let us hope she has none; for it is a terrible drawback
+to a woman who has brains. Anyhow, it has had no education from me."
+
+The description somehow did not prepare Dr. Tom Kennedy for either the
+face or manner which greeted him on his arrival at the house of
+mourning, but then he himself had the softest heart in the world, and
+the mere sight of a lonely slip of a thing in a black dress gave him a
+pang. But that was only for a moment; five minutes afterwards he
+wondered how that suggestion of kissing and comforting her in
+semi-fatherly fashion could have arisen. Yet the same evening after
+she had bidden him good-night with a little stilted hope that he would
+be comfortable, the temptation returned with redoubled force, when, on
+going into the study for another volume of the book he had taken up to
+his bedroom to read, he found her fast asleep in the dead man's chair,
+her arms flung out over the table, her cheek resting on one of the
+ponderous volumes which had been the dead man's real companions. Her
+fresh young face looked happy enough in its sleep, though the marks of
+tears were still visible, and yet Dr. Kennedy felt another pang. Had
+the child no better confidante than that musty, fusty old book? Yet he
+did not dare to rouse her, even though the room struck cold and
+dreary, for he felt that the knowledge that he had so far been witness
+of her weakness would be an offence, a barrier between them, and that
+was the last thing he desired. So he crept out of the room again
+discreetly, and smoked another cigar over the not uninteresting
+novelty of his guardianship. For Tom Kennedy was sentimental, and
+gloried in the fact.
+
+"You are very kind," said Marjory to him, a day or two afterwards,
+with a half-puzzled and critical appreciation of his tact and
+consideration. "But I don't see why you should take such trouble about
+me. I shall get on all right, I expect. I think it is a mistake that
+uncle has forbidden my beginning work till I am twenty-one, but, as it
+can't be helped, I must go on as I've been doing, I suppose. I would
+rather not go to school if that can be arranged. You see I don't know
+any girls, and I am not sure if I should get on with them. If I could
+stop here, Mr. Wilson at the Manse would look over my work, and I
+could come up to Edinburgh for my examinations, you know."
+
+Evidently his guardianship was not going to be a burden to him. This
+clear-eyed young damsel, despite a very dainty feminine appearance,
+was evidently quite capable of looking ahead.
+
+"I will do my best to arrange everything as you wish," he replied,
+feeling somehow a little hurt in his feelings. "My great object, of
+course, will be that you shall be as happy as possible."
+
+"Happy?" she echoed, quaintly. "Uncle never said anything about that.
+I'm not sure if I want that sort of thing."
+
+"What sort of thing?" he put in, rather aghast.
+
+"Oh! nonsense, and all that; and yet----" She looked at him with
+almost tragic earnestness. "I am not sure if I don't like it after
+all. It is funny, but it is nice."
+
+"What is nice?"
+
+"You're being so kind. Only I think it would make me lazy, and that
+wouldn't do at all. Uncle used to say I must never forget that I had
+to earn my own living."
+
+"And I--well! I'm afraid I should like to make you forget it," he
+answered; "but we needn't quarrel about it, I suppose. At any rate,
+not for the next four years."
+
+"But I don't mean to quarrel with you at all," she said, very
+sedately. "I mean to be friends; it is so much more convenient."
+Perhaps it was on the whole; even though as the years went on Dr.
+Thomas Kennedy, aged forty, began to wish that her twenty-first
+birthday would find her willing to continue the tie on another
+footing. And yet he recognised, not without a certain admiration, that
+she was not likely to be happy, even if married to one whom she
+trusted and liked as she trusted and liked him, unless she had first
+faced the world by herself. Of course, if she were to fall in love it
+would be different; then, like other women, she might take a certain
+pride in giving up her future. But she was scarcely likely to fall in
+love with him, unless he made love to her, and that was exactly what
+he could not do. In a sort of whimsical way he told himself it would
+not be fair, since in his heart of hearts he did not believe in the
+master passion! not, at least, in the romantic form in which alone it
+would appeal to a girl like Marjory. To affect her it must be
+something very intense indeed; something, in short, which his infinite
+tenderness for the girl prevented him from giving. Perhaps if there
+had been any symptoms of another lover appearing on the scene all this
+philosophic consideration might have disappeared under the pressure of
+rudimentary jealousy; but there were none. Indeed, barring the
+Episcopalian clergyman, who was quite out of the question, there was
+no young man of Marjory's own rank, or near it, at Gleneira, where he
+had arranged for her to stay on with a distant cousin of his own. And
+neither Will Cameron, the factor, nor old Mr. Wilson, at the Manse,
+nor any of the occasional visitors were more likely to stir the
+romantic side of the girl's nature than he was himself. Less likely,
+indeed, since he had the manifest charm of being a person of more
+importance. In appearance he was a small, dark man with a vivacious
+face and something of a foreign manner, the latter being due to his
+having wandered about on the Continent for years seeking surgical
+experience at the cannon's mouth. So, on his last visit to Gleneira,
+where he spent all his rare holidays, he had told himself point-blank
+that he of all men in the world was bound in honour not to take
+advantage of his ward's innocence and undisguised affection. She was
+exceptionally fitted for the future she had mapped out for herself, so
+in a way he was bound to let her try it.
+
+Consequently, as she sate that July afternoon teaching the children
+their duty to their neighbour, there was no _arrière pensée_ of any
+kind in her affectionate reliance on Cousin Tom's unfailing interest.
+That would last until she grew tired of teaching, and he grew old.
+Then, always supposing that it was agreeable to both parties, they
+might settle down somewhere and be the best of friends till death did
+them part.
+
+Weary of teaching! That did not seem likely, to judge by the way she
+taught; and yet through all her work she was conscious of that
+postcard in her pocket; conscious of the fact that there was no
+denying Donald's proposition, and that it brought great news whatever.
+But as she followed the trooping children out of doors to the
+horse-chestnut shade, she took no notice whatever of Mr. McColl's
+evident desire to re-open the question, and, with a curt remark that
+the children knew their duty to their neighbour admirably, she set off
+with a light, rapid step down the white road.
+
+Mr. McColl looked after her admiringly, unresentfully. Miss Marjory
+was Miss Marjory, and without her help his grant in aid would be but a
+poor thing, what with the Bishop's lawn sleeves and the new standards;
+both of which are stumbling-blocks in a remote Highland parish even
+when there is no other school within ten miles. Well, well, it was
+grand news for the Glen that the laird was to be home, and there were
+others besides Miss Marjory who would be glad to hear it.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER II.
+
+
+Mr. McColl was right, as Marjory herself had ere long to acknowledge;
+for she had not gone far ere quick steps echoed behind her, and,
+looking round, she saw the Reverend James Gillespie trying to overtake
+her. She paused in resigned vexation, experience having taught her the
+wisdom of waiting for him; the fact being that the fusion point of
+mind and body was with him extremely low, and heat had a disastrous
+effect on both; so she waited--that honest walking boot of hers
+beating a very girlish tattoo of impatience the while against a rock.
+
+"This is great news, Miss Marjory," he began, breathlessly. "Great
+news--I may say, good news--is--is it not?"
+
+The latter rather alarmed inquiry being the result of a glance at her
+face; for she was in a contradictory mood, and the Reverend James
+never had any fixed opinions in minor matters. He took them from his
+friends and was, in consequence, often in the position of a child who,
+having filled both hands with biscuits, is suddenly offered a sweetie.
+Even then he was quite ready to swallow the new contribution if it was
+firmly put into his mouth. There was no little excuse for him,
+however, since his present environment in a measure forced him to a
+poor opinion of himself in the past. The fact being that until the age
+of fifteen he had been nothing more than the son of a poor crofter on
+the estate of Gleneira. A clever lad, no doubt, who might perchance
+rise to something above his father's fate. And then the Bishop, on the
+lookout for recruits to the Gaelic-speaking clergy necessary to carry
+on the work in the remoter glens, where the Episcopal faith still
+lingers, had chosen him out like Samuel for the service of the Lord.
+It had been a veritable translation, for the Bishop, being High
+Church, had exalted views of the priesthood. The result being that
+James Gillespie, fulfilled with a virtuous desire to justify the
+Bishop's choice, soon lost the small amount of individuality he had
+originally possessed. Educated by the Bishop, ordained by the Bishop,
+made the Bishop's chaplain in order that the Bishop might coach him
+through the rocks of social etiquette, he became, not unnaturally, a
+sort of automaton, safe so far as his knowledge of the Bishop's views
+went, but no further. On these points he was logic proof; on others
+the veriest weathercock at the mercy of every breeze that blew. For
+the rest, a good-looking, florid, fair young man, dressed rigorously
+in clerical costume. This again being in deference to the Bishop who,
+honest man, having his fair share of the serpent's wisdom, saw the
+necessity of hedging this prophet in his own country about with every
+dignity which might serve to emphasise the difference between his past
+and present. The more so because the sparse congregations amid the
+fastnesses of the hills were in the charge of different pastors. Once
+a month or so the Reverend Mr. Wilson, from the Manse miles away down
+the Strath, would drive up in a machine, put up with the Camerons at
+the Lodge, and deliver a very cut-and-dried little sermon in the
+school-house. On these occasions the Reverend Mr. Gillespie used to
+trudge over the hills with his surplice in a brown paper parcel, so
+leaving the Geneva gown and bands a fair field while he delivered an
+equally cut-and-dried little homily to the still more outlying
+faithful in a barn. About this arrangement, necessitated by ancient
+custom, even the Bishop constrained his tongue, seeing that Mr. Wilson
+belonged to the Church of Scotland, as by law established, and, what
+is more, to the very highest and driest portion of it. He was a
+courtly old gentleman, with a white tie, yards long, wound round his
+neck numberless times, and finished off by an odd little bow made out
+of the extreme ends; a learned old man with a turn of the leg,
+suggesting a youth when calves were visible, and a vast store of
+classical quotations remaining over from the days when he lectured on
+the humanities at St. Andrews. Neither did the Bishop consider the
+Reverend Father Macdonald, who came once in three months or so, and
+generally on a week day, an intruder. On the contrary, the Reverend
+James had instructions to ask him to dinner, and, if it was a Friday,
+to have cockle soup and stewed lentils for him; that is to say, if the
+invitation was accepted, which it was not as a rule, the Father
+preferring to eat potatoes and butter at the Camerons, and endure the
+old lady's good-natured scorn, for the sake of hearing Marjory sing
+Scotch songs and play Scarlatti. For Dr. Carmichael's one relaxation
+had been, music, in which, as in other things, the girl had proved
+herself to be an apt pupil. As often as not, too, on these occasions,
+old Mrs. Cameron would send a man with the dogcart down the Strath to
+fetch up Mr. Wilson, and then the two old enemies could fence at each
+other courteously over the single glass of port, for which the Jesuit
+had a dispensation. And, if the buttons seemed inclined to come off
+the foils, Marjory, in the next room, would strike up, "Come, bring to
+me a stoup o' wine, and bring it in a silver tassie." Then their old
+heads would wag, and they would give over the endless battle for the
+sake of hearing a "bonnie lassie" sing their favourite song. But it
+was very different when the Free Church missioner came round, for he
+was an earnest, red-haired person, who any day of the week would
+gladly have testified against Black Prelacy to the bitter end of the
+stake. He was a stumbling-block, even to Marjory, who professed calm
+tolerance; but then those courtly old admirers of hers, to say nothing
+of Cousin Tom's rather foreign manners, had spoilt her. So that amid
+all her theories--the theories of clever youth instinct with the love
+of justice and liberty--she could not help being repelled by the
+roughness of life when, as it were, she touched and handled it. The
+people themselves, however, thought it a sign of strength to bang the
+pulpit and bellow, as, indeed, it was, undoubtedly. So the consensus
+of opinion in all sects was that the Free Church had the finest
+preacher. Not that it mattered much in a place where church-going on a
+Sunday was a recognised dissipation, which had to last for a week.
+Thus, no matter who was in the pulpit, the little school-house on a
+fine day overflowed; and even the Reverend Father Macdonald had not a
+few applicants for a blessing against witchcraft if the cows did not
+milk properly. This, however, was done on the sly, by accident as it
+were, when the petitioners chanced to meet priestly authority in the
+post-office.
+
+In order, therefore, to hold his own amid the hosts of Midian, the
+Reverend James spent quite a large slice of his modest income on
+all-round collars and silk cassocks; and even when the old Adam arose
+at the sight of a red-brown river, and he _had_ to creep away with a
+hazel rod and a bag of worms to some seething pool where the sea-trout
+lay, he still kept to his professional garments and sate on a rock
+with his long coat-tails pinned behind his back, looking like a
+gigantic crow about to fly.
+
+Despite this and other ridiculous habits, Marjory, with her clear,
+honest eyes saw the real desire to do his duty to Church and State
+underlying the young man's indecision; but, fortunately for him, she
+had no notion that of late this had taken the form of wishing to marry
+her. The fact being that in a recent visit the Bishop had not only
+remarked that the parish clergy should be the husbands of one wife,
+but had rather pointedly referred to the immense improvement in the
+school standard, since Miss Carmichael had begun to practise teaching
+there. The direct consequence of which had been to make the Reverend
+James believe himself in love, and at the same time to make him regard
+all Marjory's opinions as episcopally blessed. An effort needing
+mental gymnastics of the highest class, especially when, as now, she
+was bent on mischief.
+
+"Good news," she echoed. "Well, I hardly know; that must surely depend
+entirely on what sort of person Captain Macleod turns out to be." This
+she knew must, to begin with, savour of blasphemy to one born and bred
+on the estate.
+
+"Naturally, I may say, of course, but----" he looked at her
+pathetically, like a dog when asked to perform a difficult trick;
+"you--you--you surely have not heard anything against him, have you?"
+
+Marjory's eyes twinkled, but only for a moment; after all it was poor
+fun depolarising his mental compass.
+
+"Anything against him? No; except that he is too good-looking, I am
+told."
+
+"Handsome is that handsome does," remarked the Reverend James,
+cheerfully; it was a favourite proverb at the palace, and he felt sure
+of his ground. Unfortunately, since it roused Marjory to
+contradiction.
+
+"Nonsense! As if all the goodness in the world could change a snub
+nose into a Grecian."
+
+"But surely, my dear Miss Marjory," protested the young man feebly,
+"the proverb does not assert--em--that sort of thing. I have always
+understood it--em--I mean the latter half--perhaps I should say the
+simile--alludes to moral worth."
+
+"Now, Mr. Gillespie! does that mean you consider beauty and goodness
+to be the same, or simply that you deny the value of physical beauty
+altogether?" asked Marjory in aggrieved tones.
+
+"I--I don't think I mean either," he replied, so naively that she was
+obliged to laugh; "but indeed," he went on, "it seems to me, as I
+remember the Bishop said in his sermon on All Souls, that beauty and
+goodness are in a measure synonymous, that----"
+
+"Do you mean," she interrupted hastily, but with a sort of quick
+hesitation which came often to her speech when she was really
+interested, "that not only are good things necessarily beautiful in a
+way, but that beautiful things must be good? Look at Tito! All his
+vileness did not mar the perfection of his beauty. It was a tower of
+strength to him till the day of his death. It must be so--you can't
+help it. The thing is good in itself."
+
+Never having read "Romola," the Reverend James fell back discreetly on
+a more unimpeachable proverb, by remarking, with the air of a man
+making a valuable contribution to the argument:--
+
+"Beauty is but skin deep."
+
+"Who wants it to be more?" she asked, hotly. "That is all you see. No
+one asks whether the muscles follow the proper curves beneath the
+skin, or the bones are strong. And, after all, it seems to me that
+goodness and beauty appeal to the same chord--the love of everything
+that is clear, defined, orderly. Ugliness is so incoherent, so
+indistinct, Mr. Gillespie! Did it ever strike you how unnecessarily
+ugly we all are? Now, don't deny the fact. Remember the Bishop's hymn
+says, 'only man is vile.'"
+
+"But that really does apply to his moral."
+
+"I don't agree with you. Some of us, perhaps, are wicked, but most of
+us are hideous."
+
+"Do you really think so?" And the self-conscious look on his smug,
+comely face was too much for her gravity. She laughed merrily.
+
+"There are exceptions to every rule, Mr. Gillespie; I only meant to
+say that since the strongest and best, and therefore, according to
+you, the most beautiful, had survived in the struggle for
+existence----"
+
+"By the bye," he put in, for him quite eagerly, "the Bishop has just
+sent me an excellent reply to the Darwinian----"
+
+Marjory went on remorselessly, "That we were singularly plain-looking,
+as a rule. For my part I would gladly have eliminated the Carmichael
+nose if I had had any choice in the matter."
+
+The remark left a grand opening for a compliment if he could at the
+moment have thought of anything save the crude assertion that he
+considered it the most beautiful nose in the world. So he remained
+silent, casting about in his mind for a less absolute form, with such
+concentrated admiration in his face, that even Marjory could not avoid
+noticing it, and with a sudden curl of her lip, changed the subject by
+asking him, in her best categorical manner, when he had last been to
+see old Peggy, who was bad with her rheumatism. Now old Peggy's
+cottage was not an inviting-looking abode--a boulder-built hut with a
+peat roof and a rudimentary chimney--and it lay close by in a hollow
+between the road and a bog full of waving cotton grass. So the
+Reverend James regretfully gave up his opportunity as lost for the
+time; but a gleam of manly resolution came to him as he looked first
+at the hut, then down the road, the pleasant sunshiny road stretching
+away to where a thin blue smoke from the chimneys of Gleneira Lodge
+rose above the silver firs and copper beeches to the right of the big
+house. All that distance to traverse with Marjory, as against Peggy
+Duncan the pauper, who was bad enough at the best, but, with the
+rheumatism, simply appalling.
+
+"I'm afraid I haven't time to-day," he began, with admirable regret,
+which, however, changed to consternation as his companion paused and
+held out her hand.
+
+"Then good-bye! I promised to look in on my way home. And on the whole
+it is better as it is, for it is positively unsafe to visit old Peggy
+in couples when she is ill. So long as she has but one visitor, you
+know, the fear of losing a gossip bridles her tongue; but when there
+are two, one is always a scapegoat." Now, Marjory looked at her
+companion gravely, and spoke deliberately, "You wouldn't, I'm sure,
+care to hear me abused; so it is wiser for me to go alone. Good-bye."
+
+She was off as she spoke down the brae, leaving him disappointed, yet
+still vaguely content, the very thought of in the future having a wife
+who would go and visit old Peggy filling him with peace, for that old
+woman was a sore trial to his dignity, since she invariably made a
+point of remembering his youth as a barefoot cotter's boy. But then at
+heart she was a Presbyterian who did not believe in the sanctity of
+orders. So he went on his way down the loch fairly satisfied with
+himself, while Marjory took his place beside the sick bed of the
+rheumatic old woman.
+
+The girl gave one regretful glance at the sunshine before she dived
+into the darkness of the cottage. It was mean and squalid in the
+extreme, yet to those accustomed to the dirt and warmth, the
+discomfort and the cosiness of a Highland hut, its air of tidiness was
+unusual. The mud floor was even and clean swept, the single pane of
+glass doing duty as a window was neither broken nor patched with rags,
+while the crazy, smoke-blackened dresser was ranged with common
+earthenware. A gathering peat, just edged with fire, lay on the huge
+stone hearth, above which a tiny black pot hung in the thin column of
+pale blue smoke which, as it rose to the dim rafters, was illumined by
+the only ray of sunlight in the house--that which streamed through the
+round hole in the roof which did duty as a chimney. Beside the hearth
+a fair-haired boy of about six lay fast asleep, while from a settle in
+the darkness a pair of gleaming green eyes revealed the presence of a
+cat.
+
+Nothing more to be seen by Marjory's sun-blinded sight. Not a sound to
+be heard, until suddenly a grey hen roosting in the rafters began to
+cluck uproariously with much sidelong prancings of a pair of yellow
+legs, and downward dips of a quaint, irascible, tufted head. Instantly
+from a recess bed arose a patient moan and a pious aspiration that the
+Lord's will might be done at all costs.
+
+"Good afternoon, Peggy! I hope your sleep has done you good," said
+Marjory blithely, as she sate down on the edge of the bed, and looked
+steadily at the occupant's face. Old Peggy Duncan, with the assertion
+that she had not slept for days trembling on her tongue, wavered
+before the girl's decision, and murmured something about closing an
+eye.
+
+"That is better than nothing, isn't it?" continued the uncompromising
+visitor. "And as for wee Paulie! he's been having a fine snooze.
+Haven't you, Paulie?"
+
+The child by the fire, rubbing his eyes drowsily, smiled back at her
+rather sheepishly.
+
+"'Deed it's so," broke in the querulous voice, satisfied at finding a
+legitimate object for complaint. "He's just the laziest, weariest
+wean, and no caring a tinker's damn for his nanny. Just lyin'
+sleepin', and me in an agony. Could ye not watch?--Ay!--Ay! But what
+can one expect o' a child o' the devil----"
+
+"Peggy! You're a wicked old woman to speak like that. Paul does more
+than most boys twice his age. I'll be bound he has been stuffing
+indoors with you all day long without a grumble. Run away now, dear
+laddie, and get the fresh air."
+
+The order, spoken in Gaelic, produced a sudden flash of life all over
+the little fellow, and he was out of the door in a second. Marjory
+looked after him with a pleasant smile.
+
+"He is a pretty boy, isn't he, Peggy?--quite the prettiest in the
+glen."
+
+"Aye! he has the curse o' beauty. Sae had his mither. Ay! an' her
+father before her. Thank the Lord, Miss Marjory, you're no bonnie."
+
+"I shall do nothing of the sort, Peggy. And how is the pain? Better
+for that liniment I rubbed in yesterday?"
+
+"Better!" There was a world of satisfied scorn in the old voice.
+"Better frae ae teaspoonful o' stuff. Lord be gude to us, Miss
+Marjory! Naethin' short o' a meeracle'll better me, an' ye talk o' a
+carnal rubbin' doing it."
+
+"It would be a miracle if it did, wouldn't it, Peggy?" retorted the
+girl, calmly; "but if it did no good at all there is no use in
+repeating it, so I'll be off and leave you to your sleep again."
+
+"Hoot awa! an' you tired wi' your walk. Just sit ye down and rest a
+bit and dinna mind me. I'm used to being no minded, ye ken. Wha minds
+a bit pauper body but the pairish? Two an' saxpence a week, an' a boll
+o' meal term-day that's no meal at a', but just grits; grits and
+dirt. I'm no wondering that they puts soddy (soda) until't at the
+poor's-house to gar't swall. Ay! Aye! and me lyin' a week without
+spiritual food, an' I cravin' for it from anyone."
+
+"Now, Peggy, you know quite well you told Mr. Gillespie you wanted
+none of his priestcraft, the last time he was here. You are just a
+bad, ungrateful old woman, and I've a great mind to go away without
+making you a cup of tea or telling you the news."
+
+The old face set close in its white cap frills brightened visibly at
+the last words. "Weel! Weel! I must na be hard on the puir lad. There
+be divers gifts, an' may be he's gotten one somewhere. And but for the
+pain makin' me clean wud, I'd have had the tea for you. Just cry on
+Paulie--the kettle's on the fire, and he'll no be long, puir lammie."
+
+But Marjory preferred to leave the boy to his play, and set about the
+task herself quickly, dexterously, while old Peggy watched her with
+sagacious eyes; for she herself had been a notable worker, and had
+still a regretful admiration for the capability in others. Rather a
+despicable object, perhaps, this fretful rheumatic old woman,
+grumbling and growling at everything; and yet, could the secrets of
+all hearts be revealed, she might have seemed more of a heroine and
+martyr than many a canonised saint. A youth of ceaseless plodding toil
+had been given in stolid honesty to her master's interests; then late
+in life, when the hopes of womanhood were almost over, had come a
+brief St. Martin's summer, where a wandering Englishman engaged on
+some mining venture close by had married the sober lass as a means of
+being comfortable for the time, and after a year had deserted her
+shamefully, leaving her to work harder than ever for the sake of the
+little daughter who remained to show that Peggy's short spell of love
+had not been a dream. Some, indeed, there were who maintained that it
+had never had any solid foundation, and that the marriage had been but
+a pretence. This coming to the mother's ears had roused in her a
+fierce anger, which in its turn gave rise to a passionate desire to
+prove this child of hers to be above their petty spite, superior to
+their plodding lives. And in a measure she succeeded. Jeanie Duncan
+grew up in what, to a girl of her class, was luxury, while her mother
+sold brown sugar, herrings, tarred rope, and tobacco--in fact, kept a
+general store. Until the girl, like many another, fretted at home,
+sought service, and disappeared beyond the circle of blue hills; to be
+followed after a time by her mother.
+
+But though pretty Jeanie Duncan never returned, old Peggy did,
+bringing with her a baby. Not an unusual sequel to the story; and so,
+though the neighbours shook their heads, there was no need to question
+the woman. What else could have been expected from flighty Jeanie
+Duncan, whose head had been turned by Mr. Paul's painting her picture.
+And Peggy said nothing, even while she concealed nothing. Silent from
+her youth, she was more silent than ever as she reverted again to the
+hard toil of those early days, until one January the cold settled into
+her ill-clad old bones when she was gathering sticks in the woods and
+left her a cripple. And then the loss of her independence broke her
+spirit and turned her into a fretful scold. A dreary, toil-worn,
+barren youth, desertion, degradation, outrage of love and pride--all
+this gamut of grief had she sounded without an answering groan. The
+straw which broke her patience was not the hardness but the charity of
+her fellow-creatures. A most irrational old lady, no doubt, yet not
+altogether blameworthy in her self-satisfied appreciation of the tea
+"that was no from the pairish, praise be to the Lord," and very human,
+certainly, in her eager desire to hear the news of that parish. Yet
+her face when Marjory told her of the laird's return seemed to settle
+into a strange indifference. "The laird! It will be Mr. Paul you're
+meaning."
+
+"Yes, Mr. Paul; he is the laird now, you know, and he hasn't been here
+for nine years. He has been away in India with his regiment."
+
+"Lord sakes! as if I did na' know that; he has been the laird these
+sax years gone. I mind it weel. And I mind him, too; ower weel, maybe.
+A winsome laddie, fond of painting; but 'Thou shalt not make to
+thyself the likeness,' ye ken. So he is coming home at last--bonnie
+nae doot; and she, my Jeanie, is dust and ashes."
+
+It was seldom that Peggy alluded to her dead daughter, and there was a
+wistful look in the crabbed old face. Marjory, quickly responsive,
+stroked the crabbed old hand which lay on the coverlet gently; but old
+Peggy would none of her sympathy and drew it away, while her voice
+took almost a triumphant tone.
+
+"Ay! Dust and ashes! That's what we a' come to. Young and auld, Miss
+Marjory, my dear, rich and poor. Ay! and pairish officers, forbye;
+it's no to be escapit, thank the Lord! And if you're going ye might
+just open yon drawer in the aumry an' tak' oot my deid claes. There's
+a bonnie blaze in the fire that maun-na be wasted, and in life we are
+in death, ye ken, so it's as weel to hae them aired. There's a deal o'
+sickness comin' frae damp linen, and I'm sae subjec' to the
+rheumatism."
+
+"That would be one of the ills you would leave behind you, Peggy,"
+suggested Marjory, with a tender smile at the oddity of the old
+woman's thought.
+
+"I'm sure I hope sae, for it wad be maist terrible in the wings,"
+replied Peggy, gravely. Her eyes, following the girl as she complied
+with the grim request, lit up with satisfaction, her mouth trembled in
+the effort for calm indifference.
+
+"Ay! sure enough it's the best of cloth, yon, and there is twa rows
+back stitchin' as fine as fine, and a frill down the front. Some has a
+lace edgin', but I'm no sure o' furbelows. It wad no be decent for me
+to come before my Maker prinked oot like a young lass; though Mary
+McAndrews, who was a gude four year aulder nor me, had real
+Valenciennes. But, there! she was ae' flighty, puir thing; her mind
+set on bows and gum flowers, no on things above. Fine cloth an' a
+cambric frill's gude eneuch for my funeral; an' the coffin no from the
+pairish, thank the Lord!"
+
+As old Peggy lay there in the bay bed gossiping over her shroud she
+was a grim sight; yet a pathetic one, since there is nothing in the
+wide world which appeals to the humanity within us so much as the
+tired, toil-wasted hands of old age folded on a coverlet waiting for
+death. Marjory, with her strong young ones straightening the dead
+clothes, felt a strange thrill at her heart, even as she thought of
+the long years of welcome struggle before she, too, would be glad of
+rest.
+
+"So Mr. Paul is to come hame again?" quavered the old voice, softened
+inexplicably by that chill thought of death. "Aye, aye! he will be
+bonnie still, for he was aye of the kind to mak' a bonnie corp. And no
+that bad for a man--not by ordinair. Weel! when ye see him tell him
+that ould Peggy's gone on the pairish, but that it'll no be a pairish
+funeral. For there's twa bottles gude whiskey in the draw wi' the deid
+claes, my dear, and that's eneuch to carry me to my grave as I sou'd
+be carried."
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER III.
+
+
+Will Cameron the grieve, or, in plain English, the land steward of the
+Gleneira property, was leaning lazily over the shrubbery gate,
+watching two men mowing a narrow strip of grass on either side of the
+grand approach leading up to the Big House; a proceeding which gave
+the whole place a most ridiculous half-shaven air. It had its merits,
+however, in Mr. Cameron's eyes, seeing that it was supposed to make
+the roadway look kempt while it preserved the rest of the lawn for
+hay; an economy sorely needed at the Big House, after the late laird's
+riotous living. Even now, when matters had mended somewhat, honest
+Will did not care to think of those times when all he saw of the laird
+of Gleneira was a signature on I O U's; for, when all was said and
+done, his own honesty seemed bound up in that of the old place. A
+gardener was nailing up the creepers covering the porch; the windows
+of the house were set wide open, and through them a noise of hammering
+and brushing floated out into the crisp morning air as Marjory came
+up the road from the lodge; her footsteps crunching in the loose
+sea-gravel, which not even the coming and going of years had worn into
+compactness, and leant over the gate likewise. Will shifted a little,
+almost unconsciously, to make room for her, with loose-limbed easy
+good-nature, and in so doing revealed the whole attitude of his
+individuality towards Marjory Carmichael. Briefly she was the dearest
+girl in the world, but rather apt to make a fellow move on, when he
+would much rather have stopped where he was. Yet they were the best of
+friends, almost playmates, although he was double her age and
+distinctly bald. For the rest a very straightforward simple person,
+with nothing complex about him. One of those men whom Nature has made
+firstly a sportsman, secondly a farmer; in other words, a descendant
+of both Cain and Abel. Marjory herself was very fond of him, and no
+wonder, since during the years she had spent with his mother he had
+set himself to make things pleasant for her as a man about a house can
+do when he has absolutely no ulterior object in view. The mere
+suggestion of such an object would have filled him with terror, for
+Marjory's energy was appalling.
+
+"What a pretty place it is after all," she said suddenly, and in so
+saying spoke the truth. Framed in by an amphitheatre of purple
+heather-clad hills and dark green fir-clad spurs, Gleneira House with
+its swelling lawns stretching away to the rocky beach of the loch, its
+tall silver pines and clumps of rhododendrons looked bright and
+cheerful despite the nameless want which hangs always round an empty
+house; the dead look, as if, the soul having passed from it, naught
+remained save for it to hasten back to the dust whence it came. There
+was something, however, which struck one as homelike in its low
+irregular outline, its bow windows set in rose, jasmine, and magnolia;
+above all in its clustered stacks of chimneys rising without respect
+to symmetry and suggesting comfortable firesides within. Cosy
+firesides in corners, not set back to back in pairs after the modern
+fashion. A conglomerate building altogether, not unlike a two-storied
+summer-house full of French windows. An airy feminine sort of house,
+unlike the usual aggressively stony Scotch mansions, yet fitting in
+strangely with its fairylike background of hills, and woods, and
+lochs.
+
+"Very pretty, but awfully out of repair," replied Will,
+disconsolately. "The roof won't last much longer."
+
+"Why doesn't he--Captain Macleod I mean--put on a new one?"
+
+"My dear Marjory! He can't afford it. A man has to spend a lot in an
+expensive regiment like his, and----"
+
+"Nine years since he was in the Glen," interrupted the girl, bent on
+her own thoughts. "I don't remember him a bit. What is he like, Will?"
+
+"Awfully handsome; about the handsomest boy I ever saw, and I don't
+suppose he has changed much."
+
+"I know that--anything more?"
+
+"Spends a heap of money."
+
+"I know--anything more?"
+
+"Yes; you will like him."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Women always do."
+
+Marjory turned down the corners of her mouth; a trick which with her
+meant disapproval, disgust, dislike, disappointment,--such a variety
+of small d's that Will was wont to say it was quite as reprehensible
+as the collective big one of his sex.
+
+"He really is an awfully nice fellow," continued Will; "but the place
+is going to rack and ruin. The farm houses are so poor that the south
+country men won't take them, and a slack style of tenant only means
+going from bad to worse. He ought to marry money. It is the only way
+out of the difficulty, since he won't skin the woods or let the
+place."
+
+"Why doesn't he come and live here as his fathers did," put in the
+girl, quickly; "why shouldn't he be satisfied to do his duty to the
+people as his fathers did?"
+
+"Because his income isn't what theirs was to begin with. The place is
+heavily mortgaged; everyone knows it, so there is no reason why I
+shouldn't say so. Then Alick Macleod ran through a heap of money
+somehow, and left a lot of debts which had to be paid off. I don't say
+that the Captain mightn't have been more economical, but it isn't all
+his fault. And then he won't touch the estate. That is right enough in
+a way, and yet Smith, the hook-and-eye man, offered twice its value
+for that bit of moor that marches with his forest."
+
+"And Captain Macleod refused?"
+
+"Declined with thanks; and wrote me privately not to bother him again
+with any proposals of that sort from a bloated mechanic."
+
+Marjory's mouth turned down again. "Indeed! that was very noble of
+him."
+
+"So it was in a way," replied her companion, sticking to his own
+ill-concealed satisfaction, "for the man is offensive to the last
+degree. He has invented a tartan, and has a piper to play him to bed."
+
+"If he likes it, why not? Every man must have invented his own tartan,
+once upon a time, you know; the Macleods into the bargain."
+
+Will Cameron smiled languidly. "You are a beggar to argue, Marjory.
+But as I said before, the laird must marry money."
+
+"Sell himself instead of his property?"
+
+"Why not? he is worth buying, and she needn't be ugly."
+
+"Ugly! as if that were the only question! I believe it is all you men
+think of. Why, Will, you haven't told me anything about Captain
+Macleod except that he is good-looking; and I knew that before. I
+wanted to hear what he was like--he himself, I mean."
+
+He looked at her with comical amusement. "You have come to the wrong
+man, my dear. I never could tell my own character, much less anybody
+else's. But here is old John, beaming with satisfaction at the thought
+of coming slaughter among the birds. Ask him!"
+
+"Is it what the laird is like?" echoed the bent but active old man,
+pausing with a troop of wiry-haired terriers at his heels. "Then he is
+real bonnie, Miss Marjory; that's what he is."
+
+"So I told her; but she wants to know more." John Macpherson scratched
+his ear dubiously, then brightened up. "Then it's a terrible good shot
+he will be. Aye! ever since he was a laddie no higher than my heart.
+Just a terrible good shot, that's what he is."
+
+"After all," remarked Will, as the old man passed on, "that gives you
+as good a clue to the laird as anything else would do. Old John meant
+that as the highest praise. The coachman in all probability would say
+he was a first-rate rider. I have heard mother call him a good young
+man, but that was when _I_ had lost five pounds at the Skye gathering,
+and he had won. The fact being that he had a knack of warping people's
+judgment; it was he, by the way, who advised me to bet on a man who
+couldn't putt a bit. He used always to twist me round his little
+finger when we were boys together--and by Jove! he had a temper.
+Sulky, too, and obstinate as a mule."
+
+"Thank you," interrupted Marjory, drily; "that's quite enough. Well, I
+hope nobody nice will buy him."
+
+Will Cameron flushed up quite hotly. "Now, I call that really nasty,
+Marjory, when it can't matter to you. And you know as well as I do
+that we want money awfully; you, who are always railing at the black
+huts, and the lack of chimneys, and----"
+
+But Marjory, after a habit of hers when she was not quite sure of her
+ground, had shifted it, and passed on to the house, whence the sounds
+of sweeping and hammering continued. Will shook his head at her
+retreating figure, smiled, and called out cheerfully:--
+
+"Tell mother not to hurry, he can't come till the evening boat."
+
+Vain message, since you might just as well have made such an appeal to
+old Time himself as to Mrs. Cameron, who, despite her seventy years
+and portly figure, was bustling about, the very personification of
+order, even in her haste. You felt instinctively that every symptom of
+hurry was the result of a conscientious conception of the importance
+of her part in the day's proceedings, and that to be calm would have
+been considered culpable. Yet, as she trotted about, her voluminous
+black skirts tucked through their placket-hole, not a hair of her flat
+iron-grey curls was astray, not a fold of her white muslin kerchief,
+or frill of her starched lace cap was awry, though her aides-de-camp,
+a couple of sonsy Highland maids, were generally dishevelled, cross,
+and hot.
+
+"Eh! Marjory, my dear," she cried, catching sight of the latter, as
+she entered the large low hall, set round with antlers; "ye're just in
+the nick to help count the napery while I see to the laird's chamber.
+He will be for having his old wee roomie, I misdoubt me; he was always
+for having his own way, too. But he will just no have it, that's all.
+Folks must accept their position, aye! and maintain their privileges
+in these days, when every bit servant lassie claims a looking-glass to
+prink at." The last words were delivered full in the face of a pert
+South country maid, who, with an armful of towels, passed by in rather
+an elaborate pink dress. It was merely a snap shot, however, for the
+old lady hurried on her appointed way, leaving Marjory and the
+offender, who was quite accustomed to being a target, in charge of the
+dark lavender-scented linen closet. Pleasant work at all times this,
+of handling the cool, smooth piles; the only household possessions
+which never seem to suffer from being laid away, which come out of
+their scented tomb with their smoothness emphasised by long pressure,
+their folds sharply accurate, their very gloss seeming to have grown
+in the dark. No fear of moth here; no hint of decay. Marjory, singling
+out a fine tablecloth and napkins for the laird's first meal at home,
+and choosing the whitest of sheets and pillow-cases for his bed, found
+herself unable to believe that long years had passed since some
+woman's hand had carefully put them away. It seemed impossible that it
+should be so, and that they should be ready to begin their work as if
+not a day had passed. Unchanged in a world of change! But the guest
+himself would be more changed than his surroundings; for he could only
+have been a boy--not much older than she herself--when he was last at
+Gleneira. The thought lingered, and after her task was over she
+wandered from room to room trying to put herself in his place, and
+guess how it would strike him. For it was pleasant sometimes, when one
+had an hour to spare, to spend it in that fanciful world of feeling,
+with which her practical life had so little to do.
+
+His mother's sitting-room! That could not fail to be sad, even though
+the fair-haired original of the faded portrait in pastels over the
+mantelpiece had passed from life when he was still a child. Yet, if
+_she_ by any chance could see even the smallest thing that had once
+belonged to that mother whose memory was a mere abstraction, who had
+never really existed for her at all, she would feel sad, and so he
+must also who had known his. Well, Captain Macleod's mother must have
+been dreadfully fond of fancy work, to judge by the room! And yet, not
+so long ago, she herself had been full of childish admiration for that
+terrible screen in the corner, which now only excited a wild wonder
+how any responsible human being could have wasted hours--nay! days,
+months--in producing such a fearful result. It represented a
+Highlander in full national costume, done in cross-stitch; the flesh
+was worked in small pink beads, giving a horrible pimply appearance to
+the face and a stony glare to the eyes; in the distance rose purple
+silk hills, and the foreground consisted of an over-grown velvet pile
+mongrel with a tail in feather stitch. In those childish days of
+admiration, however, it had had a fearful charm of its own, born of
+its inaccessibility. For, once within a certain radius, the whole
+picture disappeared into a senseless medley of silk, worsted, and
+beads. Only distance lent design, making four white beads and a black
+one a recognisable equivalent for the human eye. As she stood looking
+at it now, an amused smile curved her lips, with the remembrance that
+in still more childish days she had mixed up this magnificent
+Highlander with her conceptions of the absent laird. Probably it was
+quite as like him now as the crayon drawing, labelled "Paul," of a
+pallid boy holding a toy ship, which hung on the wall beside the
+pastel. On the other side was another pallid boy holding another ship,
+and labelled "Alick." As far as she could judge Alick might have grown
+up to be Paul, and Paul to be Alick. Only Paul held his ship in his
+right hand, and Alick in his left; but that was, of course, only
+because their portraits had to look at each other across the picture
+of their mother; because, as it were, of the exigencies of Art. She
+smiled to herself as she drifted on lazily to what Mrs. Cameron had
+considered the keystone of the laird's position. It was a dim,
+dignified room, with a dreadful bed. So large, so square, so evenly
+surrounded with Macleod tartan hangings that a sleeper immured therein
+might well on waking lose his airs, and which way he was lying. A bed
+which might have a dozen ghostly occupants, and the flesh and blood
+one be none the wiser of those dead and gone lairds of Gleneira.
+Marjory, oppressed by the very look of it, threw the windows, wide as
+they would set, to the air and sunshine. Even so, it was a dreary,
+depressing room, especially to one coming alone, unwelcomed by
+kindred, to his old home. With a sudden impulse of pity she drew from
+her belt a bunch of white heather and stag-horn moss which she had
+gathered that morning, and arranged it neatly in a little empty vase
+which stood on the wide dressing-table. A poor effort, yet it gave a
+certain air of expectancy to the room; more appropriate also to the
+occasion than more elaborate garden flowers would have been, since
+white heather stood for luck, and the stag-horn moss was the badge of
+the Macleod clan. A charming little welcome, truly, if the laird had
+eyes to see! Her face, reflected in the looking-glass as she stood
+smiling over her task, would, however, have been a more charming
+welcome still could the laird have seen it. And then the sound of
+wheels on the loose gravel outside sent her to the window in sudden
+alarm; but it was only the Manse machine, drawn by the old grey horse,
+with Father Macdonald on the front seat beside Mr. Wilson, who, as he
+caught sight of her, stood up with profound bows, disclosing a curly
+brown Brutus wig. And there was Will lounging at the horse's head, and
+his mother on the steps with dignified gesticulations. Beyond towards
+the Strath was the wide panorama of hill and moor and sea, flooded in
+light. The sudden feeling that it is good to be here, which comes even
+to untransfigured humanity at times, filled the girl's heart with
+content as she nodded back to her two devoted old friends who were now
+both standing up in the dogcart, waving their hats. How good everyone
+was to her! How happy they all were together in the Glen! And she had
+never before seemed to realise it so completely.
+
+"Heard I ever the like?" rose in Mrs. Cameron's most imperious tones.
+"To pass by the house wi' an empty stomach, and it not even a fast! A
+fast, say I? A feast for Gleneira, and twa glasses o' port wine for
+Father Macdonald whether he will or no. Marjory, my lass, away with
+them like good boys to the parlour and cry on Kirsty for the glasses.
+Will, ye gawk, are there no grooms in Gleneira House that you must be
+standing there doing their wark. Now, Mr. Wilson, just come you down
+to _terry-firmy_, as you would say yourself. You're no golden calf,
+man, to be put up on a pedestal."
+
+"My dear Madam!" cried he, gaily, clambering down with no small regard
+to the Graces. "If it is a question of worship, 'tis I who should be
+at your feet. _Facilius crescit quam_."
+
+"_A cader va chi troppo in alto sale_," interrupted Father Macdonald,
+clambering down on his side. He was a small man with round childish
+face, possessed of that marvellously delicate yet healthy complexion
+which one sees in Sisters of Charity; in those, briefly, who take no
+care for beauty and lead a life of austerity and self-denial. A
+complexion which a society woman would have given her eyes to possess.
+
+"Hoot away wi' your gifts o' tongues," retorted the old lady, in mock
+indignation at the perennial jest of strange quotations. "Marjory,
+just take them ben and stop their mouths wi' cake and wine. And make
+them drink luck to the auld house that is to be graced wi' its
+master."
+
+"Ah, my dear Madam," said the incorrigible offender, ambling up the
+steps, and giving a sly glance at Marjory, "you agree with our friend
+Cicero, '_Nec, domo dominus sed domino domus honestanda est_.'"
+
+Mrs. Cameron treated the remark with silent contempt, and Marjory,
+leading the way into the morning room where Paul Macleod's portrait
+hung on the wall, looked back with a kind smile at the two old men
+who, never having owned chick or child of their own, treated her as a
+daughter. A sort of dream-daughter, dear yet far removed from the hard
+realities of every-day familiarity.
+
+"I'm so glad you were passing to-day, father," she said eagerly; "I
+found a little Neapolitan song among some old music here, and I want
+you to see if I sing it right."
+
+Mr. Wilson, seated in the armchair, his legs disposed elegantly,
+straightened his necktie, and made a remark to the effect that the
+Neapolitans were the most debased Christian population in Europe. And
+that despite the fact that they lived, as it were, under the very nose
+of the Pope. An attack which was the result of an ever-green jealousy
+in regard to the little Jesuit's superior knowledge.
+
+"Neapolitan! Ah! my dear young lady, the patois is almost beyond me.
+If it had been Roman!" The smooth childlike face grew almost wistful
+thinking of the days so long ago spent in the still seclusion of the
+Scotch college, or out in the noisy colour of the Roman streets; a
+quaint memory for the old man who for fifty years had never seen a
+town, whose very occupation was passing away from his life, as, one by
+one, the old adherents to the old faith still lingering among the
+mountain fastnesses, died and were buried by him.
+
+"Ah! you will manage," said Marjory, cheerfully. "It isn't as if you
+didn't know the subject, for it is sure to be all about love. Songs
+always are."
+
+So, while the cake and wine were coming in, she sate down to the piano
+and sang, guided by the two old men, of love; for Mr. Wilson, great on
+philology, had his views on the mutations of vowels and consonants,
+and stood beside the little priest beating time to the phrases with
+his gold eyeglasses.
+
+Mrs. Cameron found them so, and rallied them on their taste when there
+was good port-wine on the table.
+
+"My dear Madam," retorted Mr. Wilson, positively shining with delight
+at his own opportunity of showing that his acquaintance was not
+confined to dead languages. "We have only put the 'Weib und Gesang'
+before the 'Wein'; and I am sure anyone who had the privilege of
+hearing Miss Marjory sing would do the same."
+
+She made him a little mock curtsey, but Mrs. Cameron would none of it,
+and cut a huge slice of cake. "No! no! minister; from the very
+beginning o' things men-folks cared more for their stomachs than their
+hearts. If Eve, poor body, had only given Adam a better dinner he
+wouldna have been wantin' to eat apples betwixt whiles, and a deal o'
+trouble might have been saved. But a woman's different. She takes it
+ill if a man doesn't fall in love with her; she's aye wantin'----"
+
+"I'm sure I don't want anything," put in Marjory, with her head in the
+air.
+
+"Don't be talkin' havers, child. I tell ye a woman's aye wantin' it.
+Auld as I am----"
+
+"My dear Madam," expostulated Mr. Wilson.
+
+"Haud your whist, minister," interrupted Mrs. Cameron, tartly; "what
+will you be knowing o' a woman's heart? I tell you she may be auld and
+grey, she may hae left half the pleasures o' this world behind her,
+she may hae been a wife for two score years, and spent her heart's
+bluid in rearing weans, but what's left o' the heart will be turnin'
+wi' regret to the time when the auld body who sits on the tither side
+o' the fire--girding at his food, maybe--was courtin' her. Or, maybe,
+when some ither auld body that's no at the tither side of the fire was
+courtin'. There's no sayin'."
+
+There was a silence: and then the old priest said under his breath:
+"_Amor a nullo amato amor perdona_."
+
+Mr. Wilson nodded his brown Brutus wig in assent. He did not mind that
+sort of Italian. Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of the humanities
+could understand so much. So they were merry over the cake and wine;
+merry even over the parting with it in obedience to the minister's
+Horatian order: "_Lusisti satis, editsi satis, alque bibisti, Tempus
+abire ibe est_"--which Mrs. Cameron insisted on having explained to
+her word by word. It was a complete exposition, she asserted, of the
+whole duty of man as viewed by men. To eat, to drink, to amuse
+themselves, and then to run away.
+
+That same evening, in the mirk end of the gloaming, Marjory, walking
+in the garden between the great borders of clove pinks which were
+sending out their fragrance to meet the coming night, heard the _feu
+de joie_, arranged by old John Macpherson to greet the laird's
+arrival, go off like the beginning of a battle. Half an hour
+afterwards Will Cameron returned, calling loudly for his supper, and
+full of enthusiasm.
+
+"Upon my word, Marjory, I think he is handsomer and more charming than
+ever."
+
+"Favour is deceitful and beauty is vain," said the young lady, taking
+a leaf out of Mr. Gillespie's book.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+People who only know the West Highlands in the rainy months of August
+and September, when a chill damp, almost suggestive of winter, comes
+to the air, will scarcely credit the intense heat which June and July
+often bring to the narrow glens, shut in on all sides by sun-baked
+mountains. Then the springs fail, and the cattle break through the
+fences, seeking the nearest point of the river; or stand knee-deep in
+the estuary water, flicking away the plague of flies with their tails,
+and lowing seaward to the returning tides. Then the burns, fine as a
+silver thread down the mountain sides, run with a clear bell-like
+tinkle through the boulders over which they will dash with a roar and
+a rush in the coming Lammas floods. Then the cotton grass hangs
+motionless on its hair-like stem, and the bog myrtle gives out a hot,
+dry, aromatic scent, to mingle with that of the drying grass. On such
+days as these, everything having life instinctively seeks the shade.
+So Marjory Carmichael, on the morning after the laird's return, left
+the dusty high-road, crossed the fast hardening bogs by the tussocks
+of gay mosses tufted with bell-heather, and so continued her walk
+along the alder-fringed bank of the river. Even at that early hour not
+a leaf was stirring; the very bees hung lazily on the pale lilac
+scabious flowers, and the faint hush of the river had a metallic
+sound. Marjory, clambering down a fern-clad bank, sat down beneath a
+clump of hazels, set with green nuts. Below her the river, between the
+alder stems, showed olive and gold in sunlight or shade, with every
+now and again a foam fleck sailing by; for, some fifty yards above her
+resting-place, the Eira, fresh from a boisterous half-mile scramble
+among the rocks, rushed through a narrow chasm at racing speed, and
+fell recklessly, dashing itself into a white heat of hurry in a
+seething whirling pool set in sheer walls of rock, and thence finding
+outlet for its passion in a wider basin, and so, with ever clearing
+face, sliding into peace in the dark oily pool beneath the bank where
+Marjory sate. Her favourite nook, however, in all the river side, lay
+higher up, close to the leap, where she could watch the gleaming
+sea-trout and an occasional salmon patiently trying at the fall, see
+the flash of the rapids beyond the fringing ferns, or mark the
+drifting shadows on the opposite hillside. But the single rowan tree,
+clinging with distorted roots to the heather-tufted cliff, flung its
+branches over the fall, and gave no shade elsewhere; hence on this
+hottest of hot July mornings Marjory chose the hazel hollow instead,
+and leaning back among the flowering grasses, which sent a pinkish
+bloom of tiny fallen blossom on her curly hair, drew a long, closely
+written letter from her pocket, turned to its last sheet, and began to
+read it. Not for the first time, but then Cousin Tom's letters were
+worth a dozen of most people's, especially when they had something to
+say, as this one had:--
+
+"What a hurry you seem to be in to begin work; and I am always in such
+a hurry to begin play. But then you have arrived, or are about to
+arrive, at the years of discretion, and I am a mere child of
+forty-one. Twenty years between us, dear! It is a lifetime; and what
+right have I, or any other old foozle, to dictate to you, Mademoiselle
+Grands-serieux, who, clever as she is, hardly knows, I think, when her
+most affectionate and unworthy guardian is attempting a jest. It is an
+evil habit in the old. Expect to hear from the School Committee in
+Hounslow before many days are over. I think all is settled fairly, but
+I hear there is no chance of your being needed before the beginning of
+November. And this is still July. Three whole months, therefore, ere
+Mademoiselle need take up the burden of teaching vulgar little boys
+the elements of Euclid. And yet the momentous coming of age, when
+Wisdom, let us hope, is to be justified of one of her children, is
+this week. Marjory, my dear! Fate has given you a real holiday at
+last! Of course, I am an incorrigible idler compared to you, but,
+believe me, my heart has ached at times over your sense of duty! Life
+is not all work, even if it is not all beer and skittles. So take the
+goods the gods provide (as dear old Wilson would say in the proper
+tongue--my Latin is merely a catalogue of dry bones)--put away all the
+books--let two and two be five or five hundred for the time, while you
+cross the Asses' Bridge with the rest of humanity. Wake up, my dear
+little girl! or rather begin to dream! Of what? you ask. Of anything,
+my dear, except Woman's Suffrage. By the way, I have six new reasons
+against the latter, which I will detail to Mademoiselle Grands-serieux
+when a detestable bacillus, who will neither be born nor die, permits
+of my joining her in the earthly paradise. Meanwhile have a good
+time--a real good time."
+
+Marjory leant back again on a great basket of spreading lastrea which
+gave out scent like honey as she crushed it. Cousin Tom was
+delightful, and perhaps he was right. The sudden content with Life as
+it was which had come to her the day before when she realised its
+peace, its beauty, its kindliness, returned now. Through the arching
+hazel boughs the sunlight filtered down in a tempered brilliance
+restful to the eyes; a grasshopper shrilled in the bents; a yellow
+butterfly, settling on a leaf beside her, folded its wings and,
+apparently, went to sleep. An earthly paradise, indeed! Surely if one
+could dream anywhere it would be here.
+
+Suddenly a faint _shwish-shwish_ broke the silence. _Shwish-shwish_,
+at regularly recurring intervals. Marjory, recognising the sound,
+wondered listlessly who could be fishing the lower pool at this early
+hour. One of the keepers, perhaps, hopeful of a trout for his master's
+breakfast; rather a forlorn chance even in the pot above, with that
+cloudless sky. A jarring whizz, accompanied by a convulsion in the
+alder branches, broke in on her drowsiness, making her sit up with
+intelligent appreciation of the cause. The somebody, whoever he might
+be, was "in" to the tree. Another convulsion, gentler, but more
+prolonged; another short and sharp, as if somebody were losing his
+temper. Then a persuasive wiggle to all points of the compass in turn,
+and finally the whirr of a check reel.
+
+Somebody being evidently about to try conclusions with Nature, Marjory
+leant forward in deep interest, knowing by bitter experience that it
+was two to one against humanity. At last, as she expected, there came
+a series of short, sharp jerks; then something she had not expected.
+On the morning air one comprehensive monosyllable--"Damn." That was
+all. No affix, no suffix; without nominative or accusative; soft, but
+trenchant.
+
+"A gentleman," said Marjory to herself, without a moment's hesitation,
+as she rose to peer through the thick tangle of alders. If so, the
+laird, of course. Yes! It must be he, on the opposite bank, standing
+irresolute; weighing the pros and cons of breaking in, no doubt.
+Marjory's experienced eyes following the taut line, rested finally on
+the cast looped round a branch just above her, and apparently within
+reach. The mere possibility was sufficient to make her forget all save
+the instinct to help.
+
+"Don't break, please, I can get it."
+
+Her eager voice, unmistakably girlish and refined, echoed across to
+Paul Macleod, who, after a moment's astonished search, traced it to a
+face half-seen among the parting leaves. He took off his hat
+mechanically, for though it might have been a pixie's there was no
+mistaking its gender, and the sex found a large measure of outward
+respect in Paul Macleod. For the rest, help offered was with him
+invariably help accepted; a fact which accounted for a large portion
+of his popularity, since people like those around whom the memory of
+their own benevolence can throw a halo. So he stood watching Marjory
+settle methodically to her task, wondering the while who the girl
+could possibly be. For that she had white hands and trim ankles was
+abundantly evident, and neither of these charms was to be expected in
+the rustic beauties of the Glen.
+
+"I am afraid I am giving you a lot of trouble," he said
+sympathetically, as for the third time the branch flew back from
+Marjory's hold with a sudden spring.
+
+"Not at all," she gasped jerkily; one cannot speak otherwise on tiptoe
+with both hands above one's head.
+
+"Perhaps I had better help."
+
+"Perhaps you had," she answered resentfully, desisting for a moment
+after a fourth rebuff. "There is no positive necessity for you to
+remain idle. You might for instance reel in as I pull."
+
+His faint smile was tempered by respect. The young lady on the
+opposite bank knew what she was about, and, perhaps, might even be
+good looking, if she were not quite so red in the face. So he obeyed
+meekly, and was rewarded by a gasp of triumph.
+
+"There! I've got it. I knew you could help if you tried."
+
+"I'm immensely obliged," he began; then the girl's foot slipped, the
+branch sprang from her hand, she made an ineffectual jump after it,
+and the next instant the all but disentangled cast, flung into the air
+by the rebound, was hard and fast in a higher twig.
+
+Marjory could have stamped with despite; thought it wiser to laugh,
+but found the opposite bank full of silent, grieved sympathy.
+
+"I'll get it yet," she called across the water, with renewed
+determination.
+
+"I think, if you'll allow me, I will break in," came the deferential
+voice after a time. "It really must be very tiring to jump like that."
+
+"Not at all; thank you," she retorted, without a pause. "I never--give
+in."
+
+"So it appears. Will you allow me to come over and help?"
+
+Come over and help, indeed! Marjory's growing anger slackened to
+contempt. As if he could come over without a detour of half a mile
+down or quarter of a mile up the river; and he must know it, unless he
+had no memory. "You can't," she jerked between her efforts. "You
+had--better slack line--and sit down--I'll get it somehow."
+
+Very much "somehow." Her hat fell off first. Then, after a desperate
+spring, in which she succeeded in clutching a lower branch, a hairpin
+struck work. Hot, dishevelled, exasperated, yet still determined, she
+persevered without deigning another reference to the silence over the
+way, until an arm clothed in grey tweed reached over hers and bent the
+branch down within her reach. She looked round, and, even in her
+surprise, the great personal charm and beauty of the face looking into
+hers struck her almost painfully; for it seemed to soothe her quick
+vexation, and so to claim something from her.
+
+"I jumped," he said, answering the look on hers. "It is quite easy by
+the fall."
+
+Something new to her, something which sent a lump to her throat, made
+her turn away and say stiffly: "I am sorry I gave you the trouble of
+coming. It would have been better if you had broken in. Good morning."
+
+He stood grave as a judge, courteous, deferential, yet evidently
+amused, still bending down the bough.
+
+"Will you not finish the task you began? You said you never gave in;
+besides, I can hardly do it for myself." The fact was palpable; it
+required two hands to disentangle a singularly awkward knot. To deny
+this would be to confess her own annoyance, so she turned back again.
+Rather an awkward task with a face so close to your own, watching your
+ineptitude. And yet she forgot her impatience in a sudden thought. If
+he had fallen! If that face had had the life crushed out of it!
+
+"You ought not to have jumped," she said, impulsively. "It was very
+dangerous."
+
+"Pardon me; I have done it hundreds of times when I was a boy."
+
+"Boys may do foolish things."
+
+He smiled. "And men should not; but are dangerous things necessarily
+foolish?"
+
+"Needlessly dangerous things are so, surely?"
+
+"In that case, what becomes of courage?"
+
+She paused, frankly surprised both at herself and him. How came it
+that he understood so quickly, that she followed him so clearly? Yet
+it was pleasant.
+
+"Courage has nothing to do with the question."
+
+His smile broadened. "Thanks. I began by saying so. The fact being
+that the jump is not dangerous."
+
+"No one else jumps it," she persisted.
+
+"Pardon me for mentioning that I am an unusually good jumper.
+Besides--
+
+
+             "The game is never yet worth a rap
+                For a rational man to play,
+              Into which some misfortune, some mishap
+                Cannot possibly find its way."
+
+
+Again something new to her, something which this time sent a thrill of
+answering recklessness through her veins, something of the mere joy
+and pride of life made her ask in quick interest--"Who wrote that?"
+
+"A man who gave in at last; he shot himself."
+
+Marjory's face paled. Yes; men did that sort of thing, she knew. She
+had read of it, and accepted the truth of it calmly. Now for the first
+time she felt that she understood it, that she too stood on the brink
+of the Great Unknown Sea, which might bring her to the haven where she
+would be, or to shipwreck. Then in quick relief came a new cause for
+resentment in the perception, as she began to wind up the now
+disentangled cast, that a large portion of line remained attached to
+it. In other words, her companion had deliberately cut it, and brought
+his rod with him; had risked his life not for the sake of his flies,
+but simply to amuse himself at her expense.
+
+"I think that is all I can do for you," she said, in a white heat of
+annoyance. "Good morning, Captain Macleod."
+
+The name slipped from her unawares, and she recognised her own mistake
+immediately. Her knowledge of his identity being a sort of
+introduction, from which she could scarcely escape. For his position
+as laird of Gleneira, owner of the very ground on which she was
+trespassing, could not be ignored. She could not dismiss him like a
+tramp. He took the advantage she had given him, coolly.
+
+"Thanks, so many," he said, holding back a branch to allow of her
+passing before him, "but I am going also. It is too bright for sport.
+In truth, I never expected any, and only came out to renew my
+acquaintance with the river, and discover, what I expected, that I
+have almost forgotten how to throw a fly."
+
+"Indeed, you have not forgotten how to break in, at any rate," she
+replied viciously; then ashamed of her unnecessary heat, since surely
+it was none of her business if he broke every cast he possessed, she
+added, in superior tones, "there is no reason, however, why you should
+not get a fish in the Long Pool. The sun won't touch it for half an
+hour."
+
+"The Long Pool," he echoed, "which is that? I'm afraid I have almost
+forgotten it, too."
+
+It was a palpable excuse for continuing the conversation, and as such
+Marjory resented it; at the same time, no one ever appealed to her for
+information without meeting with prompt attention, the teaching
+element being strong in her. So was impatience at crass stupidity; or,
+as Captain Macleod preferred to call it, a deficient bump of locality.
+
+"I'll see you as far as the Alder Island," she said at last, with some
+irritation, "then you can't possibly make a mistake." That, at any
+rate, would be better than trailing the whole two miles back to
+Gleneira beside him. Not that he was forward or objectionable; on the
+contrary, he treated her with a deference which would have been
+pleasant had it not covered a quiet coercion which was perfectly
+intolerable. So the glint of the Long Pool behind the Alder Island
+came as a relief, and she pointed to it in a sort of triumph.
+
+"I'm afraid it is no use," he said despondently. "Too fine; besides, I
+haven't had my breakfast, and it is growing late. I'll get Cameron to
+come down afterwards and show me the casts. A river changes in ten
+years."
+
+"You can't possibly judge from here; and I can show you the cast
+perfectly," she retorted. It had come to a stand-up fight with the
+gloves on between his will and hers, and accustomed as she was to
+instant submission from everybody of the opposite sex, she would not
+confess her own defeat by getting rid of him with a crude dismissal.
+To begin with he scarcely merited the insult, and, in addition, it
+might be awkward afterwards. So she pointed out the probable lie of
+the fish, and, her sporting instincts overcoming her contempt,
+exclaimed against the gaudy cast he selected--a cast no decent fish
+would have looked at except in flood time.
+
+"No! no!" she cried, in real eagerness. "Something less like a
+firework, if you have one--a brown body and turkey wing. Ah! here's
+the very thing. I don't believe in the steel loops, though, do you--?
+Will doesn't. And you have bridge rings I see; I never saw them
+before. They look good. Now then! Just below the break, down the slidy
+bit, and across to the ripple--Oh-h!"
+
+The exclamation was caused by a fall as of a coiled hawser on the
+water, and a separate "blob" of each fly on the surface.
+
+"You had better try again," she said gravely, "and don't thrash so;
+use your wrist."
+
+"If there was more wind," he suggested.
+
+"Nonsense! you ought to be able to throw that distance anyhow. It's
+all knack; it will come back after a cast or two. I'm sure it will."
+
+Apparently she was wrong. The line ceased, it is true, to fall in a
+heap like an umbrella, yet failed by many feet to reach the break
+above the slidy bit.
+
+"Give me the rod a moment," she cried, "and I'll show you the turn of
+the wrist. You'll recognise it then."
+
+There was an instant's pause as she stood, one foot planted against a
+stone, her lithe figure thrown backwards, her chin following the
+little toss of her head, tilted sideways; so that her eager young face
+was in full view of her companion; and then the long line flew out in
+the spey cast and seemed to nestle down just where the water broke.
+
+"Bravo!" cried Captain Macleod, as much to the picture as to the
+skill. And then before he could say another word came an eddy, a noise
+like the cloop of a cork, a glint of a silvery side, and the whirr of
+the reel. Things to drive all else from a fisherman's brain.
+
+"In to him!" shouted the Captain, excitedly; "and a beauty, too. No!
+no; keep it. I'd rather you kept it! I'd like to see you land him--if
+you can."
+
+The implied doubt, joined to the vicious shooting of something like a
+huge silver whiting with its tail in its mouth into the air, warning
+the girl of the danger of a slack line, had the desired effect. She
+set her teeth and gave herself up to repairing the error of
+indecision. The fish, having got his head, was now further down the
+pool than he should have been, and close to an ugly snag, towards
+which he bored with the strange cunning which seems born in fish.
+Marjory gave him the butt bravely, but he fought like a demon, and for
+one instant the reel gave out an ominous clicking.
+
+"Perhaps I had better," came an eager voice beside her. "It is heavier
+than I thought."
+
+"Please not! Please let me keep it now! I'd rather lose him--there!" A
+rapid wind-up emphasised her excitement. "I can manage him, you
+see--if you will go down--there by the white stones--I'll get him
+into the shallow--the tackle is so light I can scarcely bring him
+up--and--and--don't be in a hurry--I'll bring him in right over the
+click."
+
+The old imperiousness was back in full swing, and once again she had a
+willing slave, eager as she was for the sight of something long and
+brown curving, snakelike, into the shallow as if of its own free will,
+or coming in despairingly "this side up." It was a sharp, swift
+struggle, all the sharper and swifter because of that ominous snag
+over the way; and then an eight-pound grilse with the sea-lice still
+on him lay on the bank.
+
+"Oh! What a beautiful creature! One of the prettiest I have ever
+seen," cried Marjory, ecstatically, on her knees beside the prize.
+
+"Very much so, indeed." Captain Macleod's voice was absent, and his
+eyes were not on the fish. "You killed him splendidly."
+
+The light went out of the girl's face; she rose to her feet slowly.
+
+"I wish I had given you the rod," she said, still looking down on the
+palpitating, quivering bar of silver.
+
+"That is most forgiving of you!"
+
+She turned upon him almost indignantly. "Oh! I wasn't thinking of all
+that--that stuff! I was thinking--it seems so cruel."
+
+"Many things seem so afterwards. One might spend a lifetime in
+regretting, if it was worth it; but it isn't."
+
+"Isn't it? I wish anyhow that I hadn't killed that fish."
+
+"Why not go further back, and wish you hadn't interfered to safe my
+cast? for, as it happens, the one you chose out was the very one Fate
+had ordained should remain in an alder bush----"
+
+"Perhaps I do," she replied stiffly, realising how he had played upon
+her for the first time. The knowledge, rather to her own surprise,
+brought tears to her eyes.
+
+"I don't wonder that you regret having helped me," he said with a
+sudden change of manner. "If you will tell me where to leave the fish
+I will no longer trouble you. I am sorry for having given you so much
+already."
+
+There was no mistaking the hidden depth of his apology. As he stood
+there in the sunlight, looking at her gravely, Marjory felt to the
+full the charm of his gracious presence. Who could really be angry
+with him for such a trifle? For it was a trifle after all.
+
+"My name is Marjory Carmichael," she said briefly, "and I live at the
+Lodge with the Camerons. But I don't want the fish. I don't indeed."
+
+"Then you shall not have it. I owe you some obedience, do I not?--and
+thanks beyond measure."
+
+He stood there with his cap off smiling at her, and she, feeling
+apologetic in her turn, hesitated. After all, if he was going her way
+it would be foolishness itself to tramp that mile and a half with an
+interval of fifty yards or so between them.
+
+"And now I must emulate your skill," he said cheerfully, "though I
+can't expect your luck." And as she moved away she saw his flies
+settle softly as thistledown in the right place. Well! that was better
+than keeping up the pretence.
+
+As for him, though he continued to fish conscientiously, his thoughts
+were with the figure of the retreating girl. She had amused him and
+interested him greatly. A relation, he supposed, of Dr. Carmichael's;
+in fact, he had a dim recollection of a curly-haired child scampering
+about on a Sheltie ten years before; though he had never known the
+doctor, who had lived as a recluse. But how came she here still, and
+with the Camerons? A cut above them surely! By Jove! how she had hung
+on to that grilse, and how nearly she had cried over it afterwards.
+Maudlin sentimentality, of course, and yet he had felt the same a
+hundred times over a wounded deer. The look in her eyes had been like
+that, somehow; uncommonly pretty eyes they were, too, into the
+bargain!
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER V.
+
+
+Paul Macleod sate in the business-room, where so many lairds of
+Gleneira had received rents and signed cheques, playing his part with
+great propriety, much to Will Cameron's delight and astonishment.
+Captain Macleod was, undoubtedly, the laird, and as such bound to a
+semi-parental interest in every living thing, to say nothing of every
+stick and stone about the old place. On the other hand, he had been
+away in a perfectly different environment for nearly ten years, and it
+seemed nothing short of marvellous to the factor that he should
+remember every farmer and cottier, nay, more, their wives, and sons,
+and daughters, by name. And so, perhaps it was; though, to tell truth,
+the mental qualities it represented were small, being no more nor less
+than a quick responsiveness to the renewal of past sensation; that
+very responsiveness which ten years before had made Paul shrink from
+giving an unpleasant memory a place in his life. Moralists are apt to
+sneer at the popularity which the possessor of this faculty enjoys;
+and, of course, it is easy to cheapen the sympathy of the man, who
+when he sees you, is instantly reminded of all the past connected with
+you in detail, and proceeds to inquire eagerly about your ox and ass,
+your manservant and your maidservant, and everything that is within
+your gate. Yet, when all is said and done, and though he certainly
+gives the false impression that these things have never been out of
+his mind, the gift is not only an enviable one, but in itself argues a
+quicker sensibility than that possessed by his more stolid, if more
+honest, neighbours.
+
+So there was no effort to Paul Macleod in taking up the thread of his
+past life at Gleneira; at the same time, he felt no more regret at
+hearing, as he did through Will's answers to his inquiries, of Jeanie
+Duncan's death, somewhere in the vague South country, than he did for
+many another item of news. Partly because that old life had really
+passed out of existence for him altogether, and partly because Will,
+being a good-natured kindly soul, said nothing about the child which
+poor old Peggy had brought with her. There are many men of this
+sort--more men for the matter of that than there are women--who hate
+to face the sad aspect of life, and slur over a painful story whenever
+they can.
+
+Thus Captain Macleod was able to quit the past and plunge into the
+future without even the slight regret which the news must have brought
+him; for in his way he had really loved Jeanie, and the thought that
+his admirable self-sacrifice had not availed to keep her memory
+pleasant, would have been a distinct annoyance. As it was, he began at
+once on plans and arrangements, which convinced Will Cameron that the
+laird must be going, unconsciously, to follow his advice, and marry a
+rich wife. Nothing else could explain the fact that Gleneira House had
+to be generally smartened up for the present, pending more solid
+repairs during winter, that carriages and horses had to be bought at
+once, and preparations of all sorts made for the houseful of guests
+which would come with the shooting season. In the matter of slates,
+glass, stables, and garden, Will Cameron felt himself equal to the
+occasion, but when chintzes and furniture came under discussion he
+meekly suggested a reference to Maples', or Morris, or his mother.
+
+"I should prefer Mrs. Cameron," replied the laird, with a laugh. "If I
+wanted the other sort of thing my sister Blanche would do it for me
+fast enough. Take a brougham by the day--to save her own horse, you
+know--and re-create poor old Gleneira. First day, paper, painting,
+draping; second day, furnishing; third day, creeping things
+innumerable--you know them. Chenille things climbing up the lamp, a
+Japanese toad on the writing-table, and a spider on the edge of a
+teacup." He rose and went to the window. "But that sort of thing is
+desecration of this," he went on, looking out on the opalescent
+shimmer of sea and sky and hills; "though it does well enough in South
+Kensington. I never could fit myself out, even in clothes, with a view
+to both hemispheres, and though some folk profess to prepare for
+heaven and enjoy earth at the same time, I'm not made that way."
+
+He pulled himself up with an airy smile, and turned round again.
+
+"So let us be off to Mrs. Cameron, and perhaps that young lady who is
+staying with you--I met her by the river this morning----"
+
+"Marjory," put in Will, eagerly; "why, yes, of course, she is the very
+person we want--has awfully good taste."
+
+"Indeed," said the other, smiling again. He was thinking that in that
+case he could not claim distinction since she had not favoured him
+with much of her approval. Not that it mattered, since he had quite
+made up his mind that during the next few weeks, before his married
+sister came to do hostess, Marjory would be a decided acquisition to
+the limited society at his command; for Paul was distinctly gregarious
+in his tastes. It did not take much to amuse him; but he needed some
+gentle interest to start the wheels of his pleasure, and that interest
+was, preferably, a woman. So, being able thus to combine duty and
+amusement by a visit to the Lodge, he calmly suggested an adjournment
+on the spot, to which Will agreed, blissfully oblivious of the fact
+that not half-an-hour before he had left his mother in the agonies of
+redding up the best parlour, with a view to the laird's expected visit
+in the afternoon.
+
+No doubt when the women of the future have won large interests for
+themselves, such a spectacle as Mrs. Cameron presented when she saw
+two tweed-clad figures lounging up the path together will be
+impossible. Even nowadays the attempt to describe her feelings must
+fall far short of the reality, since few of this generation can grasp
+the mental position of the last, and Mrs. Cameron belonged to the
+generation before that. Of far better birth than many a farmer's wife
+who would be ashamed at being discovered engaged in household work,
+Mrs. Cameron would as a rule have gloried in what was to her the sole
+aim and object of woman's creation; but this was no ordinary occasion;
+how could that be one which necessitated clean muslin curtains at a
+time when clean muslin curtains should not be, a cake made after her
+mother's original recipe baking in the oven, and a bottle of her dead
+husband's very best Madeira waiting to be decanted on the sideboard?
+
+She stood transfixed on the steps, in the very act of running a tape
+through the stiffened hem of the curtain, an operation which in itself
+had reduced her patience to the lowest ebb; and then, after an
+instant's pause, her resentment found an outlet in one expressive
+epithet.
+
+"The Gowk!" For it was Will's fault, of course; had not the lad been a
+perfect dispensation ever since he was born? (this being her favourite
+word for describing all the inevitable trials of her life). Besides,
+after the manner of most housewifely women, she always visited any
+failure in domestic arrangements on the head of the nearest male
+belonging to the family. No one but a man, no one but a man, sent to
+make _her_ life a burden, could have been guilty of such a disgraceful
+blunder, when a word, a hint, could have kept the laird from coming
+until the afternoon. The conviction brought a sort of martyred
+resignation with it, as she continued in a lower key, "and the parlour
+as bare as the loof o' my hand, save for the tea leaves on the
+drugget."
+
+A more forlorn picture of discomfort could not have been suggested,
+and Marjory, standing by with needle and thread, promptly suggested
+that the laird should be shown into her study, since she was on the
+point of going out; an assertion which mollified the old lady by its
+suggestion that the visit must be to her alone. And wherefore not,
+since she had seen three generations of Macleods come and go? So, with
+vague remarks about sparing the rod and spoiling the child, which it
+is to be supposed bore reference to poor Will's education, she hurried
+off to meet her guest in the old-fashioned style, and take it out of
+the offender--who in the meantime had, for hospitality's sake, to go
+scot free--by a display of almost subservient humility to their
+employer.
+
+"Come ben! Come ben, Gleneira, to your ain house. And tho' it is no so
+tidy as I might have wished" (here a savage glance at her son
+emphasised the stab) "it is not for me to say you nay, for even if we
+have been here father and son, a' these years, it is no for us to be
+forgettin' oor position and dependence."
+
+"Don't keep the laird standing on the steps all day," put in Will,
+hurriedly; "he wants to have a crack with you, mother; let us go into
+the parlour."
+
+"The parlour, William, as you should ken fine, is being redd up, so I
+must fain ask the laird's pardon for takin' him to our boarder's wee
+sitting-room."
+
+As a rule Mrs. Cameron would sooner have died than call Marjory a
+boarder, and so level herself to the bit farmer-bodies who let
+lodgings in the summer time; but at present any weapon against her
+son's dignity was welcome, and she rejoiced to see him growing more
+and more impatient. Letting lodgings, indeed! Aye, that was what the
+poor shiftless creature would come to if he hadn't her to make both
+ends meet!
+
+"My dear Mrs. Cameron," replied Paul, still holding her old hand and
+looking sentimentally into her old face, "the pleasure of seeing you
+is all I care for now. To begin with, it makes me feel years younger.
+And how young I was when you caught me stealing your jam! I have
+never forgotten the lecture you gave me, never! And then, do you
+remember----?" He was fairly afloat on the sea of reminiscence now,
+much to the old lady's gratification. But since this was distinctly an
+irregular method of getting through a state visit, she led the way
+defiantly to Marjory's little snuggery upstairs, with another sniff at
+poor Will, which sent him off muttering something about letting its
+owner know; a remark which increased his mother's wrath, and made her
+more than ever set on a strict observance of the ceremony due to the
+occasion. So she sat exactly opposite Paul on a high chair, and began
+_seriatim_ on all domestic events in the Gleneira family during the
+past nine years, until his head whirled, and the life which had seemed
+to him so varied and gay, reduced itself to a mere excerpt from the
+first column of the Times. Yet his deferential courtesy never failed,
+and, as usual, brought him its own reward; for after a time, the old
+lady, finding it impossible to resist his charm, thawed completely,
+and finally getting quite jolly, frankly confessed her annoyance, and
+hurried off to see if the cake were not sufficiently baked to admit of
+Gleneira's breaking bread in the house, just for luck's sake.
+
+Paul, left alone, began to frown. This was Miss Carmichael's room;
+but, apparently, she meant to steer clear of it while he was there.
+Girls did that sort of thing; it made them feel independent.
+Meanwhile, what sort of a girl was she, judged by her room; that sort
+of knowledge often came in very useful when the dear creatures were
+shy. Fond of flowers, certainly, and in a rational way; these were not
+arranged in bouquets, but set one or two in a vase wherever a vase
+could stand, so that you could see them. Books? A closed bookcase full
+of the dreariest backs; they must have belonged to her uncle, or
+perhaps to old Cameron, who had been a bit of a student; but scarcely
+to a girl who could throw a salmon line like Miss Carmichael. Yes! She
+had certainly looked as well as she was ever likely to look, when
+swaying her lithe body to the sway of the rod. Pictures? A good
+photograph that, over the mantelpiece, of Andrea del Sarto's
+Maddelena; from the original, of course, and full size. That was the
+best of photographs, you could have them exact, and sometimes half an
+inch made such a difference. How well he remembered his first sight of
+the picture in that dark corner of the Borghese gallery, and the
+effect its dreamy eyes had had on him; the wonder, too, whether the
+casket really held a very precious ointment, or a still more precious
+_acquatofana_. Either was possible with that dim, mysterious smile;
+and the woman herself--for it was Del Sarto's wife, of course--had
+been a lying devil who made her husband's life a perfect hell. Now,
+had Miss Carmichael chosen that photograph for herself; and, if so,
+why? Since it did not fit the salmon fishing any better than the
+books. Ah! there in the bow window, cut off from the rest of the room
+by muslin drapery, was a low wicker chair, placed close to a revolving
+bookstand.
+
+"Now for the last new novel," he said to himself cynically. "What is
+the odds on anything in these latter times. I have seen nice girls
+since I came home reading things in public which I would not leave
+about in the smoking-room for fear the housemaid might be shocked.
+Eheu!"
+
+It was a sort of prolonged low whistle of surprise and disappointment,
+mingled with a distinct personal aversion to the treatise on Conic
+Sections, which he took up inadvertently. The fact being that Paul
+Macleod had at one period of his life thought of Woolwich, and that
+particular book had, as it were, stood in the way of his ambition.
+Perhaps it was that which made him fling it down contemptuously,
+with a sort of vague indictment against the owner. She had not looked
+like it certainly, yet for all he knew she might be one of those
+clear-headed, hard-hearted nondescripts--the opposite extreme from
+that angel-faced, sensual-minded demon over the mantelpiece--who
+despised the emotions they were born to create, and would scorn to
+have a foolish, illogical, unreasoning, lovable sentimentality. There
+he paused abruptly, and whistled again; for on the stand among the
+books was a little vase holding some white heather and stag-horn moss.
+A curious coincidence truly, even if it were nothing more. He stood
+looking at it for a minute or two, and then quite coolly exchanged it
+for a similar bouquet which he was wearing in his buttonhole; a
+bouquet which he had found in a vase on his dressing-table.
+
+Just then the door opened, at first gently, then hurriedly, while
+Marjory's voice exclaimed in joyous relief, "Gone at last! What a
+relief!"
+
+Paul emerged from his concealment with outstretched hand.
+"Good-morning, Miss Carmichael," he said in that charming voice of
+his, "delighted to find you at home." She looked at him with level,
+puzzled eyes.
+
+"I think you must have heard what I said just now, didn't you?" Her
+directness went straight through the veneer of conventional
+politeness, and startled him into corresponding frankness.
+
+"Yes; every word," he said, turning to take up his cap.
+
+"Oh, please don't," she broke in eagerly. "It will make me feel so
+ashamed. And it was only because I wanted to finish some papers and
+send them off. You see to-morrow is my birthday, and I promised Tom to
+take a holiday. But I forgot," she added with a quick apologetic
+smile, "you don't know who Tom is, and it can't interest you----"
+
+"I beg your pardon," he interrupted, returning somewhat to his more
+elaborate manner; "it interests me exceedingly to know who Tom is."
+
+Again her perfect unconsciousness drove him back to simplicity.
+
+"Tom is my guardian--Dr. Thomas Kennedy. I don't suppose _you_ have
+heard of him, but most people have; I mean of that sort. He is in
+Paris now busy over a bacillus."
+
+"Indeed!" said Paul, beginning to weary; "and so to-morrow is your
+birthday, and you are to have a holiday; a whole holiday. That sounds
+very virtuous, Miss Carmichael, to a man who has perpetual holidays."
+
+"But I am going to have six weeks! A real vacation. The first I've
+ever had; because you see I've never been to school or college, and
+work has always been more or less of an amusement to me. One must have
+something to do, you know."
+
+"Pardon me, but I seldom find the necessity. Life in itself occupies
+all my spare time; I mean all the time I can spare from things that
+are necessary to keep in life."
+
+She looked at him again with frankly puzzled, half-amused eyes. "How
+funny that sounds. I don't understand it a bit, but I daresay I shall
+when I have really been idle for two or three weeks. Tom says it will
+do me good before I start regular work. I am going to teach in a Board
+school in November."
+
+"That seems a pity."
+
+"Why? I have to earn my own living, remember!"
+
+"Pardon me for saying that that seems to me a greater pity still."
+
+The puzzled, amused look grew more pronounced. "And that sounds still
+funnier. Can't you see that some of us must work; there are so many of
+us nowadays. Besides, I like work; uncle used to say that was lucky,
+because I had to. You see I am absolutely alone in the world."
+
+"And that is the greatest pity of all." His voice, soft, kind,
+courteous, carried them beyond the lightness of ordinary conversation
+in a moment, and Marjory, recognising the fact, felt none of her
+usually quick resentment at the intrusion of a stranger into her inner
+life; for she was not of those who parade their possession of a soul,
+perhaps because she took it as a matter of course.
+
+"I suppose it is, in a way," she assented; "but I have been accustomed
+to the position all my life, and somehow I never regret it."
+
+"That seems to me rather unnatural in a girl."
+
+"It is very lucky," she retorted. "What would become of me if I were
+afraid?"
+
+"You would probably lead a far happier life."
+
+"Why?"
+
+They were standing opposite each other, looking into each other's
+faces, and the beauty of his, the unconsciousness of hers, held them
+both captive.
+
+"Because in all probability you would marry."
+
+There was a silence for a moment, but Paul Macleod, no mean judge of
+character, partly because of the complexity of his own, had rightly
+gauged the measure of what he had to deal with. What many girls might
+have deemed an impertinence Marjory passed by as a mere truism.
+
+"I have often thought of that myself," she replied quietly; "but I
+think you are mistaken."
+
+It was his turn now to put that terse, unconditional "Why?"
+
+"I am not likely to marry; as uncle used to say, I have not purchasing
+power equal to my requirements."
+
+"Meaning, of course, that your ideal is too high. I should have
+fancied so. You are very young, Miss Carmichael. And I am old;
+besides, ten years knocking about in Indian cantonments disposes
+effectually of the theory of twin souls. It is very beautiful, no
+doubt; but I fancy mine must have died in the measles, or some other
+infantile ailment. It did not survive to riper years, at any rate. But
+here comes Mrs. Cameron, so I shall escape scathing this time. I
+generally do."
+
+Marjory felt she could well believe it, palpably unjust though such
+immunity might be, as she watched the laird give back the fervid
+greeting of the Reverend James Gillespie, who followed close on the
+tray of cake and wine.
+
+"My dear sir; welcome to the Glen," cried the young clergyman. "I have
+been up at the Big House, and, hearing you were at the Lodge, ventured
+to follow you. As parish clergyman----"
+
+"'Deed no! Gillespie," put in Mrs. Cameron, sharply.
+
+"I did not say minister, my dear Madam," retorted the Reverend James
+with uncommon spirit; "I said clergyman; and considering that the
+lairds of Gleneira have ever clung loyally to the Church." Here
+something in the old lady's face made him, as it were, climb down
+again. "Well, let us say parish priest."
+
+"'Deed no, again," interrupted the good lady, with a grim smile. "What
+would Father Macdonald be saying?"
+
+The Reverend Mr. Gillespie climbed down still further for the sake of
+peace, though the vexed question of effectual orders was a favourite
+hunting-ground of the Bishop's. "As a native of Gleneira, deeply
+interested in the spiritual and moral welfare of its inhabitants,
+allow me to express my sincere pleasure in your return. Believe me,
+Gleneira, the people welcome you to their midst."
+
+"It is really awfully kind of you all, when I have been such a
+shocking ne'er-do-weel absentee. I assure you, Miss Carmichael, that
+the number of times I've had to drink my own health in raw whiskey
+this morning is incredible; enough to ruin it for the next year."
+
+The Reverend James put on his most professional air. "Too true. As the
+Bishop says, whiskey is indeed the bane----"
+
+"Hoot, no!" interrupted Mrs. Cameron from the cake and wine; "good
+whiskey ne'er harmed a good man. It is just the idle, feckless bodies
+getting drunken that gives it a bad name."
+
+"But that is just the point, my dear lady," expostulated the young
+man, feeling sure of his ground. "It is for the sake of the weaker
+brother."
+
+"Havers!" began Mrs. Cameron; but the Reverend James was firm, and
+quoted the text.
+
+"Aye, aye!" continued the old lady, "I ken where it comes from fine,
+more's the pity, for I don't hold wi' it. It's just a premium on being
+a poor body, and is the clear ruination o' this world whatever it may
+be of the next. Gie me a useless, through--other man or woman, and
+hey! it's a weaker brother an' maun' be cockered up."
+
+She showed so much animation that her opponent retired from the
+contest discreetly by turning to the laird and beginning on a stock
+subject.
+
+"I am sorry to say, Gleneira, that despite my own efforts, and the
+Bishop's earnest desire for the erection of a church, matters remain
+much as they were, when you were here last. That is to say, service
+has still to be conducted in the school-house, which, er--in addition
+to other illegitimate uses"--he glanced casually at his old enemy at
+this point--"also serves as a post-office; a plan which has great and
+undeniable inconvenience."
+
+"And convenience, too," put in Mrs. Cameron, remorselessly. "You see,
+laird, the post is no delivered on the Sabbath-day, this bein' a
+Christian land, and so when folk go to kirk they can kill twa birds
+wi' one stane."
+
+This was too much. "In my opinion," retorted the Reverend James,
+pompously, "it would be far less objectionable if Donald _did_ deliver
+the letters than that the last words of the blessing should be the
+signal for handing them round the congregation. But as is so often the
+case in Scotland, the veneration for the day--which, by the way, is
+not the Sabbath----"
+
+"No, no!" interrupted the old lady, "I'm no going that gate. I've told
+ye oft, Mr. Gillespie, it is naught to me if it's the Sabbath or
+Sunday, or Lord's-day or the first day o' the week we are keeping. But
+I ken fine that in my learnin' days I was taught to keep it holy, so
+if there is ony mistake it was none o' my makin'. It's the fault of
+the minister."
+
+Mr. Gillespie coughed. "The hours of service are eleven o'clock for
+matins, and four o'clock for evensong. Miss Marjory kindly helps us
+with the harmonium. Indeed, one of my reasons for coming on here was
+to ask her to settle the hymns for Sunday first, unless, indeed, you
+yourself would select one suitable--er--to the occasion."
+
+Paul took the proffered hymn-book with visible embarrassment, and
+looked appealingly towards Marjory, but it was impossible to laugh,
+for the Reverend James's proposition was saved from absurdity by its
+absolute simplicity.
+
+"Really! my dear sir," he began, when Mrs. Cameron came to his rescue.
+
+"Gie the laird a harvest hymn, Mr. Gillespie. I'll warrant he has sown
+his wild oats, though maybe after all, you would no care to be reapin'
+them, Gleneira."
+
+He laughed very boyishly. "My dear old friend, if they were fifty
+shillings a quarter, I should be the richest man in Lorneshire,
+instead of the poorest."
+
+"Poor," she echoed grimly; "you couldna' be poor if you tried. It is
+no in some men. And now, Gleneira, there's some o' the farm folk
+waiting to drink your health outside, so come awa'. And you, too,
+Marjory, my dear, for you're a Gleneira lass when all's said and done.
+And the parson can tak' a glass for his oft infirmities if he'll no do
+it for anything less important."
+
+They followed her out into the sunshine, where, in a solemn
+semi-circle, they found half-a-dozen or more of men and halflings,
+headed, of course, by old John Macpherson as spokesman. He held a wine
+glass in one hand, a black bottle in the other, and the liltiness of
+his attitude, joined to a watery benevolence in his eye, told a tale
+of previous exertions towards the laird's good health. It was evident
+that, for the time being, he was an optimist, viewing the world as the
+best of all possible worlds. A glass more, and he would be ready to
+defend the proposition with his fists; another, and he would have wept
+over its denial, for Aladdin's genii of the bottle was not more
+powerful in metamorphosis than Scotch whiskey was on John Macpherson.
+
+"An' here's to you, Gleneira," he said, when Paul returned the glass.
+"An' it's wissing you as rich as the Duke o' Wellington--Pech!
+Mistress Cameron, but yon's gude whiskey--water never touched it."
+
+Even the refilled glass, as it passed from hand to hand, seemed to
+have a vicarious effect on old John, who waxed more and more lilty,
+and finally, when the others moved off, lingered for an audible
+whisper, accompanied by an admiring glance at the laird.
+
+"Gorsh! Miss Marjory, wass I no tellin' you he was bonnie, and iss he
+not bonnie, whatever?"
+
+"A leading question, John," said Paul, readily; "witness can't be
+expected to answer it."
+
+But the argumentative mood was beginning. "An' what for no. Miss
+Marjory will be a Highland lass, an' a Highland lass will no be so
+shamefast, but they will be knowing a bonnie lad when they see one."
+
+"I quite agree with you, John," said the girl, quickly, with a
+suspicion of both a frown and a smile on her face.
+
+Paul Macleod, as he walked home, found himself fully occupied in
+trying, as it were, to piece the girl's character together to his
+satisfaction. She was a novel experience, a pleasant one into the
+bargain.
+
+So when she came to breakfast next morning, a bouquet of hot-house
+flowers lay on her plate with Captain Macleod's best wishes for her
+birthday.
+
+"I think it is very kind of him," she said judicially, in reply to
+Mrs. Cameron's rapture over the laird's condescension; "but Peter
+Morrison will be furious at having his show spoilt. And he has
+amputated the poor things at the knee. Men ought never to pick
+flowers, they don't understand them, except gardeners, and they never
+want to pick them at all."
+
+When she went up that afternoon to the Big House in order to aid Mrs.
+Cameron's taste in the matter of new curtains, there was a little
+bunch of white heather and stag-horn moss tucked into her belt. In
+finding room amongst the vases for the newcomers this had seemed too
+pretty to throw away, that was all. But Paul Macleod's keen eyes fell
+on it at once with a certain satisfaction; nevertheless, he made no
+allusion to the subject, a reticence which he would not have observed
+towards most women of his acquaintance. It was sufficient for him to
+be aware of its complicated history. That sort of thing gave an
+infinite zest to life.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+Even in the dusty glare of a dusty July sun, one of the largest houses
+in Queen's Gardens looked cool and pleasant with its delicate shades
+of grey on wall and portico, its striped jalousies and tiled window
+gardens gay with scarlet geraniums, yellow calceolarias, and blue
+lobelias; flowers, all of them, which seem somehow to have lost their
+flowerfulness by being so constantly associated in one's mind with
+area railings, barrel organs, and the eternal rat-tat of the postman's
+knock--to be brief, with London. For all the passer-by knew or cared,
+those lines of brilliant red, yellow, and blue blossoms might have
+been cunningly composed of paper, and would have served their purpose
+to the full as well had they been so, since no one, even inside the
+house, ever looked on them in the light of living, breathing plants
+going through a process of asphyxiation. It is difficult no doubt to
+resist the temptation to have pot-plants in London, but how often when
+brought face to face with the hideous ravages which a day or two of
+its poisonous atmosphere makes on our favourites has not the true
+flower-lover felt nothing short of murder. The inhabitants of the
+house in Queen's Gardens, however, had not even this chance for
+remorse, since the boxes were kept bright by contract, and if any poor
+plant was ill-advised enough to droop and complain, it was promptly
+rooted up and replaced by the man who came in the early mornings to
+"walk the hospitals" before the family appeared on the scene.
+
+Within the house, the same spick and span, utterly impersonal
+attention to beauty prevailed. From basement to attic it was simply
+perfect in its appointments. As it might well be, since an artist in
+copper utensils had been let loose in the kitchen, the greatest
+authority in the world on wall papers had been allowed his will in
+friezes and dados; and so on from cellar to roof. There is, of course,
+a good deal to be said in favour of this modern specialism. It is
+distinctly comforting to know, that if you have not reached
+perfection, you have at any rate paid for it; but to some barbarians
+the loss of individuality in such houses is very grievous. To begin
+with, you lose a most delightful study of character. And after all, if
+Mrs. Jones has a sneaking admiration for a pea-green carpet with pink
+cabbage roses sprinkled over it, why, in heaven's name, should she
+conceal the fact? No green that ever was dyed is greener than grass,
+no flower that ever was woven is half as brilliant as the
+blossom-mosaic which Nature spreads for you to tread upon when the
+snow melts from the upland Alps. Yet the house was charming enough in
+detail if a little confusing _en masse_ to those sensitive to their
+surroundings; since the drawing-room was Queen Anne, the dining-room
+Tudor, and various other corridors and apartments Japanesque,
+Renaissance, Early English, or Pompeian.
+
+This again did not affect the inmates, who, indeed, would have scorned
+to feel as if time and space had been annihilated in the course of
+half-a-dozen steps; such fanciful imaginations being almost wicked,
+when time and space were distinctly necessary to the due performance
+of your duty in that state of life to which it had pleased Providence
+to call you.
+
+On this particular morning in July, Mr. and Mrs. Woodward and their
+daughter Alice were seated at the breakfast table in the usual
+comfortable indifferent silence of people who keep a diary of outside
+engagements in a conspicuous place on the writing-table, and whose
+inner lives move in decorous procession from morn till eve. A canary
+was singing joyfully, but at the same time keeping a watchful eye on
+the grey Persian cat which walked up and down rubbing itself, as it
+passed and repassed, against Mrs. Woodward's gown, with an anxious
+look on the bread and milk she was crumbling for it. Mr. Woodward, at
+the other side of a central palm tree, studied the share list. Miss
+Alice Woodward, who had evidently come down later than the others, was
+still engaged listlessly on toast and butter; finally making a remark
+in an undertone to her mother that as Jack had settled to ride with
+her in the Park at eleven, she supposed it was about time to get
+ready; a remark which resulted in her pushing away her plate
+languidly.
+
+"You have eaten no breakfast, my dear, and you are looking pale," said
+her mother, comfortably; "I will get you some more Blaud's from the
+Stores."
+
+"Oh! I'm all right," replied the girl. "It's hot, and--and things are
+tiresome. They generally are at the end of the season, aren't they?"
+
+She drifted easily, rather aimlessly, out of the room. Like everything
+else in the house she was costly and refined; pretty in herself but
+without any individuality. For the rest, blonde and graceful, with a
+faintly discontented droop of the mouth, and large, full, china-blue
+eyes.
+
+Mr. Woodward watched her retreat furtively till the door closed behind
+her, then laid down his paper and addressed his wife with the air of a
+man who attends strictly to business. That was, in fact, his attitude
+towards his daughter at all times. He did not, he said, understand
+girls, but he did his duty by them.
+
+"I heard from Macleod this morning, my dear."
+
+Mrs. Woodward went on crumbling bread gently, and there was a pause.
+"Well, what does he say?"
+
+"That the house will be ready for visitors by the 8th of next month,
+and that it will give him great pleasure to welcome us as soon after
+that date as we can manage."
+
+"Nothing more?"
+
+"Only the old story; that he is most anxious for our consent in order
+that he may speak definitely. There, read it yourself, a sensible,
+gentlemanly letter. I really don't think she could do better."
+
+His tone was precisely what it would have been had he been
+recommending the purchase of debenture stock in a safe concern.
+
+"Then I suppose we may consider it settled; I mean, if Alice likes the
+place."
+
+"Just so; but I'm told it is charming; there is a man--in
+hooks-and-eyes, by the way--who has the moor next it. I met him at the
+Kitcheners' dinner. He said it only wanted money, and she will bring
+that. Besides, the man himself is all that can be desired, even by a
+girl."
+
+Mrs. Woodward nodded her head. "Yes, that is such a comfort, and Lady
+George is so nice. Alice is quite fond of her, which is a great point
+with a sister-in-law. In fact, everything seems most satisfactory."
+She paused a moment, and a faint shade of doubt showed on her face.
+"Only, of course, there is Jack."
+
+"Jack! heaven and earth, Sophia! what has Jack to do with it?"
+
+"Nothing, of course, only you know, or at any rate you might have seen
+that he--well, that he may object."
+
+Mr. Woodward's face passed from sheer amazement to that peculiar
+expression of virtuous indignation which so many English fathers
+reserve for those who, without a nomination, have the temerity to
+admire their daughters.
+
+"Jack! that boy Jack?"
+
+"He is older than Alice, my dear," put in his wife, with meek
+obstinacy. She, on the contrary, was smiling, for, no matter how
+ineligible the victim, a scalp is always a scalp to a mother; and
+Jack was not ineligible. On the contrary, he was the head of the
+soap-boiling business, now that her husband had received a
+consideration for his interest, and retired into the more genteel
+trade of blowing soap bubbles on 'Change.
+
+"Pooh!" retorted Mr. Woodward, angrily, "if he is troublesome send him
+to me, I'll settle him. The lad must marry position, like Alice." He
+paused, and his manner changed. "You don't, of course, mamma,
+insinuate that--that Alice--that your daughter has been foolish
+enough----"
+
+Mrs. Woodward rose with dignity, and gave the cat its bread and milk.
+"_My_ daughter is a dear, good, sensible girl, Mr. Woodward; but that
+doesn't alter the fact that your _nephew_ may be foolish. I consider
+it extremely likely that he may be; it runs in the family."
+
+Mr. Woodward took up the share list again, using it--after the manner
+of his kind when in domestic difficulties--as a shield, and his wife
+put a fresh lump of sugar in the canary's cage, saw to its seed and
+water, and left the room placidly. The bird was her bird, the cat her
+cat, and therefore she did her duty by them. In the same conscientious
+spirit she interviewed the housekeeper and ordered a very good dinner
+for her husband because he was her husband. Some people have the knack
+of getting a vast deal of purely selfish satisfaction out of their own
+virtues. Finally, she went into the morning-room, and began to think
+over the best way of doing her duty by her daughter also; for there
+was this difficulty in the way, here, that she and Alice were too much
+alike for sympathy. They found each other out continually, and, what
+is more, placidly disapproved of the various little weaknesses they
+shared in common. It is this inevitable likeness which is really at
+the bottom of that state of affairs, which is expressed in the
+feminine phrase, "they don't get on at home, somehow." But Alice was
+not a revolting daughter. Apart from other considerations, she would
+have thought it vulgar not to behave nicely to her parents, while Mrs.
+Woodward herself would have felt her complacent self-respect
+endangered if she had not had a high estimate of her own child; and
+Alice was, in this aspect, a far easier subject than her brother Sam,
+who, to tell truth, gave even his mother a few qualms in regard to his
+personal appearance.
+
+But Alice was perfect in that respect, simply perfect. Not too
+pronouncedly pretty; not the sort of girl whose photograph would be
+put up surreptitiously in the shop windows, but really quite
+unexceptionable as she came in to her mother's room and stood at the
+window in her trim habit waiting for the horses to come round. Then
+she turned to her mother composedly.
+
+"Father had a letter from Captain Macleod this morning, hadn't he?
+When does he expect us?"
+
+Mrs. Woodward gave a sigh of relief. It was an advantage sometimes to
+be seen through, especially when you were anxious to give a word of
+warning before that long ride with Jack in the Park, and you did not
+quite know how to set about it.
+
+"On the 8th; that will suit your father nicely; he will have done his
+meetings by then. And you will like the change, won't you, darling?"
+
+"Immensely, of course. Then we had better go round to Redfern's to-day
+and order tailor-made things; something that looks rough, you know,
+but isn't. I hate rough things, they make me feel creepy. Ah! there is
+Jack coming round the gardens. Good-bye, dearest."
+
+She stooped to kiss her mother dutifully ere leaving, and Mrs.
+Woodward seized the opportunity.
+
+"Good-bye, darling, and before you go, Alice, about Jack."
+
+"What about Jack, mamma?"
+
+"You might tell him--perhaps."
+
+"What shall I tell him?" asked the girl, a trifle petulantly. "That we
+are going down to stay at Gleneira with the Macleods. That is really
+all there is to tell--as yet."
+
+"I know that, my dear; still--still it would be better if Jack did not
+follow you about so much."
+
+"Of course, it would be better, and I have told him so often; I will
+tell him again, if you like, so don't be anxious, you good, pretty
+little mamma. I am very fond of Jack--he is a dear fellow--but I don't
+intend to marry him. I see quite well how foolish it would be for us
+both."
+
+Mrs. Woodward, as she watched the riders pass down the road, told
+herself that Alice was one in a thousand, and deserved to be happy, as
+no doubt she would be if she married Paul Macleod, who was so very
+nice-looking. This point of good looks was one upon which Mrs.
+Woodward laid great insistence, and it enabled her to spend the next
+hour or two in finishing a sentimental novel in which the lovers,
+after sternly rejecting the counsels of parents and guardians, were
+rewarded in the third volume with £50,000 a year and a baronetcy. For,
+like most mothers, poor Mrs. Woodward was sadly at sea on the
+matrimonial question. Its romantic side appealed to her fancy, its
+business side to her experience, since no woman can have done her duty
+in the married state for a quarter of a century without seeing that
+where personal pleasure has been the motive power in one point, sheer
+personal self-abnegation has been the motive in ten.
+
+Meanwhile the cousins, after cantering round the Row, had reined in
+their horses for a walk. Alice rode well, and the exercise had brought
+an unwonted animation to her appearance. Jack, on the other hand, was
+a tall, burly young fellow, a trifle over-dressed, but otherwise
+unobjectionable, looked his best, with a heartwhole admiration for his
+companion on his honest face. What a pretty couple they would make,
+thought an old spinster, taking her constitutional in Kensington
+Gardens, and began straightway to dream of a certain hunt ball where
+someone had danced with her five times before supper. How many times
+afterwards she had never had to confess, even to her twin sister;
+thanks to the extras, which, of course, need not count. And yet
+nothing had come of it! And just as she got so far in her
+reminiscences Alice was saying to Jack pleasantly, "I shall miss these
+rides of ours, Jack, shan't you?"
+
+"Why should you miss them?" he asked anxiously, for there was a
+superior wisdom in her tone which he knew and dreaded. "I'm going down
+to Heddingford when you go. We can ride there."
+
+"But we are going to Scotland first; didn't mamma tell you? We are to
+stay with Captain Macleod."
+
+Poor Jack's heart gave a great throb of pain.
+
+"Macleod?" he echoed, "that is the tall, handsome fellow, isn't it,
+who used to hang round you before I came up from the works?"
+
+This allusion to Paul's good looks was unfortunate, since Jack's were
+not improved by the sudden flush which crimsoned even his ears.
+
+"I don't know what you mean by hanging round," retorted the girl,
+quickly. "It is a very vulgar expression."
+
+This again was unwise, for Jack, knowing his strong point was not
+refinement, felt instantly superior to such trivialities, and took the
+upper hand.
+
+"Call it what you like, Ally. You know perfectly well what I mean, and
+what he meant, too."
+
+There was no denying it, and, after all, why should it be denied? Had
+she not a right to have other lovers besides Jack?
+
+"Let us come for another canter," she said, in the tone of voice which
+an elder sister might have used to a troublesome little brother, who
+required to be coaxed out of ill humour. "There is no use being cross
+about it, you know."
+
+She went a little too far, and roused him into laying his hand on her
+rein, abruptly. And the action startled her, for she hated any display
+of emotion, being, in truth, totally unaccustomed to it.
+
+"Not yet, Ally! I want to have this out first. It is time I did. And
+yet I don't know how to begin; perhaps because it never had a
+beginning. I've always cared for you--you know that. Ever since----"
+the young man's eyes grew moist suddenly over some childish
+recollection, and then an almost savage look came to his face. "And
+you--you cared. I'm sure you cared----"
+
+Some people have the knack of saying the wrong thing, and in this case
+poor Jack Woodward gave his mistress a handle both to her pride and
+her prudence.
+
+"Care," she echoed, in a patronising tone. "Of course, Jack, I cared.
+I cared for you very much, and I care for you now. So much so that I
+am not going to let you be foolish any more. We didn't understand what
+things really meant in those old days----"
+
+"You don't understand now," he broke in hotly.
+
+"Don't I," she continued; "perhaps I don't, for I don't really see
+what there is to make such a fuss about. And it is very selfish----"
+
+"Do you mean to say that it is selfish of me to love you?" he cried.
+"Selfish to----"
+
+She interrupted him again with the same facile wisdom.
+
+"Very selfish, if we stand in each other's way. And, after all, Jack,
+what we both need to make life really successful is something we
+have neither of us got. We are only soap-boilers, you know, and
+society----"
+
+"Society!" he echoed sternly. "What has society to do with it? I
+didn't think you were so worldly."
+
+"I am not worldly," she retorted, in quite an aggrieved tone; "unless,
+indeed, it is worldly to be sensible, to think of you as well as of
+myself--to be unselfish and straightforward."
+
+"Straightforward! What, do you call it straightforward to let me hang
+round you as I have done?"
+
+"Really, Jack, you are _impayable_ with your hangings round! Can you
+not find a less objectionable phrase?"
+
+She was fencing with him, and he saw it, saw it and resented it with
+the almost coarse resentment of a nature stronger and yet less
+obstinate than hers.
+
+"Yes, if you like. I'll say you have played fast and loose with me--as
+you have. You have known for years that I cared for you, and that I
+intended to marry you. And when a girl allows that sort of thing to go
+on without a word, and doesn't mean it, I say she is a flirt--a
+heartless flirt, and I have nothing more to do with her."
+
+He turned his horse as he spoke, and without another word rode off,
+leaving her to go home with the groom. Inexcusable violence, no doubt.
+Alice told herself so again and again in the vain effort to get rid of
+a certain surprised remorse, for the girl was emphatically a moral
+coward, and any display of high-handed resentment, so far from rousing
+her opposition, invariably made her doubtful of her own wisdom. She
+hated scenes most cordially, hated, above all things, to have
+opprobrious epithets hurled at her; for she clung with almost piteous
+tenacity to her own virtue. It was too hard, too unkind of Jack to
+blame her, and yet despite this, his condemnation seemed to dim that
+lodestar of her firmament--common sense. After all, if he liked her,
+why should they not marry? Why should such devotion be sacrificed to
+the Moloch of position? In truth, as she thought over the incident, an
+odd mixture of anger and regret came to upset her usual placidity, so
+that, much to her own surprise, she broke down helplessly into tears
+over her mother's conventional inquiry as to how she had enjoyed her
+ride. Nor could she find any reason for this unwonted emotion, beyond
+the fact that Jack had been brutal and called her a flirt, and had
+ridden away, declaring that he would have nothing more to say to her.
+That such would be the case Mrs. Woodward, as she administered sal
+volatile and talked about the trying heat, felt was most devoutly to
+be wished; but a long course of three volume novels warned her of the
+danger of trusting to the permanence of lovers' quarrels. So after her
+daughter had been provided with darkness and eau-de-cologne, and a
+variety of other feminine remedies against the evil effects of
+emotion, she went off to her own sitting-room to consider the position
+by the light of her five-and-forty years of human experience. To begin
+with, the girl's feelings were clearly more deeply implicated than
+she, or for the matter of that Alice herself, had imagined. The
+question, therefore, came uppermost whether this fact ought to be
+admitted or deprecated; whether in short this evident dislike to
+giving her cousin pain was the result of a romantic attachment or
+simply the natural kindliness of a girl for a young fellow she had
+known from infancy. Now the cogitations of mothers over their
+daughters' matrimonial prospects are always fair game for both
+moralist and novelist. For some mysterious reason the least display of
+prudence is considered worldly; yet, on the face of it, a woman who
+has had, say, five-and-twenty years of married life cannot possibly
+fail to see how much of her own life has been made or marred by
+influences which she never considered in accepting Dick, Tom, or
+Harry. In nine cases out of ten it is the remembrance of her own
+ignorance which makes her espouse the cause of the lover who can bring
+the greatest number of chances for content. And it is idle to deny,
+for instance, that a girl marrying into a family which will welcome
+her is far less likely to quarrel with her husband than one who is
+looked on askance by her mother-in-law. There is, in sober truth, an
+immense deal to be said in favour of the French theory which holds
+that given a favourable nidus, and kindly atmosphere, the germ of
+happiness is more likely to grow into a goodly tree, and bear fruit a
+thousandfold, than when it is planted in a hurry by two inexperienced
+gardeners in the first pot which they fancy in the great Mart. Owing,
+however, to our somewhat startling views as to the sanctity of the
+romantic passion over the claims of duty towards oneself and others,
+these minor considerations are considered mercenary to the last
+degree, and the mother who is courageous enough to confess them openly
+is held up to obloquy. Why, it is difficult to say, since none of us
+really believe in the popular theory. It will not hold water for an
+instant when put to the practical test of experience; even if we leave
+out of consideration the fact that fully one-half of the people one
+meets have never felt, and have never felt the desire to feel, an
+absorbing passion.
+
+Mrs. Woodward, for instance, had not; moreover she had brought Alice
+up from the cradle to share her views of life, and had never once
+found her way barred by any bias towards a more passionate outlook. In
+fact, she was, in her mother's estimate, the very last girl in the
+world to find sentiment soothing. On the contrary, it distressed her,
+made her cry, necessitated her lying down with smelling-salts and a
+hot-bottle. Then above all things she loved a certain refined
+distinction and exclusiveness. Even as a child she had held her head
+high in the soap-boiling connection, and though she would no doubt be
+very fairly happy with Jack, the Macleod family was distinctly more
+suitable. The question, therefore, soon resolved itself, not into
+whether the outworks of the girl's placidity should be defended, but
+how this could best be effected. How in short Jack could be prevented
+from posing as a martyr; for Mrs. Woodward was sharp enough to see
+that, at present at any rate, the danger lay entirely in her
+daughter's remorse.
+
+"It was very unkind of Jack I must say," she commented skilfully on
+the story which Alice unfolded to her after a time; "but you mustn't
+be hard on him, my dear. Men never have so much self-control as we
+have, and no doubt the knowledge that you were right vexed him. They
+get over these little rebuffs very quickly."
+
+"It--it seemed to hurt him though--and I hate--all that sort of
+thing," murmured the girl doubtfully, looking as if she were going to
+cry again.
+
+"And it hurts you apparently, though you know quite well that you only
+did your duty."
+
+"I suppose so," remarked Alice, still more doubtfully; "only I wish he
+hadn't been so unreasonable."
+
+"So do I; but in these cases the girl always has to have sense for
+both. Besides Jack has a vile temper. But it is soon over. You will
+see that he will come to dinner as usual--it is the opera night, and
+he wouldn't miss that for anything--not even for you, my dear."
+
+Alice smiled a watery smile, and said she did not think it meant so
+little to him as all that; but Mrs. Woodward maintained her position,
+having, in fact, some grounds for her belief, owing to the despatch of
+a certain little note which she had sent off before coming in to
+console Alice, and which ran thus:--
+
+
+"Dear Jack,--Alice tells me you were very much put about to-day
+regarding our visit to Scotland; why, I can scarcely understand. Dear
+boy, if only for your own sake--since you can scarcely wish to quarrel
+with her, or us--do try and keep that temper of yours a little more
+under control. The poor girl came home crying, and I really cannot
+allow you to go out with her again if you are so inconsiderate. You
+ought to know quite well how sensitive she is, so for goodness' sake
+don't let this stupid misunderstanding disturb us all.--Your
+affectionate Aunt,
+
+                                  "Sophia Woodward."
+
+P.S.--"We dine earlier to-day, as Alice wants to be in time for the
+overture, 'Tannhauser.'"
+
+
+A note which meant all or nothing according to the wishes of the
+reader. In this case it meant all, for Jack, returning to his rooms
+after a disastrous attempt to begin his future rôle in life by playing
+whist with the old fogies at his club, was feeling that life, even as
+a misogynist, was unendurable, when the sight of his aunt's
+handwriting made his heart beat. The note was not in the least what he
+had expected to receive, and made him somehow feel as if he had
+grossly exaggerated the necessity for grief.
+
+"Aunt Soph is on my side, anyhow," said the young man, with a certain
+elation, "and I was a brute, I'm afraid."
+
+The result being, that before Alice, who had been spending the
+afternoon with Paul Macleod's sister, Lady George Temple, had returned
+from her drive, Jack, with a big gardenia in his coat, was ushered
+into the drawing-room, where his aunt, in satin and diamonds, was
+skimming through the last few pages of another novel which had to be
+returned to the library that evening.
+
+"Good boy!" she said, smiling. "Now, I hope you won't spoil Alice's
+pleasure to-night by even alluding to your rudeness."
+
+Jack looked a little aghast. "But, Aunt Sophia, I must beg her
+pardon."
+
+"Then you had better do it at once," replied Mrs. Woodward, "and get
+it over. For there she is at the door. You can run downstairs and meet
+her, for she will have to go up to dress at once. She is late as it
+is."
+
+Begging your mistress's pardon on the way upstairs, before the eyes of
+a butler and a footman, was not quite what Jack had pictured to
+himself; but it was better than nothing, and Alice's unfeigned look of
+relief at seeing him could not be mistaken.
+
+Mrs. Woodward slept soundly that night, feeling that she had done a
+good day's work, and steered the bark of her daughter's happiness out
+of a great danger. And happiness to her philosophy meant much, since
+virtue was so very much easier of attainment when life went smoothly.
+This was partly the reason why she did not detail the past danger to
+her husband after the manner of some wives, who love to chase sleep
+from their good man's eyes by breaking in upon the delicious
+drowsiness of the first ten minutes in bed by perfectly needless
+revelations of past woe.
+
+The tie, in fact, between these two whose night-capped heads reposed
+side by side, was a curious one if absolutely commonplace. It
+consisted of a vast amount of mutual respect for each other's position
+as husband or wife, a solid foundation of placid affection, and no
+confidence. For instance, Mrs. Woodward knew considerably more about
+her son Sam Woodward's debts than his father did, to say nothing of
+minor points in the matter of household management; but then at least
+two-thirds of Mr. Woodward's life was absolutely unknown to the wife
+of his bosom. He breakfasted and dined at home on week days, and on
+Sundays he added lunch to the other meals; what is more, he never
+deserted her for the club on the occasion of "At Homes." But of his
+life between 10 A.M. and 7 P.M. she knew nothing, except that he
+lunched at a bar in the City. So far as this went, he was to her
+exactly what he was to the outside world; that is to say, Mr.
+Woodward, the lucky financier, whose name meant money. Even the
+success or failure of the companies which she saw advertised with his
+name as director did not interest her, for she knew by experience that
+money and to spare was always forthcoming. And to tell the truth, Mr.
+Woodward was a singularly lucky man. When the smash came to the
+company "For Preserving the North American Indian from Total
+Extinction by Supplying him with a Sparkling Beverage, Exhilarating
+but non-Alcoholic, to take the Place of the Deleterious Fire Water,"
+he had happened to sell his last remaining share the day before; and
+even when the scheme for supplying hard-boiled eggs to the settlers in
+Africa failed, it did not affect the home supply at all. And yet Mr.
+Woodward's character as a business man stood above suspicion, and the
+worst that had ever been said of him was that he could sail a point or
+two nearer to the wind with safety than most men.
+
+So that night he also slept the sleep of the just, undisturbed by the
+thoughts of Jack's temerity. Even if he had known of it, it is to be
+feared that he would have set the question aside with the mental
+verdict that it was clearly the business of the girl's mother to see
+to such things. Poor mothers! who as they look at the bald head on the
+pillow beside their own cannot but feel, even while they would not now
+part with it for all the world, that life would have been less
+disappointing if circumstances had been more kind.
+
+As for Alice herself, she slept peacefully also, the doubt which poor
+Jack's pain had raised in her gentle mind having been allayed by his
+prompt submission. And Jack snored--positively snored; for he was
+rather fatigued with his own excitement, being of the sort which takes
+most things not so much keenly as heavily. To tell the truth, also,
+his determination to marry his cousin was so fixed that the greater
+part of his pain had been sheer inability to grasp the idea of denial;
+so that he reverted gladly to the old position without asking
+questions as a less tenacious man might have done.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+Lord George Temple sate moodily in the armchair of his study in his
+little house in Mayfair chewing the end of a cigar and looking
+disconsolately at a tray of whiskey and water and a plate of oval thin
+Captain's biscuits on the table. He was a red-haired smooth-faced man
+with rather a long upper lip, and a good-natured, somewhat whimsical
+expression.
+
+"It is a confounded shame!" he said to his wife, who, with an opera
+cloak slipping from her pretty bare shoulders, was resting for a
+moment before going upstairs to bed. "Graham gives his cook
+twenty-five pounds a year--I heard her telling you so one day when she
+was wanting a new one--and yet there wasn't a thing fit to eat on the
+table----"
+
+"Well, I don't know," put in Lady George, absently; "I think those
+stuffed larks came from Mirobolants. I saw that style of decoration in
+his place the other day, and I'm quite sure the iced soufflé was
+Bombardi's; I know the shape."
+
+"Exactly what I said!" continued the husband, "not a thing fit for a
+gouty man to eat at the table, and yet a woman on twenty-five pounds
+ought to be up to roast chicken and a rice pudding."
+
+Blanche Temple looked at her spouse with the compassionate air of
+tolerance which she invariably extended to his views.
+
+"But you can't give your friends roast chicken and rice pudding; you
+can't, indeed, nowadays. People wouldn't come."
+
+"My dear girl," interrupted Lord George, obstinately, "there were four
+men at the table who, like myself, partook of soup, fish, and cheese
+straws. And one poor beggar didn't even have the soup." The thought
+was apparently comforting, for he began more contentedly on a biscuit.
+But his wife was now interested in the subject. Most things interested
+her, either to affirmation or denial, for Paul Macleod's sister was a
+very clever woman, if at the same time curiously conventional.
+
+"Well! I don't know who eats the things, then," she said, aggrievedly.
+"Why, the last time we had a dinner-party--I mean when the Woodwards
+were here--I'm sure Paul ought to be infinitely obliged to me for the
+trouble I take--the cook who came in used pounds on pounds of stock
+meat, and quarts on quarts of cream; to say nothing of a whole bottle
+of whiskey. 'You had better give it her, my lady,' said Jane, 'for
+fear as the dinner might 'ave no appearance.'"
+
+Among other unknown and despised talents which did not suit Lady
+George's theory of her own rôle in life was a distinct turn for
+mimicry. Her admirable impersonation of Jane, therefore, made her
+husband burst out laughing; since by a whimsical perversion of affairs
+he loved his wife dearly for the very qualities which she feigned not
+to possess. For Blanche was essentially a theatrical woman, loving to
+pose in all the relations of life, her present one being that of a
+dutiful sister. On Paul's return from India she had not only hastened
+to impress on him the absolute necessity for his marrying an heiress
+if he wished to keep Gleneira in the family, but had also introduced
+him to Alice Woodward, as a girl who would suit the part admirably.
+For Lady George knew her brother's foibles thoroughly, and understood
+that if he married for money, the bride must be a person who would
+neither offend his refinement, nor require much display of affection;
+since Paul would certainly never give himself away by pretending a
+depth of sentiment he did not feel, and yet would not marry without
+something of the sort. That she felt was the worst of him. _Au fond_
+he was absolutely truthful to himself.
+
+"Of course you could sell if you liked," she had said to him
+skilfully, well knowing that the very thought was utterly repugnant;
+"trade is always ready to buy a Highland property. The only
+alternative is to marry a girl with money. I know one, pretty,
+lady-like, refined; a girl of whom you would be very fond if she were
+your wife. Her father is a speculator. Not quite so safe, of course,
+as a solid business--buttons or tallow--though, by the way, he has
+something to do with soap. Still, these Woodwards are quite
+presentable, and _Monsieur le père_ has his wits about him. And then
+you know there are always settlements, and deeds of gift, and those
+sort of things which creditors make such a fuss about."
+
+Her brother winced visibly. "I should prefer not to have a row with
+anybody else's creditors," he said shortly. "_I_ shall have enough
+apparently to do in keeping my own quiet. England is a terribly
+expensive place to live in."
+
+"London, you mean," retorted his sister, gaily. "You can always go
+down to Gleneira and vegetate."
+
+That had been at the beginning of the season, and now Paul had gone
+down, not to vegetate, but to prepare the old place for the visit of
+inspection; not without a certain resentful irritation at the
+necessity for it. Though at the same time it put the affair on an
+easier footing for the present.
+
+Afterwards, however, Paul had every intention of imparting sentiment
+into the transaction, if it could be done; and he knew himself to have
+a vast capacity for falling in love, after the approved romantic
+fashion, with any pretty girl who was willing to let him make love to
+her. So his sister, bewailing the pounds of stock meat and quarts of
+cream expended on his behalf, yet felt that she had been successful;
+but, then, she would hardly have recognised herself if she had not
+been so, since in her own little world, which she carefully avoided
+extending unwisely either upwards or downwards, Lady George Temple was
+always cited as a success in all the rôles which she felt called upon
+to play.
+
+"I heard from Paul to-day, by the way," she said, as she gathered up
+her gloves and fan. "He wants me to go and call on that Mrs. Vane. You
+remember who I mean, of course?"
+
+"No, I don't," replied Lord George, relapsing into moodiness over the
+biscuits.
+
+"You never do remember what I mean, dear! But she is the Colonel's
+wife, who nursed Paul when he nearly died in India. Of course they do
+it very often, I know, and it is more confusing than sending for a
+woman whom you can pay and get rid of afterwards. Still, she really
+did save his life--under Providence, of course--at least, Paul always
+said so. Well, her husband, who, I believe, drank, or did something,
+died two years ago, leaving her dreadfully off, so she went to live
+with somebody--an uncle or an aunt, who, I fancy, must have left her
+some money, for she has just taken a house somewhere in Chelsea. And
+Paul, who hasn't seen her since those old days, has asked her to
+Gleneira, and wants me to make her acquaintance first. Rather a bore,
+for I wish to have a particularly pleasant party, and she will most
+likely be an old frump."
+
+"Scarcely, my dear, if she nursed your brother, and he survived,"
+remarked Lord George, gravely.
+
+His wife frowned. "How can you be so absurd, dear; she must be quite
+old, for Paul wrote she was a perfect mother to him, and that is quite
+six years ago."
+
+Lord George's eyes twinkled again. "My dear Blanche, you and Paul have
+exaggerated notions on the subject of a mother's----" He paused, at a
+rattle on the door-handle, and looked apprehensively at his wife. The
+next instant two charming little figures in frilled white nightgowns
+burst into the room, and flinging themselves into their mother's arms
+began to cover her with kisses. The daintiest little creatures, a boy
+and a girl, with angelic faces and shrill, excited, happy, little
+voices.
+
+"Oh, you bad children!" cried Blanche, without a trace of vexation.
+"So you wanted to see mother, did you? And now you have seen her, off
+to bed with you before Nannie comes after you, there's dear ones!
+Quick! or she will be coming."
+
+"Quick, Adam! Quick, Evie!" echoed the happy voices excitedly, in a
+rush to the open door, which ended in a sudden pull up, and a still
+more excited cry. "Oh, mammy! Oh, daddy! here's Blazes comin' down the
+stairs."
+
+Lord George's face lost its apprehensiveness in resignation. Yet, as
+he settled himself back in his chair, his long upper lip betrayed a
+disposition to smile, for Blasius, his youngest son, was apt to amuse
+him. A very different child this, short, squat, and red-haired, who,
+after sundry thumpings and bumpings outside, suggestive of falls,
+appeared, rubbing his eyes sleepily, at the door; then the broad,
+good-natured face expanded into a grin. "_Bickys'!_" he said,
+laconically, as he toddled across to the tray.
+
+"Oh! what a welly greedy little boy, ain't he, Evie?" said Adam. "We
+come to see our darlin' mummie, didn't we, duckums?" He was at her
+side for a swift caress, and back again to stand expectantly beside
+his sister, whose little dancing feet were keeping time to her nodding
+golden head. As pretty a picture of light-hearted innocent enjoyment
+as heart could desire, even at eleven o'clock at night!
+
+"Give him a biscuit, do, and let him go," said Lady George, hurriedly.
+"It won't hurt him, they are quite plain. Dada will give you a
+biscuit, Blasius, and then you can go back to bed, like a dear, can't
+you?"
+
+Blasius' large, round, blue eyes assumed a look of vacuity as the
+sentence proceeded; but as he stood sturdily on his little bare feet
+beside his father both little chubby hands went out at once, and a
+singularly full voice for so young a child gave out conglomerately:--
+
+"Blathe's--'ll--take two, ta."
+
+Lord George shot a glance at his wife and complied; while from the
+door came a little whisper, intended to be one of horror. "Oh, Addie!
+ain't he a welly greedy little boy?"
+
+"And now Blasius will go to bed like a good boy, with his good little
+brother and sister," remarked Lady George, with forced optimism. "Adam
+and----" Her voice failed before a soft thud as Blasius sat down
+solidly, and stuck his little bare feet beyond his little white
+nightgown.
+
+"Mummie can go, Blazeth'll stay with dada--ta."
+
+Those two at the door stood bolt upright, with sidelong looks of pious
+horror at each other--
+
+"Oh, Evie!   \
+              >  Ain't he a weally naughty little boy?"
+"Oh, Addle!  /
+
+"Blasius _must_ go to bed," began his mother, quite firmly,
+"or--or--mummie will be very much grieved. Her little boy wouldn't
+like to grieve his mummie, would he?"
+
+Lord George, who had looked hopeful at the decision of tone, sank back
+in his chair and twiddled his thumbs.
+
+"You had better ring for nurse at once, Blanche. It always comes to
+that in the end, and the child will get cold."
+
+His wife frowned. Her theories had been so successful with Adam and
+Eve that the necessity for reverting to the _vi et armis_ with this
+baby was grievous. She sate down beside him on the floor, and began in
+mellifluous tones.
+
+"Listen, Blasius. Mummie wants her little Blasius to do something to
+please her; she wants him to do something very much----" She got no
+further, being gagged by a little soft hand and a very hard biscuit
+together.
+
+"Blazeth's not a deedy 'ickle boy. Blazeth'll give poor 'ickle mummie
+hith bicky, and be a dood 'ickle boy. Then daddy'll gif him anofer."
+
+Little chortles of intense enjoyment came from those angelic faces at
+the door.
+
+"Go to bed, children; off with you at once," said their father,
+quickly, whereupon an obedient patter of bare feet fled up the stairs
+with an accompanying cackle of high, eager voices, busy over the pros
+and cons of Blasius versus authority.
+
+"Do you think she'll assuade him, Evie? I don't." "I think he ought to
+be smacked, I do." "I'd let him cry, it don't hurt a child to cry.
+Nanna's mother says it's good for the lungs." "And Blazes likes to
+cry, he does." "I say, Addie! how long will it be afore Duckum's
+mummie has to ring the bell?"
+
+The last wonder being faintly audible from the landing above, settled
+the business downstairs. Lord George rose and took the law into his
+own hands.
+
+"Oh, George!" cried his wife, reproachfully, "how can you expect to
+train up children in the way they should go if you are so impatient?
+If once I could have got Blasius to understand what was really
+required of him----"
+
+Here the advent of a big, stalwart figure in a wrapper, bearing a
+white shawl, brought such sudden comprehension to the stalwart little
+one, that the room for one brief moment resounded with yells. The next
+found the door closed upon them, and Lady George looked disconsolately
+at her husband, as she listened to the retreating struggles of her
+youngest born.
+
+"I cannot think what makes him so different from the others," she
+said, gloomily.
+
+"My dear," replied her husband, consolingly, "Cain came after Adam and
+Eve; perhaps the next will be Abel. Besides, Blasius was a risky name.
+I told you so at the time."
+
+"Saint Blasius was a very worthy man," retorted his spouse, hotly,
+"and, considering that you and the boy were both born on his day, I
+must say I think it quite natural that I should call my child George
+Blasius--or, let me see, was it Blasius George?"
+
+"It is a matter of no importance, my dear," replied her husband,
+drily. He did not remind his wife, nor did she choose to remember that
+at the time she had been playing the ultra ritualistic rôle. To tell
+the truth, she did not care to be brought face to face with her past
+impersonations, unless the fancy seized her to revert to them; when,
+at a moment's notice, she could resume the character as if she had
+never ceased to play it.
+
+So, the next day, with a view to making a suitable impression on
+Paul's widow, as she chose to call Mrs. Vane, she put on her most
+dowdy garments, and actually went in an omnibus down the King's-road.
+Thus far her environment suited her foregone conclusions, but, as she
+stood in the wide stretch down by the river, the brilliant sunshine
+streaming upon a very bright knocker and a very white door, a certain
+feeling of distrust crept over her. Nor was the darkened room into
+which she was ushered reassuring. The parquet floors were almost bare,
+the windows beneath the striped Venetian awnings were set wide open to
+a balcony wreathed with blossoming creepers, and hung with cages of
+singing birds. A scent of flowers was in the air, a coolness, an
+emptiness, and yet the first impression was one of ease and comfort.
+Not the room, this, of an old frump. And this was not an old frump
+rising from a cushioned lounge and coming forward like a white shadow
+in the half light.
+
+"How good of you to come!"
+
+Lady George, dazzled as she was by the change from the sunlight
+outside to the darkness within, yet saw enough to make her gasp. Lo!
+this little bit of a woman with syren written all over her from the
+tip of her dainty Parisian shoe to the crown of her fair, curly head,
+was Paul's widow. His mother, forsooth! A pretty mother, indeed!
+
+Having got so far as this, Blanche, being, amongst other things,
+somewhat of an artist, felt bound to admit that Violet Vane was very
+pretty indeed; so pretty that it was a pleasure to watch the piquant
+face, full of a quaint sort of humour and freshness, grow clear of the
+shadows. In this half light she looked younger, no doubt, than she
+really was; still, even in the garish day, Lady George felt
+instinctively that her charm would remain. In fact, she was not at
+all, no! not in the least, a suitable companion for Paul, when so much
+depended on his being reasonable.
+
+"I haven't seen your brother for years," came the sweet but rather
+thin voice. "It is so good of him to remember me. So more than good of
+him to ask me down to Gleneira that I mean to go, if only to ensure
+the kindness being credited to him. I wonder if he is much changed?"
+
+There was a certain challenge in the speech which Lady George was
+quick enough to recognise, and, as she recognised it, wondered if her
+own astonishment had been too palpable, as that in itself would be a
+mistake, so she replied deftly:
+
+"He is not changed in one thing--his gratitude to you. And I am
+grateful also, for Paul is very dear to me. The dearest fellow in the
+world, is he not?"
+
+It was a statement to which, in the language of poker, Mrs. Vane could
+hardly go one better, and therefore it left her, as it were, to an
+under-study of devotion.
+
+"He used to be very nice when I knew him; but, then, sick people are
+always nice; they are so much at one's mercy," said the little lady,
+airily. They were, in their way, admirable types of their kind, these
+two women; both artificial, yet with an artificiality which sprang
+from the head in the one case, from the heart in the other; for Mrs.
+Vane saw through herself, and Lady George did not.
+
+"So that is Paul's sister," said the former to herself as, on the way
+back to her lounge, after escorting her visitor in friendliest fashion
+to the stairs, she paused to take up a photograph case lying on the
+table. It contained Paul's portrait as he had been before the time
+when she had watched his fair head tossing restlessly on the pillow in
+that hot Indian room which nothing would cool. The memory of those
+dreary days and nights came back to her in a rush, making her,
+paradoxically, look years older, worn, haggard, and anxious. She
+seemed to be back in them; to hear the gathering cry of the jackals
+prowling past the open door, to see the flicker of the oil night-light
+gleam on the splintered ice, turning it for a brief second to
+diamonds, as she prepared it for the burning forehead above those
+bright, yet glazed eyes; and, more than all, she seemed to feel the
+old passionate protest against the possibility of his passing for ever
+out of her life joined to the fierce determination to save him to the
+uttermost. From what? from herself, perhaps. For Mrs. Vane had
+performed the most unselfish act of her life when she had laughed and
+scoffed at the devotion and gratitude of her patient. She had had
+many, she said, and they had always felt like that during some period
+of their convalescence. There was nothing for these sequelæ of jungle
+fever like three months' leave to the bears in Kashmir; and, if he
+liked, he might bring her home one of those little silk carpets for
+her sitting-room as a fee; she would prefer a carpet to anything else.
+And so Paul had come back with his unromantic offering, cured, as she
+had prophesied, of his feverishness, but not of his friendliness. That
+had lasted, despite a separation of years. And something else had
+lasted also, to judge by the look on Mrs. Vane's face as she stood
+with Paul's photograph in her hand.
+
+Lady George Temple took a cab home, and tried to regain a sense of
+lost importance by having the children down to tea. Paul had kept this
+thing secret from her; he had allowed her for years to speak kindly,
+effusively of the woman who had saved his life as if she were an old
+frump, when she was really--Blanche, being a person of sense, felt
+forced to acknowledge the truth--one of the most charming little
+creatures imaginable, with just that half-sympathetic, half-bantering
+manner which was so taking. And Paul, having done this, her own rôle
+of devoted sisterhood suffered thereby; so she fell back upon her
+motherhood.
+
+Thus, when her husband returned, he found the room littered with
+Kindergarten toys, while Adam was threading beads by the
+multiplication table, and Eve was busily engaged in marking the course
+of the River Congo in red back-stitching on a remarkably black
+continent of Africa, which was afterwards to do duty as a
+kettleholder. Blasius, meanwhile, having been so far beguiled into the
+Zeit-Geist as to consent to build a puff-puff out of some real
+terra-cotta bricks and columns which were intended for an
+architectural object lesson.
+
+"Oh, George!" began his wife, pausing with a lump of sugar in the
+tongs over his cup, "Paul's widow is dreadful; I don't know what I
+shall do with her."
+
+"Hand her over to me--I can generally manage to get on with people,"
+he said, watching the tongs greedily; for the question of sugar in his
+tea was the cause of much dispute between him and his wife. A slow
+smile came to her face as she replaced the lump.
+
+"No! my dear; it wouldn't be good for you," she said, coming back to
+the present, and then she frowned. "I cannot think what induced Paul
+to ask her just when so much depends on the Woodwards feeling
+themselves to be _the_ guests _par excellence_," she continued, after
+a brief but picturesque description of the offender. "And this woman
+is sure to sing, and play, and dance, and act. I saw it in her face."
+
+"Jolly sort of person to have in a country house, I should say,"
+remarked her husband, secretly impressed.
+
+"I knew _you_ would say that, George," put in his wife, resignedly.
+"Yes! she is just the sort of woman men love to dangle round."
+
+"Then ask someone to dangle. That will leave the coast clear for Paul
+and Miss Woodward."
+
+Lady George raised her eyebrows scornfully. "As if that would do any
+good! That sort of woman always insists on having the best men, and
+Paul looks that in most society; besides I don't feel called upon to
+pave the way to an heiress for anyone else but my brother. That is
+what it would come to. No! I cannot conceive why Paul should make
+things so--so much more difficult for himself."
+
+"Natural depravity, my dear," suggested her husband, helping himself
+on the sly to sugar. "There is such a thing--Hullo! what's that?"
+
+That was the sudden discovery on Blazes' part that an Ionic column,
+when used as an engine funnel, would, if hit violently with a good,
+squat Norman one, break off in the middle; a discovery which was
+followed by an outburst of that craze for destruction which healthy
+children display on the least provocation.
+
+"He--he is not a 'Kindergarten' child," remarked his mother,
+plaintively, when after a time the upstairs bell had once more been
+rung and the offender carried off shrieking amid awed whispers of
+intense enjoyment, about "welly welly naughty little boys" from Adam
+and Eve.
+
+"No, my dear, he isn't," assented Lord George, cheerfully. "Some of us
+are made that way; his uncle, for instance; but he isn't a fool, and
+he knows which side his bread is buttered; a fact which has a
+marvellous effect in keeping a man straight."
+
+"My dear George! what a terrible thing to say. It is a reversion to
+that fear of punishment----"
+
+"My dear! I should like a second cup of tea, and this time I think you
+might let me have a small lump of sugar--quite a small one."
+
+That evening Blanche wrote a long letter to her brother, which gave
+her some trouble to compose. In it she lavished endless praises on
+dear Mrs. Vane, who, to judge from her _looks_, must have had great
+_trouble_, and fully deserved dear, kind Paul's grateful remembrance
+of past services; which, by the way, she seemed to have extended to
+many other fortunate invalids. Altogether a most delightful woman, of
+_varied experiences_ if a trifle _manierée_; "though this," she added,
+"my dear Paul, is, I fear, a common fault with women who have been
+made much of _by many men_."
+
+As it so happened he read this remark at a small picnic party where
+Marjory, the only lady present, was dispensing tea to Will Cameron,
+himself, the Reverend James Gillespie, Father Macdonald, Mr. Wilson,
+and Donald Post, who had been waylaid on the road just above the
+little creek on the loch, where they had lit their fire, to say
+nothing of the minister's man holding the Manse dogcart until its
+occupants should choose to tear themselves away from temptation and
+proceed on their journey.
+
+"_Quid datur a Divis felice optatius hora?_" quoted the minister
+gallantly, as he set aside the girl's offer of another cup and rose to
+go, while little Father Macdonald, following his example, quoted a
+verse from Tasso to show that the memory of a pleasant hour might give
+even greater pleasure than the hour itself. Paul Macleod, watching
+them, and fully alive to the adoring look on the Reverend James's
+face, continuing, as it were the kindly affection of Will's, gave a
+short laugh as he tore up his letter and threw it into the embers of
+the dying fire.
+
+Marjory looked at him inquiringly.
+
+"Only something that seems singularly out of place with my present
+surroundings," he said in quick response; "but the world has a knack
+of seeming very far away when one is in Gleneira."
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+It was true. The more so because the heat-haze lingered, turning the
+hills which lay between the Glen and the world beyond it, into a pale
+blue, formless wall, which seemed somehow more of an arbitrary
+division than it would have done had the contours of each successive
+rise been clearly visible. The fierce sun beat down on the limestone
+rocks, giving a russet tinge even to their mosses, and Paul Macleod's
+useless rod lay in its case, since the river was reduced to a mere
+tinkle of clear water in a moraine of boulders. So he took to
+haymaking instead, partly because it suited his mood to play the rôle
+of country proprietor--for to a certain extent he shared his sister's
+dramatic temperament--and partly because Marjory always brought Will
+Cameron's tea into the fields. It was quite idyllic to watch her from
+afar, making it ready on the outskirts of a nut coppice or belt of
+firs, and then to see her stand out into the rolling, undulating waves
+of new cut grass which were creeping up the hillsides before the
+scythes, and call to them in her clear, young voice, for, of course,
+the laird could not be left out in the heat when his factor was
+enjoying the cool. So he used to lounge about as Will did in the
+scented hay, and talk nonsense, with infinite grace and skill, until,
+with the extinction of his pipe, the latter's tardy sense of duty
+would take fire, and he would insist on a return to work.
+
+On the whole, it was scarcely what Paul would have expected to amuse
+him, and yet, after ten years of a land where hay-fields are not, and
+it is unsafe to sit about for fear of snakes, it was strangely
+pleasant. And so delightfully innocent! This came home to him
+one night when, on going to his room, he saw his purse on the
+dressing-table, and remembered that for a whole week he had not opened
+it. The world had gone on as if there were no such thing in it as
+money. He mentioned the fact next day among the hay-cocks, declaring
+that if someone would only be responsible for his bills, he himself
+would never care to see a shilling again.
+
+"Not I," said Will, rather dolefully; "for I'm afraid, Gleneira, these
+masons and carpenters will cost a lot more than we fancied. It is
+always the way when one touches a place. I remember when Inveresta
+began he told me I wasn't to exceed a thousand, and before he was half
+way through his list of absolute necessaries, the figures had passed
+fifteen hundred. And yet I don't think it can be helped."
+
+He blew disconsolately at his pipe as if it were in fault, for he
+prided himself on managing the estates in his charge with strict
+economy, but Paul smiled indifferently.
+
+"My owner will be able to pay, I expect, when I get one. For when the
+worst comes to the worst, Miss Carmichael, I can always put myself up
+to auction. Do you think I should fetch a fair price? Item, one
+Highland estate, seriously damaged by the Crofter Commission, and an
+ancestral tree, ditto, by Darwinism. N.B.--Property encumbered by
+several mortgages and one extravagant proprietor." He lay back against
+a hay-cock with his hands behind his head, looking the personification
+of lazy content as he watched her face shift and change. "You don't
+seem to approve of my plan," he went on, in the same light tones, "but
+the idea has infinite charm for me; it would save so much trouble, and
+do so little harm. People sell themselves to the devil, we are told,
+and that may be reprehensible--at any rate, it would be uncomfortable.
+But what inconvenience or immorality can there be in making yourself
+over, soul and body, to some virtuous Christian man or woman who, in
+all probability, is far more capable of running the coach respectably
+than you are?"
+
+"The same immorality as there is in any other form of suicide, I
+suppose," she replied coldly; but he was not to be put off.
+
+"And what immorality is there in suicide, Miss Carmichael? I hold that
+my life is my own, unless I make over the responsibility of it to
+someone else, which you say is wrong. Therefore, I have a perfect
+right to do what I please with it."
+
+"Once you have overcome the initial difficulty of discovering what you
+do please," she retorted sharply. And he smiled.
+
+"You use a detective camera apparently, but I admit it. I am only
+certain of one thing, it pleases me to please myself. It pleases me
+now to forget that there is such a thing as money, and to go to bed at
+ten o'clock."
+
+"Which shows that you are virtuously inclined, and that,
+therefore----"
+
+"I refuse to be whitewashed by your charity," he interrupted. "I am of
+the earth, earthy; though sometimes I can lie on my back in the hay
+and see heaven opening----" His voice, with a sudden cadence in it,
+ceased as he sprang lightly to his feet.
+
+"Come along, Cameron--you are intolerably long over that pipe--my
+energy, Miss Carmichael, does not arise from Goodness, but from Greed.
+If the hay is not in tonight, it may rain; if it rains, the hay will
+be spoilt. If it is spoilt I shall have to buy more, and if I buy more
+I shall not have that shilling to spend on myself. It comes to that in
+the end, even in Arcadia."
+
+There were similar endings to many conversations in which Marjory
+tilted bravely at various objects, which, in her heart of hearts, she
+feared might be windmills. For she was never quite sure if he was in
+earnest or not, and even when he had palpably played the fool with her
+pet theories, or scouted a serious thought, a word, even a look, would
+come to redeem the past, and give a curious zest to the future. Yet in
+a way it distressed her also by confusing her clear-cut, unswerving
+outlook on life. A man even professing such atrocious sentiments ought
+to be unendurable, and this man was not. Far from it. And what was
+almost more disconcerting, he evidently understood her better than
+honest Will did; while, as for the Reverend James! the very thought
+made her laugh. Yet, on the whole, she welcomed a reasonable cause
+which, despite the holiday she had imposed on herself in obedience to
+Cousin Tom's wishes, came to make an absence from the hay-fields less
+marked, and a reversion to the young clergyman's company quite
+natural. This being nothing more or less than a visit from the Bishop,
+which, coming as it did in this holiday time, gave to the person who
+was ostensibly responsible for the pupils' duties towards their
+neighbours fearful anticipations of failure. For James Gillespie
+was one of those persons who cannot teach; well meaning, fairly
+well-educated, people who know the information they wish to impart and
+cannot impart it, people who, in a repetition, invariably prompt the
+wrong word, and send the hesitating memory hopelessly astray. And this
+was a question of repetition, since the Bishop never interfered with
+the secular teaching, which he left, with a Levite shake of the head,
+to the Government inspector. So Marjory, relieved she scarcely knew
+why, spent these afternoons in hammering the necessary precision into
+the children's heads while the Reverend James sate watching her
+rapturously and feeling that the whole parish, including himself,
+would have no excuse for not knowing its duty towards its neighbour if
+she were the clergyman's wife.
+
+And on the third day someone else seemed bitten with a desire to
+learn, for Captain Macleod strolled in lazily and sate down on the
+furthest bench, saying he had come to fetch the letters, and with her
+permission would await their arrival in the cool. Why his presence
+should have immediately aroused her to a resentful consciousness of
+the adoring expression on the face beside her, she did not understand,
+but the certainty and the uncertainty of it combined made her turn to
+her companion with an audible asperity of tone:
+
+"I really think, Mr. Gillespie, that you might try and get the little
+ones perfect in their hymn. You must remember that the last time the
+Bishop inspected he told the children that the youngest Christian
+should know one hymn, and the infants are not even perfect in the
+'Happy Land.'"
+
+To hear being to obey, Mr. Gillespie retired towards the post-office
+portion of the room where, with a semicircle of tiny bare-legged
+lassies and laddies before him, he sate beside Paul Macleod and began
+his task. It was rather a Herculean one, owing to the fact that his
+pupils having no English, as the phrase runs, the simple stanzas were
+to them mere gibberish.
+
+"It is three months they will be learnin' it, whatever," said Mr.
+McColl, cheerfully, when the last of the semicircle had failed
+hopelessly.
+
+"It is impossible, quite impossible," retorted Mr. Gillespie, in a
+white heat of anxiety. "Some of them must have picked up something in
+that case----"
+
+"'Deed, no, sir. Naethin's impossible with bairnies. And wee Paulie
+there has it fine, for he is at me to learn it on him many a time,
+because Miss Marjory was saying he would be a fool if he didn't. Speak
+up, Paulie," he added, in the Gaelic, "you have it fine."
+
+Wee Paulie hung his close-cropped fair head with its odd little fringe
+left over the forehead, so that nothing was to be seen but a rising
+flush, and murmured some half-inaudible words, whereat the biggest boy
+in Marjory's class said triumphantly:
+
+"He is saying that he will no be saying it to him, but to her."
+
+"Hush! Donald," came the quick, clear, dictatorial young voice; "that
+is not the way to speak. Stand down two places. Paul, come here."
+
+The big Paul, seated on the back bench, looked up and smiled, feeling
+it would be rather pleasant than otherwise to obey; and little Paul
+pattered shamefacedly across to the girl's side, yet with a confident
+air which raised the sleek head a little, and showed a pair of very
+long lashes on the flushed cheeks. As he edged close Marjory passed
+her arm round him, and with the other hand raised his chin square and
+straight.
+
+"Now, Paul, if you please," she said, in the Gaelic; "clasp your
+hands, and say it right out--to the whole school, remember. You know
+it quite well, and you should never, never pretend that you don't know
+when you do. It is mean."
+
+Big Paul, thinking that even reproof sounded pleasant in that voice,
+and, at any rate, must be bearable in that position, smiled again, and
+continued smiling unavoidably, as little Paul reeled off the whole
+hymn from beginning to end in confused, unintelligible fluency, broken
+only by hurried gasps for breath.
+
+"A pretty little fellow," said Captain Macleod, in an undertone to his
+neighbour. "Who is he?"
+
+"Old Peggy Duncan's grandson--Jeanie Duncan's child--you must remember
+her."
+
+The words seemed to jar the very foundations of happy, idle, careless
+content, and Paul, even in his surprise, felt aggrieved.
+
+"Of course I remember her; but they told me she was dead. Who did she
+marry?"
+
+The Reverend James Gillespie put on his most professional manner. "I'm
+afraid it is a very sad story, but no one really knows the facts of
+the case. She left home, as you may have heard----"
+
+"Yes! I have heard," put in Paul, suddenly, resentfully. "And I--I can
+understand the rest. It's a common enough story, in all conscience."
+
+"Too true, too true," began his companion, but the laird had risen,
+and, with a remark that he would wait outside for the tardy letters,
+left the schoolhouse. Apparently he tired even of that, for when
+Marjory, after lingering longer than was necessary over the
+arrangements for the morrow's inspection with Mr. Gillespie, came out
+with a half-annoyed expectation of finding the tall figure still
+lounging under the horse-chestnut tree, it had gone, rather to her
+surprise.
+
+Still, it would ensure her the solitary walk home which she loved;
+since really it was too much to expect her to devote a whole afternoon
+to the Reverend James who, curtly dismissed to a neglected parishioner
+up the Glen, watched her pass down the loch with wistful yet still
+admiring eyes until she disappeared behind a knoll of ash trees,
+hiding the bridge which carried the road to the other side of the
+river, and so down the seashore to Gleneira House and Lodge. A road
+which, beautiful at all times, was never so beautiful as in the
+sunsetting. There was one point, however, where its beauty seemed to
+culminate, where, after climbing a rocky knoll cushioned with bosses
+of bell-heather and the close oak scrub which springs from the roots
+of past cuttings, it dipped down to the very edge of the water. Here,
+on spring tides, the waves crept up to smooth away the wheel marks,
+and leave a scalloped fringe of seaweed on the turf beyond. And hence
+you could see straight through the cleft of the Narrowest, where the
+hills embosoming the upper portion of the loch sloped down into the
+gentler contours of the lower, right away to the Linnhe Loch, and so
+beyond the purple bluff of Mull to the wide Atlantic. On that evening
+the sun was setting into it in a golden glory, guiltless of a cloud.
+And Marjory, cresting the knoll, thought instantly that here, indeed,
+was a chance of the Green Ray. For ever since she had read Jules
+Verne's book the idea of this, the last legacy of a dying day, had
+remained with her fancifully. Many and many a time, half in jest, half
+in earnest, she had watched for it, wondering if she would feel
+different after she had seen it. If, in fairy-tale fashion, the world
+would seem the better for it. Even if the legend was no legend, and
+the phenomenon simply a natural one, due to refraction, there must be
+something exhilarating in seeing that which other people had not seen;
+in seeing the world transfigured, even for a second, for you, and you
+only. Unless, indeed, others were watching with you. And, then, what a
+strange tie that would be! To have seen something together that the
+rest of the world had not seen; something at which it would laugh, but
+which you knew to be true. The quaintness of the idea attracted her as
+she walked over the crisp shingle to sit on a rock close to the
+incoming tide. Out yonder on the far sea horizon it was a blaze of
+light, but closer in the loch showed like a golden network of ripples
+with ever-widening meshes enclosing the purple water till it ended, at
+her very feet, in a faint foam-edge. There was no sound save the
+blab-blabbing of the tiny wavelets on the rocks as they whispered to
+each other of the havoc they had done far out at sea, or met every now
+and again with a little tinkle of laughter to drown a stone.
+
+To Marjory, looking and listening so intently that consciousness
+seemed to leave eyes and ears, came a sudden dread, not for herself,
+but for others different from what she was.
+
+"Drowned--dead, drowned--drowned and cold--dead, dead, drowned!" Those
+whispering voices seemed to repeat it over and over again, as for the
+first time in her life she realised that others might not steer
+straight for the sun across the ocean of life, as she did,
+unswervingly. Of course, in a scholastic, unreal way she knew well
+that there were swift currents to betray, big loadstone rocks to make
+the compass waver, but till she had met Paul Macleod the possibility
+of anyone deliberately and wilfully weighting his log and depolarising
+his compass had not occurred to her. It is so, often, with those who,
+as she was, are almost overburdened with that mysterious outcome of
+past sacrifices, a sense of duty. But Paul, she recognised clearly,
+might steer straight for the rocks, though his knowledge of seamanship
+was equal to her own. On that point she would take no denial. It was
+her one solace against her own interest in him. But for it what scorn
+would be too great for the weakness of her tolerance for a handsome
+face, a soft voice, and the most engaging of manners. No! The
+charm--for there was undoubtedly a charm--lay elsewhere; in his
+considerateness, his quick sympathy. This did not come, as he averred,
+from a mere selfish desire to be liked, a mere selfish consideration
+for his own comfort. It might suit him to say so, to declare his
+disbelief in anything higher, to scoff, for instance, at the Green
+Ray. The girl's thoughts rebounded swiftly to their starting-point,
+and brought back sight to her dream-blinded eyes.
+
+Too late! Too late! The last outermost edge of the sun had dipped
+beneath the sea; the fateful moment was past, and with the little
+chill shudder of a breeze which had crept like a sigh over the water
+at the Death of Day, the little wavelets at her feet were whispering--
+
+"Drowned--dead--drowned! Who cares? Drowned! drowned! drowned!"
+
+She rose suddenly and stretched her hands out to the fast fading glow,
+as if in entreaty. But only for a second; the next the voice of
+someone coming up the opposite side of the knoll carolling a Gaelic
+song made her turn quickly to see Paul Macleod outlined against the
+blue of the hills as he paused on the summit to take breath and look
+up into the child's face above him with a smile; for little Paul was
+perched on his shoulder.
+
+The western glow, already leaving the earth, fell full on those two
+faces, and on the firm delicate hands, holding the child secure. It
+was like a St. Christopher, thought Marjory, with a pulse, almost of
+pain, at her heart. For it left her bereft of something; of something
+that had gone out irrevocably to be Paul's henceforth, even though the
+first glimpse of her standing below made him loosen his clasp almost
+roughly.
+
+"Is that you, Miss Carmichael?" he called, walking on to meet her;
+"I'm doing good Samaritan against the grain; but I found the little
+imp on the road. He had fallen from a rowan tree and sprained his
+ankle."
+
+She found it easier for some reason to speak to the child in reproof.
+"I've told you so often not to climb so recklessly," she said in
+Gaelic.
+
+"He was getting berries for you; there was a bunch half ripe at the
+very top; at least so he says," replied Captain Macleod in the same
+language, then at her look of surprise added a trifle bitterly--"you
+see I remember--we lairds don't often speak it--more's the pity--but I
+have an uncomfortable memory for the days of my youth."
+
+"It was very good of you," she began, when he cut her short.
+
+"It was least trouble to carry him. He was whimpering like a little
+cur at the river pool, so I elected to bring him along instead of
+going back half a mile to ask someone else to do it for me. His
+grandmother's cottage is just below the point there, isn't it? He can
+walk as far as that." As he spoke he swung the child to the ground
+lightly. "And you needn't look so fierce, Miss Carmichael; it won't
+hurt him."
+
+She took no notice of his remark, except to ask the child if he could
+manage.
+
+"If you speak in that tone of voice he will say 'no,' of course; but I
+assure you it is all right. I've tied it up tight, and it wasn't very
+bad to begin with."
+
+It had indeed been very neatly bandaged with a handkerchief torn into
+strips, and the sight softened her rising indignation. "Possibly, but
+it will be none the worse for being put in hot water. Come, Paulie,
+lean on me, and if it's bad I'll carry you----"
+
+Before she could finish, the child was back on his namesake's
+shoulder.
+
+"If you will show me the way down, I'll save you the trouble."
+
+The accent he laid deliberately on the pronoun took half the virtue
+from his action, and yet the certainty that he had purposely put it
+there showed her that he was alive to something else, and made her
+lead the way silently to the cottage; and, even when there, the
+remembrance of the St. Christopher picture joined to the unconscious
+Highland hospitality, which forbids an unsought parting on the
+threshold, made her ask if he would not come in and let old Peggy
+thank him for his kindness.
+
+"I doubt if she would," he replied curtly; "anyhow I won't risk it."
+
+Perhaps he exercised a wise discretion. Marjory herself was inclined
+to think so, in view of the old woman's general attitude towards the
+world.
+
+"Pickin' rowan berries, was he," she echoed wrathfully, turning as she
+so often did when angry to the broader Scotch of her youth; "they're
+the deil's ain beads for young folk--aye! I mind it was so in the
+beginning!" Her restless claw-like fingers busied themselves over the
+coverlid, and her restless eyes followed Marjory, who was attending to
+the sprained foot, which to say sooth was not a very serious matter.
+"And Mr. Paul hefted the wean, and wouldna' come in bye to say a word
+to the auld wife. That was real kind, or maybe it wasn't; but there!
+he never brocht luck to my hoose, an' he wouldn't raise a finger to
+do't. It's the way o' the warld, the way o' the warld."
+
+"That is not fair, Peggy," retorted the girl, roused as she always was
+by injustice. "The laird was speaking of you only the other day. He is
+much annoyed at your having been allowed to go on the roll, and
+said----"
+
+The old pauper's hands stopped their uncanny fingerings, and every
+line of the old face hardened.
+
+"If I choose to be on the pairish, I'll be on the pairish. It's better
+than Mr. Paul's charity, an' ye may just tell him sae frae old Peggy
+Duncan. I may be wrang, I may be richt, an' Him above only kens hoo it
+is, but I was no born on his land, and I'm no his poor."
+
+"All the kinder of him to offer help," persisted Marjory. "And you
+have no right, just because you are in an evil temper, to speak as if
+he had done you some wrong."
+
+"Wha says he did?--not I! D'ye think I soud be lyin' here wi' him oot
+ben if he had. Na! Na! Half deid as they are, my auld fingers wad be
+at his bonnie fause face." The very vigour of her own voice seemed to
+choke her, and she fell into a fit of coughing, then lay back
+exhausted into a more Christian frame of mind. "God guid us, Miss
+Marjory," she gasped, "but I'm jest an awfu' limmer whiles. If I was
+to be nippit awa' this nicht I ken fine whaur I'd wauken."
+
+"And quite right, too," replied her visitor, severely, recognising the
+half-apologetic tenor of the last remark, and, seizing the opportunity
+for a bit of her mind before old Peggy, with some sidelong sally,
+should escape deftly from the difficulty, after her wont.
+
+"Aye, aye! The tongue is an unruly member, and yet I bridle it whiles
+for fear o' findin' myself in the same mansion wi' the pairish
+officer. Eh! yon's an awfu' man, Miss Marjory, for sweerin', and I
+just couldna' thole him. So, if ye like, ye may give old Peggy
+Duncan's thanks to the laird, when you see him, for bringing the
+laddie hame. Maybe it was kind o' him."
+
+"It was kind of him, very kind," said the girl, stoutly, feeling dimly
+pleased to hear herself say so, and know that there could be no
+mistake about that. And yet she felt vexed when she found him waiting
+for her on the road when she came out into the darkening dusk.
+
+"I thought it was the proper thing to do," he replied, to her little
+stiff expression of regret that he should have troubled himself so
+far.
+
+"What was the proper thing?" she asked captiously. "I am quite
+accustomed to walking home in the dark."
+
+"Proper to act up to your opinion of me, and be self-sacrificing,
+perhaps." He paused, then said, suddenly, "Don't let us quarrel, Miss
+Carmichael; it is such a lovely evening."
+
+True a thousand-fold! True beyond measure! The light had left
+everything, save the sky and the sea as they walked on side by side
+silently.
+
+"How's the patient?" he said, at last, reverting somewhat to the old,
+airy, half-bantering tone.
+
+"Well; thanks to you. If he had walked home he might have been laid up
+for days."
+
+"I did as little as I could, I assure you."
+
+"On the contrary, you did more than was necessary. Paul told me how
+you comforted him, and sang songs all the way to cheer him up."
+
+She would not allow him this denial of his own virtues, or accept his
+estimate of himself.
+
+"That was to cheer myself up, and forget my dislike to carrying a
+dirty little boy, I expect. The study of one's own motives, Miss
+Carmichael----"
+
+He got no further, for she turned to him with a quick gesture of
+pained denial. "Don't--please don't. Why should you slander yourself?"
+
+Something in her tone roused a response in him for a moment, but the
+next he had smothered it in a sort of reckless desire to shock this
+girl with the intelligent, trustful eyes--to force her from her belief
+in him.
+
+"Slander," he echoed; "there is no slander, I assure you. What do you
+know about my life? Would it help you to understand my complicated
+state of mind about that boy, for instance, if I told you that I was
+once madly in love with his mother, and that I still think her the
+most beautiful woman I ever saw?"
+
+He had not intended this confidence; yet now he had given it, he did
+not regret the impulse, nor did he wonder at it, since the thought of
+that past idyll had been interfering so much with the present one
+during the afternoon, that he felt inclined to get rid of both once
+and for all.
+
+"I have always heard she was very beautiful," replied Marjory, slowly;
+"but, of course, I did not know----"
+
+He burst into a hard laugh. "That I fell in love with her! Really,
+Miss Carmichael, you are most disconcertingly cool!"
+
+"I was going to say," she put in, unmoved, "that I did not know she
+was the sort of person----"
+
+"I would fall in love with? Indeed! Perhaps, as you appear to have
+formed some sort of estimate as to the qualities likely to attract me,
+you might give me a hint or two. It might help me in the selection of
+a wife." He hardly knew what he was saying, for his temper had got the
+better of him; indeed, he did not care for the moment what he said,
+save that it should be something that would put an end to this
+confidence of hers. But he had reckoned without her absolute
+unconsciousness; what is more, without her fearlessness and high
+spirit.
+
+"I said nothing about a wife," she replied quietly. "Why should I? You
+were talking of love, and I knew that you had made up your mind to
+marry for money."
+
+"So I have; what then?"
+
+"Nothing, except this--that since you can set love aside so easily, I
+fail to see what effect the memory of a past one could have on your
+present life--that is all."
+
+He looked at her in the growing darkness, wishing that he could see
+her face more clearly; wishing still more keenly that he could see
+straight into her mind and satisfy himself that this calm indifference
+was simply cold-bloodedness. But what if it was something more? If
+here, at last, he had found that of which most men dream at times; the
+refuge from themselves. And when he spoke again his voice had changed
+its tone, though the bitterness remained in the words.
+
+"You make no allowance, then, for the power of a sentiment, especially
+when it is morbid and unhealthy. And yet such things mean more to most
+of us than right or wrong; because they are more human."
+
+There was a pause; then she turned to him with a smile, which he felt,
+more than saw.
+
+"I am afraid I don't understand what you mean."
+
+"Perhaps it is as well you do not," he replied; and changed the
+subject.
+
+But from that day their mutual attitude towards each other altered,
+perhaps unconsciously. To tell the truth, the remembrance of the St.
+Christopher rose up between her and Paul in his less admirable
+impersonations. All the more so, perhaps, because of his strange,
+impulsive confidence regarding his love for the boy's mother. He must
+have been quite a boy himself at the time, she thought; no older than
+she was now, and boys were so much younger than girls for their age.
+She felt vaguely sorry for that young Paul and his fruitless love; for
+Marjory, like most girls who have been much in contact with the poor,
+accepted the facts of life calmly, looking at them straight in the
+face, and calling them by their names fairly, ere she passed them by.
+And so no doubt of that past to which Paul had alluded so frankly ever
+crossed her mind. She felt, almost unconsciously, that he would not
+have spoken about it to her had there been any cause for such
+suspicion. So the only effect of his attempt to shock her was to bring
+into stronger relief her confidence in his gentlemanly instincts. And
+Paul, seeing this, metaphorically took off his shoes before the holy
+ground which she prepared for him, even while he fretted against the
+necessity imposed upon him by that better part of his nature, which,
+in environments like these, would have its say. And then, even as he
+discussed the matter with himself cynically, telling himself at one
+and the same time that she was not human enough to see, and that it
+would be cowardly to open her eyes, there would come with a rush a
+fierce resentment at all reason. This was holiday time, and it would
+soon be over for him. A week or two more and Gleneira would be full of
+London ways and London talk; it would be time enough then to remember
+the world, the flesh, and the devil.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+There was some excuse for his refusal to face a struggle, for in the
+sunshiny days which followed, Nature herself held high holiday, and
+the most prosaic might well have found it impossible to avoid falling
+in with her gracious mood. The heather-flush was beginning to creep
+over the curves of moor, the rowan berries ripened under the sun's
+kiss, the juicy _guienne_ cherries purpled the children's mouths, and
+the oat fields hid their poverty in a cloak of golden marigold. Down
+in the shady nooks the stately foxgloves still lingered, while on the
+sunniest spots the bracken was gathering the sun-gold into its
+delicate tracery against the coming gloom of winter. Such times come
+rarely; times when it is possible to forget the world of toil and
+trouble, of sin, sorrow, and shame, which lies beyond the circle of
+the everlasting hills; times when one is content to let life slip
+past, without counting its pulse-beat; times when one seems to enter
+in spirit with that divine rest, because the whole world seems good in
+our eyes.
+
+Paul, dulled as he was by world-tarnish, felt the charm; Marjory,
+fresh from her sober youth, yielded to it gladly. Will Cameron, with
+the hay safe housed and harvest secure in the future, said the weather
+was too good for farming, and gave himself a holiday, and even Mr.
+Gillespie, free from inspection anxieties, and rejoicing in the
+Bishop's praise, fell back for a while on college sermons, and studied
+future ones in stones and running brooks. Only Mrs. Cameron, despising
+the heat, bustled from kitchen to store-room, from store-room to
+dairy, indignant over the irregular meals, and the still more
+irregular milk. It was enough, she said, to turn that of human
+kindness sour to have charge of five Ayrshires and two Jerseys in such
+weather, with an English cook coming, or a Frenchman maybe--the laird
+was equal to that iniquity--who would use crocks on crocks of powdered
+butter. She knew them! graceless, godless creatures, and Will, instead
+of wandering like a tinkler about the place, should be at the markets
+buying pigs, to eat up the sinful waste of good victuals which would
+begin ere long at the Big House. It was very well of William to smile,
+and for the laird to say he didn't mind; but what would Lady George
+say to the cook? And how did William expect to supply the Big House as
+it should be supplied, when every crofter body was asking one and
+eightpence a pound for butter she wouldn't look at? And it all
+trysted, every pound of it, to the English folk over at the Forest,
+who were coming down like a flight of locusts, devouring the land with
+pipers and bad whiskey, and a set of idle, pasty-faced, meat-eating
+English maids, ruining the country side with bad examples! There would
+have to be a judgment, nothing less, when Sheenach--barefooted
+Sheenach from the blackest hut on the property--Marjory would
+mind it, seeing that she held it to be a disgrace to a Christian
+landholder--set her up for new-fangled notions indeed!--had actually
+spoken to her, Mrs. Cameron, about beer-money! The kitchen girl over
+at the Forest, forsooth, got it, and three shillings a week for
+washings. Heard one ever the like! a barefoot lass that had not spent
+three shillings on washings since she was born, and would have to look
+to it for white robes in the future. And Mistress Mackenzie at the
+ferry house saying calmly that her prices would be doubled from the
+10th August.
+
+"It is too true, mother," Will would say consolingly. "I'd like to see
+the Commission have its way, and destroy the Forests altogether, if
+only to teach the people what it would mean. But there! parcel post is
+only twopence a pound, and we can get butter from Devonshire. They pay
+high rents there, you know, so they can afford to sell produce
+cheaper." But even this paradox would not soothe the old lady's ire,
+and the three idlers would escape from the butter-problem into the
+wilderness of beauty beyond the fat pastures which fed the dairy; in
+so doing, no doubt, following the example of the offending English
+folk, who do not care to trouble their holiday with thoughts of the
+dishonesty and greed they foster and encourage.
+
+Many a tramp had these three over hill and dale. Sometimes climbing
+the boulder-strewn heights whence sea and land showed like a map; more
+often lingering by the river lazily, as it made its way through the
+grassy uplands in a series of foamy leaps and oily pauses. For here
+the sea-trout were to be beguiled by patience; if not by that, then by
+the red-tailed fly which Will used with the consummate skill of the
+real pot-fisher. Paul, on the other hand, beset by lingering
+prejudice, would lounge on the bank intermittently, offering the rod
+to Marjory in order to bring him luck; while she, engaged in
+collecting a perfect herbarium, would deprecate her own past skill in
+the Long Pool.
+
+"And the admirable underhand cast was a chance also?" he retorted
+drily. "Really, Miss Carmichael, my modesty is catching."
+
+Marjory laughed. "Oh, no! I learnt that from Will. I never could make
+out whither he went on Sundays, till one day I came upon him in that
+little strip of pasture in the middle of the larch plantation,
+flicking at dandelions with his ten-foot rod. Then he confessed that
+it was his usual occupation of a Sabbath afternoon, because it was so
+deadly dull with nothing to do at home. So after that I flicked, too.
+We used to do it against each other for hours, didn't we, Will?"
+
+"Ten for a dandie, twenty for a daisy, fifty for a bumble-bee,"
+murmured Will from under his tilted hat, as he lay on the grass.
+
+"An instance of the deceit which the irrational worship of the Sabbath
+is apt to produce," remarked the Reverend James Gillespie, whose
+conscience invariably assailed him when he had not made a professional
+remark for some time.
+
+"It is so refreshing to hear you accuse Miss Carmichael," said Paul,
+gravely. "Deceit is a mortal sin, isn't it, Mr. Gillespie?"
+
+The Reverend James hesitated. He looked sorely out of place amid the
+wilderness in his black garments, with Paul in his loose Indian suits,
+and Will guiltless of coat and waistcoat.
+
+"Deceit, cheating--whoever doth wickedly, etc.--generally comes under
+common theft--non-bailable," murmured the tilted hat softly; for Will,
+in his youth, had studied law.
+
+"I congratulate you, Miss Carmichael," said Paul, still gravely, "on
+having attained the position of a real criminal. I have a sneaking
+admiration for them."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because they have done--what I have been afraid to do!"
+
+So the day would slip by in idle talk and idler work, until the
+lengthening shadows warned them they were far from home, and Will
+would grow restless over the prospect of dinner _versus_ the tea, with
+which he had more than once been put off on occasions of gross
+irregularity. While Paul would boast of his freedom from all control,
+or offer to stand in the breach by begging a meal at the Lodge; since
+even Mrs. Cameron's tongue softened when it spoke to the laird, and a
+vein of humour ran through her blame.
+
+"It's clean reediklous, Gleneira," she would say. "Here it is gone
+ten, and supper was bidden at eight. An' if you expec' me, a Christian
+woman, to tell Kursty that _my_ son is even as them who mocked Elijah,
+or that it was I that made a mistake, you're just wrong. An' a' for a
+wheen trouties, that's no good for kipper or for anything but to
+cocker yourselves up wi' at breakfast, instead of being contented with
+good porridge, as your fathers were. But there! we ken find that Esau
+sold his birthright for a mess o' pottage."
+
+"And I don't wonder at it," Paul would reply gravely; "if he was half
+so hungry as I am. How much was it, Cameron, that the hook-and-eye man
+offered me for Gleneira? A man must eat, you know."
+
+Whereupon the old lady would remark that, as she at least knew her
+duty, his father's son should never lack bread in her house, and so
+bustle away good-humouredly to hurry on supper. The unpunctuality was
+not, however, always their fault; and on one occasion followed on an
+incident which had a curious effect in still further softening
+Marjory's judgment on handsome, idle, kindly Paul, and introducing
+that vein of pity, which, in women of her type, seems an almost
+necessary ingredient of affection. It may be only a triviality, the
+half-humorous despair of a buttonless shirt, the possibility of dirty
+tablecloths, or it may go further into uncared-for sickness and
+loneliness, but the thought of personal discomfort to a man whom she
+likes is always grievous to women who have not been educated out of
+their housewifely instincts.
+
+It came about in this wise. There was a certain Loch of the Fairies
+which, despite its great beauty, Marjory had seldom seen, for this
+reason. It lay hidden in the highest corries of the deer forest,
+accessible only by the burn watering the sheltered glen which, from
+time immemorial, had been the sanctuary; and not even for Marjory
+would old John Macpherson disturb his deer, or allow them to be
+disturbed. But Paul thought differently when he found that the girl's
+face brightened at the idea of an excursion thither; for, to him, the
+nearest pleasure was invariably the best.
+
+"As well be hung for a sheep as a lamb," he said, with a laugh. "We
+will start early and make a day of it. And I'll ask Gillespie to come.
+He is always telling cock-and-bull stories about the big fish there,
+so we will set him to catch one. I never did."
+
+And Will Cameron agreed also, saying he would take the opportunity to
+meet the forest keeper on the march, and settle the position of a new
+fence to keep the hinds from straying. Only old John shook his head,
+with mutterings regarding future sport and old traditions.
+
+"As if _that_ were not worth all the sport in the world," said Paul,
+almost exultantly, as, climbing the last bracken-set knoll, and
+leaving the last Scotch fir hanging over a wild leap of the burn, they
+filed past a sheer bluff, and saw in front of them a long, narrow,
+almost level glen, through which the stream slid in alternate reaches
+and foaming falls. On either side almost inaccessible cliffs; in front
+of them, cutting the blue sky clearly, a serrated wall of rock closing
+up the valley. Great sharp-edged fragments from the heights above lay
+strewn among the sweeping stretches of heather, whence a brood of
+grouse rose, blundering to the anxious cackle of the hen.
+
+"There they are," said Will, from force of habit in a whisper, "up on
+the higher pasture. I thought they would be; so we shan't disturb them
+a bit if we keep to the burn."
+
+Marjory, shading her eyes from the sun, stood looking on one of the
+prettiest sights in the world; a herd of red deer dotted over a hill
+slope, or seen outlined against the horizon line. Paul, from sheer
+habit also, had slipped to the ground, and had his glass on them.
+"Splendid royal to the left, Cameron--wonder if we shall get him this
+year--and, by George, there's the old crooked horn! I remember, Miss
+Carmichael, trying to put a bullet into him--well, we won't say how
+many years ago."
+
+"What a slaughterhouse a man's memory must be," remarked Marjory, with
+her head in the air.
+
+"Not in this case, at any rate," retorted Paul. "Sometimes I am
+merciful--or miss; which answers the purpose quite as well." As he
+spoke the memory of Jeanie Duncan rose quite causelessly to his mind,
+and he started to his feet impatiently; for somehow little Paul's
+existence had taken the bloom off his self-complacency in regard to
+that episode.
+
+"Now for the Pixie's loch," he cried gaily. "The ladies have it all
+their own way there in destruction, if tales be true. I wonder which
+of us three unfortunate males she will choose as her victim to-day?"
+
+Marjory, looking down as they crested the last boulder-strewn rise on
+the almost black and oily sheet of water in the crater-like cup of the
+corrie, felt that she did not wonder at the legends which had gathered
+round the spot. The very perfection of its loneliness, its beauty,
+marked it as a thing apart from the more familiar charm of the world
+around it. There seemed scarce foothold for a goat on those pillared
+cliffs which sank sheer into the dark water, and the streak or two of
+snow lingering still in a northern recess marked, she felt sure, some
+deep crevasse hidden from sight by the innocent-looking mantle of
+white. Nor could one judge of the depth of the lake by the jagged
+points of rocks which rose here and there from the surface of the
+water, for, as she stood, she leant against a fragment of some earlier
+world, which looked as if it must have fallen from the sky, since the
+vacant place left by such a huge avalanche must have remained visible
+for ever in the rocks above. So those out yonder might go down and
+down, forming vast caves where the Pixie might hold her court of
+drowned, dead men. She turned to look at Paul suddenly,
+apprehensively; perhaps because, even in her innocence, she recognised
+instinctively that there, with all its gifts, with all its charm, lay
+the nature to which the syren's song is irresistible. But he, stopping
+on the brink to dip his hand into the water, was looking back at her
+with a laugh.
+
+"By Jove!" he said, "isn't it cold? Enough to give anyone the
+shivers."
+
+As he spoke, far out on the glassy glint of water came a speck of
+stronger light, widening to a circle, widening, widening ever, in
+softening ripples.
+
+"There! I told you so!" cried the Reverend James, excitedly; "a
+five-pounder at least!" After which, naturally, there was no time for
+sentiment, no time for anything but an unconfessed race as to which of
+the three should have his fly on the water first. Marjory, left to her
+own devices, wandered as far as she could round the level edge, which
+to the south lay between the lake and the cliff, until she came to the
+moss-clad moraine, through which the water found its way to new life
+in the first long leap of the burn below; for the loch itself was fed
+by unseen springs. She could hear the stream beneath her feet tinkling
+musically, and gurgling softly, as if laughing at something it had
+left behind, or something it was going to meet; and the sound
+oppressed her vaguely. Here, in an angle of sand, stood a half-ruined
+boat-house, and within it a boat painted gaily, yet with an air of
+disuse about it which made Marjory go inside and look at it more
+closely. It seemed sound enough, and yet, as she wandered on, she
+hoped that the fishers might not be tempted to use it out on those
+unknown depths. Then, coming on a great bank of dewberries, she sank
+down into the yielding heather and gave herself up to enjoyment,
+finally stretching herself at long length on the springy softness, and
+watching the lake through her half-closed eyelids. Suddenly, with a
+smile, she began to sing, and then as suddenly ceased. Cliffs could
+give back an echo, certainly, but not so clear an one as the tenor
+tone which followed close on that first phrase of the "Lorelei." An
+instant after Paul's figure showed round a rock below, busily engaged
+with a swishing trout rod.
+
+
+             "Die schönste Mädchen sitzet
+              Dort oben wunderbar."
+
+
+An echo, indeed! and Marjory sat up among the dewberries, feeling
+indignant.
+
+"Captain Macleod," she called aggressively, "have you caught
+anything?"
+
+He turned, as if he had been unaware of her presence, and raised his
+cap. "It is not a question of my catching anything, Miss Carmichael,
+but of my being caught. There is a syren about somewhere; I heard her
+just now; did you?"
+
+"I generally hear myself when I am singing," she replied coldly.
+"Where is Will?"
+
+"Will," replied Paul, cheerfully, "is swearing round the corner. He
+has just had a splendid rise, and his hook drew. No further
+description necessary."
+
+She laughed, and Captain Macleod went on in the easy familiar tone
+which had taken the sting out of so many other remarks which, to
+Marjory's unsophisticated ears, had savoured of impertinence.
+
+"If we neither of us get another this round, we are going to start
+over the hills for the fence. I want to see it myself. You will find a
+splendid place for tea about a quarter of a mile down below the fall.
+Heaps of sticks--bits of the primeval forest washed out of the
+moss--so you will manage nicely; besides Gillespie will be here."
+
+It was just such a careless, brotherly speech as Will might have made,
+and Marjory appreciated it. Besides the thought of an hour or two,
+absolutely to herself, in those solitudes had an indescribable charm;
+indescribable because, to those who know it not of themselves, words
+are useless, and those who do need them not. For her, with a stainless
+past and a hopeful future, it was bliss unalloyed to wander down the
+burn-side, resting here and there, watching the ring-ouzel skim from
+shelter, or an oak-eggar moth settle lazily on a moss-cushion. And
+yet, as she sate perched on a rock far down the valley above a deeper
+pool than usual, she amused herself by singing the "Lorelei" from
+beginning to end, secure from unwelcome echoes. So back on her traces
+to the baskets which had been hidden in the fern, and the preparations
+for tea. The relics of the primeval forest burnt bravely aided by some
+juniper branches, the kettle was filled, boiled, and set securely on a
+stony hob; and then, free from cares, Marjory chose out a springy nest
+among the short heather and curled herself round lazily to watch the
+sky line where before long two figures should come striding into
+sight, dark against the growing gold of the westering sun. Blissful
+indeed; extremely comfortable also.
+
+When she woke Paul Macleod was calling her by name, and she started up
+in a hurry. "I came on as fast as I could lest you should be
+wearying," he said, and his face showed he spoke the truth. "It was
+further than we thought for. Where's Gillespie? He can't be fishing
+still, surely. I didn't see him on the shore as I came past."
+
+Marjory, confused as she was by sudden awakening, remembered one
+thing, and one thing only--the boat--the old rotten-looking boat.
+
+"You didn't see him--and he hasn't been here! Oh! Captain Macleod, I
+do hope nothing has happened--the boat----"
+
+"Nonsense!" replied Paul, decisively, "nothing can have happened.
+Still, it's late--you have been asleep some time, I expect. Perhaps he
+has missed you, and gone home."
+
+"He could not miss the fire," she said quickly, "and he cannot swim.
+If he has taken the boat, and if----"
+
+"There is no use imagining evil," put in Paul, drily; "as you are
+anxious I will go----"
+
+"I will come with you," she said eagerly; "if I put some more wood on
+the fire----"
+
+"It will be ready for us when we return," remarked Paul, cheerfully,
+"and Gillespie will want his tea. I expect he is in to the big trout
+or----" he paused before her anxious face and told her again that
+nothing could have happened. She surely did not believe in pixies?
+Still, he grew graver when a look at the boat-house proved it to be
+empty, and his first shout brought no answer, except a confused,
+resounding echo.
+
+"If he had gone beyond that bluff into the inaccessible part, which he
+is likely to have done with the boat--he might not hear. Come on--and
+don't imagine the worst. If, when we can see all the water----"
+
+He paused, and said no more, as, with her following fast at his heels,
+he hurried up the brae which hid the further reach of the lake. So,
+being a step or two ahead, and several inches taller than she was, a
+view halloo, followed by a laugh, was her first intimation that the
+search had come to an end. The next instant she had joined the laugh,
+for a more ridiculous sight than the Reverend James Gillespie
+presented as he stood up, in full clerical costume, on an uneven rock
+some two feet square, in the very middle of the loch, could scarcely
+be imagined. The cause, however, was clear in the half-sunk,
+water-logged boat, jammed on a jagged rock, which was just visible
+above the water close by.
+
+"Have you been there long?" called Paul, recovering himself.
+
+"All the afternoon," came back in hoarse and distinctly cross tones.
+"I shouted till I could shout no more. I thought you had all gone
+home!"
+
+"Gone to sleep," remarked Paul, aside, as he sate down and began
+deliberately to unlace his boots. "Now, Miss Carmichael, if you will
+look after the tea, I'll rescue the shipwrecked mariner, and bring him
+to be comforted."
+
+Marjory, eyeing the stretch of black water nervously, suggested he had
+better wait for Will to turn up; but Paul laughed. "I'm relieved to
+find you have some anxiety left for me--yet it is really absurd. I
+could swim ten times the distance ten times over; besides, I'll bring
+him back with the oars if that will satisfy you?"
+
+She felt that it ought, yet as she turned to leave him, the keen pang
+at her heart surprised her, and not even his gay call of reassurance,
+"Two teas, please, hot, in ten minutes," given, she knew, from such
+kindly motives, availed to drive away a sudden thought of that
+gracious face--drowned--dead--drowned. Such irrational fears, when
+they come at all, come overwhelmingly; since the mind, imaginative
+enough even to admit them, is their natural prey. Yet this very
+imagination of her own was in itself startling to the girl, who caught
+herself wishing she had not sung the "Lorelei," with a sort of
+surprised pain at her own fancifulness. It was absurd, ridiculous, and
+yet the sight of Will's loose-limbed figure coming to meet her,
+brought distinct relief as she bade him go on and help Captain
+Macleod. Even so, as she blew at the fire and made the tea, the
+thought would come that a man who could not swim would be of no
+possible use if--if--if---- So, in the midst of her imaginings, came
+at last the sight of three figures striding down the brae, talking and
+laughing; at least, two of them were so engaged, the Reverend James
+having scarcely recovered his temper, and being, in addition, almost
+quite inaudible from his previous efforts to make himself heard.
+
+"The pixie wouldn't have him, said he wouldn't suit the place," said
+Paul, gravely, when, with the aid of several cups of tea, the victim
+had finished his tale of the big trout, which had deliberately dragged
+him on to a jag, knocked a hole in the bottom of the rotten old boat,
+and left him helpless, taking advantage--and this seemed the greatest
+offence--of the confusion consequent on the man[oe]uvre, to swim away
+with ten yards of good trout line and an excellent cast. At least,
+this was Will's view of the situation, the Reverend James attempting
+hoarsely to give greater prominence to the saving of his own life,
+while Paul gave a graphic description of their procession down the
+loch to the landing-place, with the clerical costume packed out of
+harm's way in the fishing-basket which was swung to the butt end of
+the rod, and Marjory indignantly disclaimed the slumber of the Seven
+Sleepers, declaring that the shouting must have gone on when she had
+been down the burn. So, chattering and laughing, the tea things were
+packed up, and they started homewards.
+
+"Let us have a race down the level," said Paul, suddenly; "that water
+was cold as ice."
+
+Five minutes after, when Marjory caught him up, as he lingered a
+little behind the two others, who were just disappearing behind the
+bluff at the entrance to the sanctuary, she was startled at his face.
+
+"Ague," he said, in answer to her look. "That is the worst of India. I
+told you the water was cold enough to give anyone the shivers." He
+tried to laugh it off, but he was blue and pinched, his teeth were
+chattering, and with every step the effort to stand steady became more
+apparent. The sight of his helplessness made the girl forget
+everything but her womanly instinct to give comfort.
+
+"You had far better sit down for a while," she said, eagerly. "I can
+easily light a fire, and we have the kettle. Some hot whiskey and
+water----" But Paul was actually beyond refusal; he sate down weakly,
+utterly knocked over for the time, and unable to do anything but
+mutter, between the chatterings of his teeth, that it would not last
+long--that it would be all right when the hot fit began--that she had
+better go on and leave him. To all of which Marjory replied, in
+businesslike fashion, by bringing him a great bundle of bracken as a
+pillow, spreading her waterproof over him, and piling it over with
+more fern, till he smiled faintly, and chattered something about there
+being no necessity for covering him up with leaves--he was not dead
+yet. Then the fire had to be lit, the kettle boiled, a jorum of hot
+toddy brewed, a stone warmed and set to hands and feet.
+
+"Now, if you lie still for half an hour," she said magisterially, "I
+expect you will be much better when I come back." And he was hot--as
+fire, of course, and shaky still, but minus the cramps, and very
+apologetic for the delay.
+
+"You couldn't possibly help it," she interrupted quickly. "You
+looked--you looked----" and then something seemed to rise up in her
+throat and keep her silent. But it was just this look of utter
+helplessness which remained in her mind, bringing with it always a
+tender compassion; and as the remembrance of him with little Paul on
+his shoulder served to soften her towards his atrocious sentiments, so
+that of his sudden physical collapse served to lessen the sort of
+resentment she had hitherto felt to the charm of his great good looks.
+She could not have explained how either of these facts came about; she
+was not even aware that it was so, and yet it did make a difference in
+her attitude towards him. A pity for his weakness, for his faults and
+failings, came to take the place of condemnation.
+
+So the days passed, until one evening as they trudged home from an
+unsuccessful raid on the river, Mr. Gillespie remarked that the
+herring were in at Craignish, and the mackerel often came at the back
+of the herring, so, maybe, it would be worth while to have a try at
+them.
+
+"Better than the river, anyhow," grumbled Will, who, even with the
+red-tailed fly, felt the horrid weight of an empty creel on his
+shoulders.
+
+Paul looked at Marjory. It had come to that in most things by this
+time, and as often as not, as now, no words were necessary. "Then I
+will tell John Macpherson to have the boat ready to-morrow, for it is
+my last day--of leisure, I mean. My sister comes on Saturday, my
+guests follow on Monday, and after that--the deluge, I suppose."
+
+"I should not wonder," remarked Will, gravely; "the midges were awful
+to-day."
+
+Both Paul and Marjory laughed; they could not help it, despite their
+vague regret that holiday time was over.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER X.
+
+
+Paul's last day was one of those never-to-be-forgotten days, when the
+mist lies in light wreaths below the mountain tops, which rise clear
+and sharp against an intense blue sky; when masses of white cloud hang
+in mid-air, bringing with each new moment some fresh beauty, born of
+shadow, to sea and shore; when a cool breeze blows unevenly, every now
+and again darkening the water to a purple, and cresting the waves with
+foam-streaks edged with turquoise.
+
+"None too soon," said Paul, briefly, as the "Tubhaneer" (so called
+from her washing-tub-like build) cast off her moorings, and stood out
+for the middle of the loch. "I told you it would be the deluge after
+to-day, Miss Carmichael. We shall have rain to-morrow."
+
+Will nodded his head.
+
+"Oh, don't talk of to-morrow!" said Marjory, quickly; "to-day is
+enough, surely."
+
+Paul, from amid-ships, applauded softly, and she attempted a frown,
+which ended feebly in a smile. And wherefore not? Sufficient, indeed,
+unto that day was the pleasure thereof. The red-brown sail drew
+bravely, the long line lay curled up forward, the oyster dredger
+rested athwart, the rifles were with Paul amid-ships, the lithe rods
+swept out astern behind Marjory as she leant lightly over the tiller,
+her eyes upon the quivering sail; for it needed every inch she could
+gain to avoid a tack, even though the current of the outgoing tide was
+aiding them to slip through the Narrowest to the open sea beyond.
+
+"Where will the white rock be?" she asked of Donald Post, who, being
+learned in banks and baits, would often set his wife to carry the bag
+while he was off and away after the sea fishing. He was now opening
+mussels with a crunching sound, regular as a machine.
+
+'"Deed an' she will be right ahead of us whatever," he replied,
+without a pause.
+
+"There will be plenty of water, I suppose?"
+
+'"Deed she will no be havin' much on her, anyhow."
+
+"Then how shall I steer?"
+
+"Just as she is, Miss Marjory, just as she is; she will be doing fine,
+I'm thinking."
+
+"A miss is as good as a mile," murmured Paul, engaged in stretching
+his long length comfortably over some ballast kegs. "Can you swim?"
+
+Marjory nodded. "Then save me, please; I really am not inclined to
+exert myself."
+
+"So it appears," remarked Will Cameron, in an injured tone. He and the
+Reverend James were forward, busy over the tangled lengths of the long
+line, and the necessity for restraining his tongue before the cloth
+was telling even on the former's easy temper; for a long line in a
+tangle is quite indescribable in Parliamentary language.
+
+"Keep her in a bit, Marjory. We must anchor over the fishing-house
+bank for a while, and get bait for this--this _thing_."
+
+"Then I shall have to tack."
+
+"Tack, indeed! If you don't like it, I'll steer and you can tackle
+this--this _thing_. Look out, Donald!--two trees and the white stone."
+
+Round went the tiller. "Now, John!" said the girl; the sail came down
+with a clatter, the way slackened, the anchor, poised in Donald's
+watchful hands, splashed overboard, and the "Tubhaneer" drew up to it
+with her mast, and the two trees, and the white stone in a line.
+
+"Well done, Miss Marjory; that was well done, whatever," rose Donald's
+voice softly, between renewed crunching; and two minor splashes
+following close on each other told that the Parson and Will had their
+hand-lines down. Then came a silence, broken only by the fitful gurgle
+of the water against the "Tubhaneer" as she swung round to the tide,
+and that monotonous crunch, crunch of the mussel-knife.
+
+"John Roy, he wass takin' five whitin's from the bank last week," rose
+Donald's voice once more, quite causelessly. "It wass a bit of himself
+he was catching them with. It iss nothin' the whitin's iss liking so
+much as a bit of himself."
+
+Then silence again, his hearers being too much accustomed to the
+intricacies of Donald's style to be startled by this novel fact in
+natural history. So, amid the stillness, a sudden jerk of the Reverend
+James's right hand, a pause of intense expectation--to judge by the
+rapt look on his comely face--then disappointment from bow to stern,
+and a general slackness.
+
+"It will just be ain o' they pickers," mused Donald, recovering from
+his momentary idleness; "or maybe a sooker. It iss the pickers and
+sookers in this place that just beats all. Oo-aye! If it wass not a
+picker, it will be a sooker."
+
+"What is the difference between a picker and a sucker, Donald?" asked
+Marjory, severely practical.
+
+"'Deed, then, Miss Marjory, and it iss not any difference there will
+be between them at all. It is a sooker that will not be caring a tamn
+for the hook, and it is the picker that will not be caring a tamn
+either."
+
+"Ahem!" interrupted Mr. Gillespie, with reproachful glance at Donald's
+unconscious back; "I believe, Miss Marjory, that pickers or suckers is
+really only the local name for young codlings, lythe, or cuddies. In
+fact, for all young fish."
+
+"She is not them at all," retorted Donald, scornfully. "It iss sookers
+and pickers, and not young fish they will be, and it iss not a local
+name, whatever." The last came with such a glance of sovereign
+contempt for the offender, that Paul, from his ballast kegs, smiled up
+at Marjory, who smiled back at him.
+
+"Got him at last! and a good one too!" sang out Will, ending the
+discussion by a new topic of all-absorbing interest, which held the
+boat's crew in suspense till the rasping rub of the line over the side
+and the drip of water falling back on water ceased in a disgusted
+exclamation from the captor of a small flounder, hooked foul.
+
+"Little deevil," murmured John Macpherson, in such a self-communing
+tone, that the Reverend James felt the observation must pass.
+
+"It iss pulling like that they are," commented Donald, affably. "John
+Roy he was fishin' at the ferry-house, and thinkin' it wass a
+_skatach_ he got, and cryin' on me for the gaff he wass, but it was
+two flukies he was hookin' by their tails."
+
+Marjory looked as if she were inclined to dispute the fact, then
+joined in the dreamful silence, which, with spasmodic awakenings as
+fish after fish came over the side, lasted until there was enough
+bait, and Will gave the word to move on. Then the anchor came up laden
+with a root of oarweed, in which strange shells and starfish lay
+entangled; so it was handed aft for Marjory to see.
+
+"It is squeakin' like a mice yon beast will be," said Donald, pointing
+to a sea-urchin. "Aye! an' bitin' most tarrible he is."
+
+"That is quite impossible," interrupted the girl, cutting short
+various other facts which trembled on Donald's lips. "They couldn't
+bite if they tried."
+
+"Then it is squeakin' like a mice they are, whatever," he retorted
+doggedly; "for John Roy wass tellin' it to me." John Roy being
+Donald's Mrs. Harris, the subject admitted of no further discussion,
+and the ensuing pause was broken by a sudden question from Paul.
+
+"Do you ever find niggerheads about here now? I remember when I was a
+boy in petticoats----"
+
+He took the tiny cowrie of dazzling whiteness she handed him by way of
+answer, and said no more. How many years, he wondered, was it since he
+had last thought of niggerheads? Truly the world was a strange place,
+and a man's brain stranger still.
+
+And now the long line, duly baited for skate and haddock, was being
+paid out and left drifting, moored to floats which seemed to dance
+away on the waves, as the "Tubhaneer" with sail full spread made for
+the last, low, sunlit point, and so, entering the Linnhe Loch, headed
+straight for the blue Kingairloch Hills. To the left lay Lismore, a
+glimmering strip of green and gold amid the shining sea; behind was
+Port Appin, with its heather-crested bluff, and spidery-black pier;
+before them the serrated line of Ardnamurchan, and beyond, faint in
+the distance, the headland of Mull jutting into a glint of the
+Atlantic. To the right rose Shuna with its swelling grassy slopes and
+cross-signed pebble shores, like a fairy island in the summer sea. So
+further afield Appin House, set in fir knolls, Ardgour lighthouse
+glimmering to the left, and beyond, all the hills rising clear and
+cloudless to the peak of Ben Nevis.
+
+On Ami's bay a cluster of boats in shore told that the herring were
+in.
+
+"They never come to Loch Eira now," remarked Will, idly. "It is funny,
+but they don't."
+
+"It will not be funny at all, sir," expostulated Donald. "It wass
+comin' they were every year, sure's I sit here, but it wass old John
+Mackenzie he wass going after them on the Sabbath, and it wass not
+coming any more after that they were."
+
+"And that is a fact, of course?" asked Will, gravely.
+
+"It will not be a fact at all, sir," echoed Donald, "but it was old
+John himself wass tellin' it to me."
+
+"I believe it to be quite true, Mr. Cameron," put in the Reverend
+James; "indeed I remember the Bishop commenting upon the circumstance
+in a sermon. He brought it in most beautifully, and so conclusively."
+
+"It wass a burnin' shame of the old _bodach_, whatever," grumbled John
+Macpherson. "Ay! Ay! a dirty trick, whatever."
+
+Marjory, watching the sea-pyots wheel and veer against the blue of the
+distant hills, smiled to herself. The mere thought of the Bishop in
+his lawn sleeves seemed unreal out there in the sunshine. Everything
+was unreal save the boat skimming with a little hiss through the
+water.
+
+"There's a steamer rounding the point below Lismore," said Will. "What
+will she be, I wonder?"
+
+"She will be the salt ship from Glasgow for the harrin'," replied
+Donald, after prolonged deliberation. "That iss what she will be, an'
+ferry welcome. I mind when the harrin' were in Glen Etive, and the
+salt ship she wass not comin' at all, the people wass diggin' holes in
+the peat, and fillin' them with the harrin'. It wass not keepin' ferry
+well, but it was eating them were. A terrible year for sickness it
+wass, though the harrin' was that plenty, they wass takin' them in
+buckets."
+
+"'Deed an' it was a dirty trick of that old _bodachs_ to be driving
+them away," grumbled Macpherson, "a dirty trick--Gorsh me!--yon's a
+seal--quick, Mr. Paul!"
+
+There was a sudden, still stir in the crew, and all eyes turned to
+where a smooth brown head slipped oilily through the water. Marjory
+held her breath half-shrinkingly, yet said no word. Not even when Paul
+whispered "Ready, Cameron?" and, heralded by a little flash and puff,
+the simultaneous report of the rifles frightened the sea-pyots into
+screaming flight. The head disappeared as the bullets went ricocheting
+over the water in soft _ping-pings_.
+
+"Too high," said one voice, mournfully.
+
+"Yes! but the direction was good."
+
+These remarks, which in constant substance but varying form follow
+most unsuccessful shots, appeared satisfactory to the speakers; for
+Paul retired to the thwarts again, and Will resumed his pipe, while
+Macpherson looked pensively through one of the rifles to see if it had
+leaded, and the general excitement died down.
+
+"It is curious," remarked Marjory, disdainfully relieved, and
+speaking, as it were, to the circumambient air, "how even a remote
+prospect of killing something will rouse a man's love of destruction."
+
+Paul, leaning one arm on the thwart, looked up at her solemnly.
+
+"True--too true. We are destructive, or rather, accurately speaking,
+we should like to be destructive--only we aren't. That was a bad miss
+of mine. But if we like to destroy, you women love to annex. Witness
+that pile of seaweed and shells beside you. You don't really want it,
+and ten to one when it comes to the bother of carrying it home, you
+will leave it behind you."
+
+"Pardon me," remarked the girl, "you shall carry it for me."
+
+"A foregone conclusion, if you wish it, of course; but in that case
+you will simply add my services to your possessions. And in like
+manner you will dispense with them when I cease to be amusing. Woman
+all over!"
+
+"Thanks, Gleneira!" laughed Will. "It does me good to hear Marjory
+kept in order. She bullies me awfully about shooting seals, and I
+fully expected her to sneeze or cough. She generally does."
+
+"I knew you wouldn't hit," retorted Marjory, scornfully, "and it
+pleased you."
+
+"'Pleased 'er and didn't 'urt me,' as the navvy said when his wife
+beat him," put in Paul. "By Jove! Miss Carmichael, if I had known what
+you thought, I would have put a bullet----"
+
+"Hist!" cried Marjory, holding up her hand. There, within a stone's
+throw, was the smooth brown head, with large, liquid, confiding eyes
+turned towards the boat. Not a ripple, not a sound, showed that it was
+in motion, and yet it slipped past rapidly.
+
+"Gorsh me! but the beast's tame," whispered John, unable to contain
+himself in the inaction; but the whisper might as well have been a
+clap of thunder, for the round head sank noiselessly into the water,
+leaving scarcely a ripple behind it.
+
+"Why didn't you shoot, Captain Macleod?" asked Marjory, with an odd
+little tremor in her voice, at which she herself was dimly surprised;
+"you might have hit that time, for it couldn't have been more than
+fifteen yards off."
+
+"I never thought of it," he replied quietly; "the beast looked so
+jolly."
+
+"It looked quite as jolly when it was far away, no doubt."
+
+"But I couldn't see it. And if we discuss that point I shall find it
+as much out of my range as the seal was. So give me a good mark for
+refraining when I did see its jolliness."
+
+"Besides, it would have been no good trying. It would have been down
+like a shot if we had stirred a finger," said Will, philosophically.
+
+Paul Macleod sighed. "There goes my last claim to saintship. You are a
+perfect devil's advocate, Cameron."
+
+"But, really, Miss Marjory," put in the Reverend James, who had, as
+usual, been left far behind in the quick interchange of thought, "I do
+not see why you should object to shooting a seal. Man is permitted by
+a merciful Creator to destroy animal life----"
+
+"In order to preserve his own, and even then it seems a pity,"
+interrupted the girl, eagerly. "Oh, I daresay, Captain Macleod, the
+feeling isn't strong enough to make me turn vegetarian, but it _is_
+wanton cruelty to kill a poor seal which is of no use to anyone!"
+
+"There you go!" grumbled Will. "Why! I wanted its paws awfully for
+tobacco pouches--mine is quite worn out."
+
+"Your remark, Cameron, is childish and unreasonable," replied Paul,
+from his lounge. "You cannot expect Miss Carmichael's tolerance of
+humanity to extend to tobacco pouches. Let us be thankful it concedes
+mutton chops."
+
+"A seal is a ferry clever beast, whatever," put in Donald. "It wass
+John Roy wass walking on the rocks at Craignish, and he wass seeing a
+big seal, and heavin' stones at it, and--gorsh me!--but it wass takin'
+the stones and fro'ing them back at John. And, tamn me! but the
+creature wass a better shot than John--oo--aye! a far better shot
+whatever."
+
+"And that is a fact, Donald?" asked Will, solemnly.
+
+"Not a fack at all, sir; but John Roy he wass tellin' it to me."
+
+"Not so clever as the Kashmir bear, Donald?" put in Paul. "When it has
+to cross a stream in flood it carries a big boulder on its head to
+keep itself steady."
+
+"An' is that a fack, sir," asked Donald, readily.
+
+"The people were telling it to me, anyhow!"
+
+"Then they were big liars whatever," said Donald, with such an
+inimitable air of shocked conviction that a general shout of laughter
+rose on the sunny air.
+
+Oh, bright, glad day! Oh, careless, foolish talk! Oh, deep abiding
+sense of peace and good-will in all that sea-girt mountain world which
+rose around them, havening their little boat! Could it be that there
+was trouble, or toil, or tears, yonder where the mist floated so
+tenderly, or there, where cottage and castle, meadow and moor, wheat
+and tares were blended into one purple glory? There were not many such
+days in life, so let us cherish the mere memory of them!
+
+The mackerel, it is true, were not to be beguiled, but what matter?
+The boat skimmed over the blue water; two red-brown sails stood out to
+the West or East.
+
+"No use trying any more," said Will at last, with a shake of the head
+over Paul's placid repose; for lunch had come to fill up the measure
+of content, and the laird was back among the ballast with a large
+basket of strawberries. "I think, Donald, we might try the big lythe
+off Shuna."
+
+"The tide will no be answerable awhile, sir, but there will be no
+excuse for the _bedach ruachs_ at the rocks; no excuse at all."
+
+"Let us hope the fish will have a sense of duty," murmured Paul from
+the strawberries; "cold-blooded creatures generally have."
+
+They anchored out of the tide race in a backwater of the current, and
+Marjory, looking over the side, could see far down into the green
+depth where pale, pulsating Medusas came floating by, and every now
+and again a flash of light told of a passing fish.
+
+"Too much tide," began Paul, eyeing the set of the lines from his
+retreat, when four mighty and coincident strikes silenced his wisdom
+for a while. But only for a while, since amid the rasp and rub of wet
+lines against the side came Will's voice despondently.
+
+"I'm in to some of you others."
+
+"So am I--and I----" echoed Marjory and the Reverend James. Only Donald
+Post whispered softly, "It is the deevil is on mine whatever," and
+Paul, without stirring hand and foot, suggested the mainland of
+Scotland. But it was neither. The lines passed to the stern produced
+conjointly a codling, which after swallowing two baits had tried at a
+third, and so hooked itself foul in the fourth.
+
+"There's an object lesson for you, Miss Carmichael," said Paul,
+teasingly. "How about your theory of the cruel hook and the poor
+fish?"
+
+"It is not feeling a tamn, fish is," commented Donald, calmly
+disgorging the baits. "It was fishin' for _bodachs_ old John Boy was,
+and he was catchin' her foul by the eye, and the eye she come out. But
+John Roy wass leavin' it on the hook and the _bodach_ was comin' again
+an' takin' his own eye."
+
+"And there is a fact for you," continued Paul.
+
+"No! No! sir," protested Donald, with a twinkle in his eye; "it will
+no be a fack whatever, but John Roy he wass tellin' it to me." Whereat
+there was laughter again.
+
+So, as the day drew down, they landed on Shuna to boil the kettle for
+tea with driftwood gathered from the shore, and wonder idly as the
+flames leapt up to shrivel the lowermost leaves of the rowan tree by
+the spring, whence the wreckage which burnt so bravely had come; for
+storm and stress seemed far from their world.
+
+Then, while the boatmen took their turn at the scones and cake, the
+jam and toast, they climbed the grassy slopes, and, sitting down by
+the old tower, watched the sunset idly; for all things, even pleasure,
+seem idle on such days as these. The clouds had pricked westwards, as
+if to aid the Atlantic in a coming storm, but below their heavy purple
+masses lay a strip of greeny gold sky, into which the sun was just
+sinking from a higher belt of crimson-tinted bars.
+
+"No Green Ray for us to-night," said Marjory, with a smile.
+
+Paul raised his eyebrows. "No Green Ray on this or any other night, in
+my candid opinion."
+
+The Reverend James looked puzzled. "I have often heard you mention
+this Green Ray, Miss Marjory, but I am not quite sure to what you
+allude."
+
+"To a fiction of Jules Verne's, that is all," put in Paul, quickly.
+
+"Nothing of the sort; people have seen it," corrected the girl,
+eagerly.
+
+"Say they have seen it," murmured Paul, obstinately, and Marjory
+frowned.
+
+"I will explain it to you, Mr. Gillespie," she went on, with assertion
+in her voice. "It is a green ray of light which shoots through the
+sea, just as the topmost curve of the sun touches the water. I watch
+for it often. I intend to watch for it till I see it, as others have
+done."
+
+"And what good will it do to you when you have seen it?" asked Paul.
+They were speaking to each other, despite the pretence of general
+conversation; but it was so often.
+
+"I haven't the least idea," she answered airily; "for all that, I look
+forward to seeing it as a great event in my life."
+
+"Great events are dangerous; like some very valuable medicines,
+uncertain in their effects. Birth, for instance--you may be born a
+fool or a wise man. Marriage--a chance of the die--so I'm told.
+Death." He pointed dramatically upwards and downwards with a whimsical
+look on his anxious, gracious face.
+
+"I deny it, I deny it altogether," cried the girl, forgetting herself
+and him in her eagerness. "You are either in existence before birth,
+or you are not. In the one case you must remain yourself, in the other
+you, being nonexistent, cannot suffer chance or change. It is the same
+with death. If there is no _you_ to survive, death itself ceases to be
+since you are non-existent. If there is, you must remain yourself."
+
+"Surely, my dear Miss Marjory," said the Reverend James, breaking in
+on the girl's half-questioning appeal, "we are to be changed in the
+twinkling of an eye?"
+
+"And marriage, Miss Carmichael?" put in Paul, quietly, passing by the
+last remark as if it, too, had been non-existent. "You left out
+marriage in your philosophy."
+
+Her face fell, yet softened.
+
+"I do not know; it is like the Green Ray, something to dream about."
+
+"To dream about! Ah! that sort of marriage is, I own, beyond the
+vision of ordinary humanity."
+
+"But indeed there is nothing scientifically impossible in the Green
+Ray. You have only to get the angle of refraction equal to the----"
+
+"Spare me, please. If I have to swallow romance I prefer it
+undisguised. Even as a boy I refused powders in jam."
+
+"Wish I had," grumbled Will, knocking the ashes out of his pipe. "I
+have never been able to eat black-currant jelly in consequence. And it
+is awfully nice in itself. Come, Marjory, we ought to be going."
+
+"It is very hard to get rid of acquired tastes," muttered Paul, in an
+undertone, as he rose, and quite familiarly held out his hand to help
+Marjory to her feet also. "For instance, it will be difficult to
+forget the flavour of the past fortnight."
+
+"Why should you forget it?" They were standing apart from the others,
+who were looking eastward to see if the boatmen were ready.
+
+"Because the pleasure of it has been demoralising."
+
+"I don't believe in the demoralising effect of pleasure."
+
+"Perhaps not. You are one of the virtuously constituted whose pleasure
+consists in behaving nicely. Mine doesn't."
+
+Her hand went out in an impulsive gesture of denial.
+
+"Why should you say that? You are not----"
+
+"How can you know what I am?" he began bitterly, yet indifferently;
+his eyes, not upon her, but fixed far on the distant horizon, as if
+arraigning some unseen power which had made him what he was. Then he
+paused abruptly, and infinite surprise drove everything else from his
+face.
+
+"Look!" he cried.
+
+"Look?--what?--where?"
+
+"Look!" His hand was on hers now, and its trembling touch seemed to
+give her sight.
+
+It was a new heaven and a new earth! For, on the outermost edge of the
+world, the last beam of light from the sunken sun shot through the
+waves, flooding sky, and sea, and shore, with a green light, soft and
+pellucid as the heart of an emerald. But only for an instant. The next
+he had loosed her hand and the light was gone.
+
+"What are you staring at so, Miss Carmichael?" His mocking tone jarred
+her through and through. She looked at him in sheer bewilderment.
+
+"The--the Green Ray!"
+
+"The Green Ray!" he echoed, in the same tones. "I say, Cameron! Here
+is your cousin declaring she has seen the Green Ray. Did you see
+anything?"
+
+"Only the seal you were watching out on the rocks yonder," called
+Will. "Splendid shot, wasn't it?"
+
+"The Green Ray!" echoed the Reverend James, bustling up. "Dear me, how
+interesting, and I missed it, somehow. What was it like, Miss
+Marjory?"
+
+The girl stood with her clear, cold eyes fixed on Paul's face. "I
+scarcely know. You had better ask Captain Macleod. If I saw anything,
+he saw it also; and saw it first!"
+
+"But you have such a much more vivid imagination than I," he replied
+easily, "that what would be to me merely an unusually beautiful
+effect, might be to you a miracle. It is simply a question of
+temperament, and mine is severely practical. In fact, Cameron, if we
+are to get home to-night, it's time we were going."
+
+"By George!" said Will, when, with a general scramble, they had stowed
+everything on board, "it's later than I thought, the tide has turned,
+and the wind is almost down. We must take the sweeps, I am afraid."
+
+"All right," said Paul. "Hand us over an oar."
+
+He was a different man; the lazy content was gone, and he gave a
+stroke from a straight back which made Donald gasp between his
+efforts--"Gorsh me! but he is a fine rower, is the laird!"
+
+But there was silence--the silence of hard work--for the most part, as
+they toiled home with wind and tide against them. Yet the scene was
+beautiful as ever in the growing moonlight.
+
+"We are not more than a mile from the house here, Marjory," said Will,
+as they rounded a point below the Narrowest; "but it will take us a
+good hour to get her to the boat-house, and I can't leave her here;
+it's spring tides, and the painter's not long enough. But I'll land
+you on that rock, and the laird will see you home. Mother will be
+getting anxious."
+
+"I would rather stay," she was beginning, when Paul cut her short.
+
+"Back water, bow; pull, Donald. Luff her a bit. Miss Carmichael,
+please. That will do." They were alongside the little jetty of rock,
+and he was out. "Your hand, please, the seaweed is awfully slippery.
+Donald, pass up those shells, will you, they are in my handkerchief.
+All right, Cameron. Give way."
+
+It had all passed so quickly, and this masterful activity of Paul's
+was so surprising, that Marjory, rather to her own surprise, found
+herself following close on his heels as he forced a way for her
+through the dense thickets of bracken, or held back a briar from the
+path in silence. Yet the silence did not seem oppressive; it suited
+her own confusion, her own vague pleasure and pain. She had seen the
+Green Ray, but she had seen it through Paul Macleod's eyes. Yes;
+whether he would or not, they had seen it hand in hand. He might deny
+it, but the fact remained. He was one of those who could see it!
+
+And Paul, as he walked on, felt that the silence intensified his clear
+pleasure and clearer pain. For there was no vagueness in _his_
+emotions. It was not the first time that the touch of a woman's hand
+had thrilled him through and through, as Marjory's had done as they
+looked out over the sunset sea; but it was the first time that such a
+thrill had not moved him to look upon the woman's face! And they had
+stood still, hand in hand, like a couple of children, staring at the
+Green Ray! What a fool he had been! What did it mean save something at
+which he had always scoffed, at which he meant always to scoff! And
+then the Green Ray? Was his brain softening that he should see visions
+and dream dreams? He, Paul Macleod, who loved and forgot all, save his
+own physical comfort. As everyone did in the end. And yet it was a
+familiar pleasure to be in love again honestly, a pleasure to feel his
+heart beating, to know that the girl he fancied was there beside him
+in the moonlight, that he could tell her of his heart-beats if he
+chose. But he did not choose. Love of that sort came and went! Did he
+not know it? Did he not know his own nature, and was not that enough?
+And yet, when they reached the high road a sudden desire to make her
+also understand it, made him say, abruptly:
+
+"When do you begin work? In London, isn't it?"
+
+"Yes; in November."
+
+"And you are really going to waste life in a dull, dirty school,
+teaching vulgar little boys and girls."
+
+"I shall teach them not to be vulgar."
+
+He shrugged his shoulders. "You cannot fight against Nature, Miss
+Carmichael; as we are born, we remain. You will only kill yourself in
+your efforts at regeneration."
+
+"I think not. I am very strong to begin with, and then I hate rusting
+in idleness."
+
+"Rust may be better than tarnish. When I think of you here in this
+paradise--a fool's paradise, perhaps--and of what you must encounter
+there, it seems preposterous for you to mix yourself up. But you do
+not understand; you never will." He had forgotten his new outlook in
+the old resentment at her unconsciousness.
+
+"Understand what? I can understand most things if I try."
+
+"Can you? I doubt it. You cannot understand me, for instance, but that
+is beside the question. The only comfort is that real life will
+disgust you. Then you will return to the home you should never have
+left."
+
+"I have no home--you know that."
+
+"You can make one by marrying, as other girls do."
+
+"I am not like other girls, thank you----"
+
+"Do you think I can't see that?" he broke out quite passionately.
+"Should I be talking to you as I am if you were--why, I can't even
+speak to you of what some of them are. It is because you are not as
+other girls----"
+
+"Then you wish me to behave as they do. You are scarcely logical." Her
+tone was as ice, and, chilling his passion, sent him back to his
+cynicism.
+
+"Logic and love do not generally run in double harness, Miss
+Carmichael; but if you prefer the former, I am quite prepared to stick
+to it. Someone wants a wife, someone wants a home. It is a mere case
+of barter. What can be more natural, sensible----"
+
+"And degrading."
+
+"Pardon me, not always. I will take my own case if you will allow me.
+We have touched on it often before. Let us speak frankly now. I need
+money, not for myself alone; for the property. You have hinted a
+thousand times that I am a bad landlord; so I am. How can I help it
+without money?"
+
+"You could be a better landlord than you are."
+
+"If I chose to live on porridge and milk; but I don't choose, and I
+don't choose to sell. I prefer to stick to champagne and devilled
+bones, and give up another personal pleasure instead. And you say it
+is degrading."
+
+"I said nothing of the sort. I spoke of myself. It would degrade me. I
+do not presume to speak of you."
+
+"But you think it all the same."
+
+"And if I do, what is that to you?" she cried suddenly, in hot anger.
+"I do condemn you, if you will have the truth. I think you will
+deliberately turn your back on the best part of life if you marry for
+mere comfort--and, what is more, that you will regret it."
+
+"Possibly. I regret most things after a time. Let us wait and see
+whether you or I find the greatest happiness in life. Only we are not
+likely to agree even there, for we shall not see the world in the same
+light."
+
+"Unless High Heaven vouchsafes us another Green Ray," she said coldly.
+
+The allusion aroused all his own vexation with himself, all his
+impatience at her influence over him. They were passing the short cut
+leading to the Lodge, and he paused.
+
+"I don't think I need intrude on Mrs. Cameron tonight," he said.
+"Good-bye, Miss Carmichael." Then suddenly he turned with a smile of
+infinite grace. "Let us shake hands over it to show there is no
+ill-feeling. It is my last holiday, remember; and, according to
+you, I am going into penal servitude for life. But I'll chance my
+ticket-of-leave. I am generally fairly virtuous when I have enough to
+eat and drink. And we have had a good time, haven't we?"
+
+"Very," said Marjory. And though he tried hard to get up another
+thrill as their hands met, he failed utterly. He might have been
+saying good-bye to his grandmother for all the emotion it roused in
+him; and as he strode home he scarcely knew if the fact were
+disconcerting or satisfactory. The latter, in so far that it proved
+his feeling for Marjory must be of a placid, sentimental form, to
+which he was unaccustomed. What else could it be in such surroundings,
+and with a girl who hadn't a notion what love meant?
+
+And Marjory, as she crossed the few yards between her and Mrs.
+Cameron's comments, felt vexed that she was not more angry with the
+culprit. But once again the thought of the St. Christopher, and of
+Paul's blue, chattering lips, when he had the chills at the Pixie's
+Lake, came to soften her and make her forget all but admiration and
+pity.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+Rain! Rain! Rain! One drop chasing the other down the window-pane like
+boys upon a slide. Beyond them a swaying network of branches rising
+out of the grey mist-curtain veiling the landscape, and every now and
+again a wild whirl of wind from the southwest, bringing with it a
+fiercer patter on the pane. Those who know the West coast of Scotland
+in the mood with which in nine cases out of ten it welcomes the
+Sassenach, will need no further description of the general depression
+and discomfort in Gleneira House a week after Paul had said good-bye
+to Marjory at the short cut. For he had been right, the deluge had
+come; and even Mrs. Cameron, going her rounds through byre and barn in
+pattens, with petticoats high kilted to her knees, shook her head,
+declaring that if it were not for the promise she would misdoubt that
+the long-prophesied judgment had overtaken this evil generation. And
+she had lived in the Glen for fifty years.
+
+Poor Lady George, who had arrived at Gleneira wet, chilled,
+uncomfortable, yet still prepared to play her rôle of hostess to
+perfection, fell a victim to a cold, which, as she complained, put it
+out of her power to give a good rendering to the part. Since it was
+manifestly impossible to receive her visitors, arriving in their
+turn wet, chilled, uncomfortable, with anything like the optimism
+required, for protestations that Highland rain did no harm, and hot
+whiskey-and-water did good, were valueless, when you sneezed three
+times during your remark. If she could only have gone to bed for one
+day, there would have been some chance for her; but that was
+impossible, since nowadays one couldn't have a good old-fashioned cold
+in one's head without the risk of breaking up one's party from fear of
+influenza! So she went about in a very smart, short, tweed costume,
+with gaiters, and affected a sort of forced indifference even when the
+cook, imported at fabulous wages, gave up her place on the third day,
+saying she could not live in a shower bath, and was not accustomed to
+a Zoölogical Gardens in the larder; when the upper housemaid gave
+warning because hot water was not laid on to the top of the house, and
+the kitchenmaid refused to make the porridge for the half-dozen
+Highland lassies, who did all the work, on the ground that no
+self-respecting girl would encourage others in such barbarous habits.
+But all this, thank heaven! was on the other side of the swing door;
+still, though the guests could scarcely give warning, matters were not
+much brighter in, what servants call, collectively, the dining-room.
+Breakfast was a godsend, for a judicious admixture of scones and jams,
+and a little dexterous manipulation of the time at which people were
+expected to come down, made it last till eleven at the earliest. And
+then the hall was a providence. Large, and low, and comfortable, with
+a blazing fire, and two doors, where the ladies could linger and talk
+bravely of going out. Looking like it, also, in tweeds even shorter
+and nattier than Lady George's, yet for all that succumbing after a
+time to the impossibility of holding up an umbrella in such a gale of
+wind, joined to gentle doubts as to whether a waterproof was
+waterproof. Then there was lunch. But it was after lunch, when people
+had manifestly over-eaten themselves, that the real strain of the day
+began. So that the Reverend James Gillespie, coming to call, despite
+the pouring rain, as in duty bound, was delighted with the warmth of
+his reception, and Lady George, making the most of the pleasing
+novelty, reverted unconsciously to a part suitable to the occasion.
+
+"Dear me!" she said plaintively; "this is very distressing! Imagine,
+my dear Mrs. Woodward! Mr. Gillespie assures me that there is no
+church in the Glen, only a schoolhouse. Paul, dear, how came you never
+to mention this, you bad boy?"
+
+Paul, who, after sending the most enthusiastic men forth on what he
+knew must be a fruitless quest after grouse, was devoting himself to
+the ladies, and in consequence felt unutterably bored, as he always
+did when on duty, turned on his sister captiously:
+
+"I thought you would have remembered the fact. I did, and you are
+older than I am. Why, you used always to cry--just like Blazes
+does--if my mother wouldn't let you open the picture papers during
+service."
+
+Lady George bridled up. It was so thoughtless of Paul, bringing all
+the disagreeables in life into one sentence; and reminiscences of that
+sort were so unnecessary, for everyone knew that even the best
+childhood could not stand the light of adult memory.
+
+"But surely there was a talk, even then, of a more suitable building.
+I suppose it fell through. High time, is it not, dear Mrs. Woodward,
+for our absentee landlord to repair his neglect?"
+
+"The farm-steadings have first claim to repair, I'm afraid, Blanche,"
+returned Paul, refusing his part. "The church will have to stand over
+as a luxury."
+
+Lady George, even in her indignation, hastened to cover the
+imprudence, for the Woodwards were distinctly high.
+
+"Not a bit of it, Paul! We will all set to work at once, Mr.
+Gillespie, and see what can be done--won't we, dear Mrs. Woodward?"
+
+"I would suggest writing to the Bishop as the first step," said the
+Reverend James, modestly.
+
+"And then a fancy fair," continued Lady George.
+
+"Delightful! a fancy fair, by all means," echoed an elderly
+schoolfellow of Blanche's, who had been invited on the express
+understanding that she was to do the flowers and second all
+suggestions.
+
+"I trust you will have nothing of the kind, Blanche," put in Paul,
+with unusual irritation. "I hate charitable pocket-picking. I beg your
+pardon for the crude expression, Miss Woodward, but I have some
+excuse. On one occasion in India I was set on by every lady in the
+station, with the result that I found twenty-five penwipers of sorts
+in my pocket when I got home."
+
+"Twenty-five, that was a large number," said Alice, stifling a yawn.
+"What did you do with them?"
+
+"Put them away in lavender as keepsakes, of course."
+
+"My dear Paul," put in his sister, hurriedly, recognising his unsafe
+mood. "We do things differently in England. We do not set on young
+men; we do not have----"
+
+"A superfluity of penwipers," interrupted her brother, becoming
+utterly exasperated; but as he looked out of the window he saw
+something which made him sit down again beside Alice Woodward, and
+devote himself to her amusement. Yet it was a sight which with most
+men would have had exactly the opposite effect, for it was a glimpse
+of a well-known figure battling with the wind and the rain along the
+ferry road. But Paul Macleod had made up his mind; besides, rather to
+his own surprise, the past few days had brought him very little of the
+restless desire to be with Marjory, which he had expected from his
+previous experiences in love. It was evidently a sentimental attack,
+unreal, fanciful, Arcadian, like the episode in which it had arisen.
+And yet a remark of his sister's at afternoon tea set him suddenly in
+arms.
+
+"Mr. Gillespie told me there was a girl staying at the Camerons',
+Paul, who was a sort of governess, or going to be one. And I
+thought--if she hadn't a dreadful accent, or anything of that sort,
+you know, of having her in the mornings for the children."
+
+"Miss Carmichael, Blanche," he broke in, at a white heat, "is a very
+charming girl, and I was going to ask you to call upon her, as soon as
+the weather allowed of it. I have seen a good deal of her during the
+last few weeks, and should like you to know her."
+
+Really, in his present mood, Paul was almost as bad as a dynamite
+bomb, or a high-pressure boiler in the back kitchen! Still, mindful of
+her sisterly devotion, Lady George covered his indiscretion
+gracefully.
+
+"Oh, she is that sort of person, is she? I must have misunderstood Mr.
+Gillespie, and I will call at once, for it is so pleasant, isn't it,
+Alice dear, for girls to have companions."
+
+And yet, as she spoke, she told herself that this was an explanation
+of her brother's patience in solitude, and that it would be far safer,
+considering what Paul was, to keep an eye on this possible flirtation.
+Meanwhile, the offender felt a kind of shock at the possibilities her
+easy acquiescence opened up. He had been telling himself, with a
+certain satisfaction, that the idyll was over, leaving both him and
+her little the worse for it; and now, apparently, he was to have an
+opportunity of comparing the girl he fancied, and the girl he meant to
+marry, side by side. It was scarcely a pleasing prospect, and the
+knowledge of this made him once more return to his set purpose of
+fostering some kind of sentiment towards Alice Woodward. But the fates
+were against him. Lord George, coming in wet, but lively, from a
+constitutional, began enthusiastically, between his drainings of the
+teapot, in search of something to drink, on the charms of a girl he
+had met on the road. "A real Highland girl," continued the amiable
+idiot, regardless of his wife's storm signals, "with a lot of jolly
+curly hair: not exactly pretty, you know, but fresh as a daisy, bright
+as a bee. I couldn't help thinking, you know, how much better you
+would all feel, Blanche, if you went out for a blow instead of
+sticking at home."
+
+"We should not come into the drawing-room with dirty boots if we did,
+should we, Alice dear? Just look at him, Mrs. Woodward! He isn't fit
+for ladies' society, is he?"
+
+Lord George gave a hasty glance at his boots, swallowed his tepid
+washings of the teapot with a muttered apology, and retired, leaving
+his wife to breathe freely.
+
+"That must be Miss Carmichael, I suppose," she remarked easily. "I am
+beginning to be quite anxious to see this paragon, Paul."
+
+"Nothing easier," replied her brother, shortly; "if you will be ready
+at three to-morrow afternoon, I'll take you over and introduce you."
+
+Positively she felt relieved when, with some excuse about seeing
+whether the sportsmen had returned, he left the drawing-room. It was
+like being on the brink of a volcano when he was there, and yet, poor,
+dear old fellow, he behaved very sweetly.
+
+She said as much to him, being clever enough to take his real
+affection for her into consideration, during a brief quarter of an
+hour's respite from duty which she managed in his business-room before
+dinner.
+
+"I wish _I_ had a snuggery like this, Paul," she said, plaintively
+shaking her head over his long length spread out on one side of the
+fire, and Lord George's on the other, "but women always bear the brunt
+of everything. If the barometer would go up I could manage; but it
+_will_ go down, and though I've taken away the one from the hall,
+Major Tombs has an aneroid in his room, and _will_ speak about it. And
+Ricketts--I have had her for five years, George, you remember--gave me
+warning to-day. It seems Jessie took advantage of the fire in
+Ricketts's room to dry one of Paul's wet suits, and Ricketts thought
+it was a burglar. She went into hysterics first, and now says she
+never was so insulted in her life."
+
+Paul laughed. "Would it do any good if I apologised?"
+
+"Wish it had been mine," grumbled Lord George. "This is my last coat
+but one, and the sleeves of it are damp. I can't think why the dickens
+the women can't turn 'em inside out."
+
+"Oh! of course, it's the women again, George, but the footman wants to
+know if he is expected to grease boots, and I don't know what to say.
+Someone used to grease them, I remember----"
+
+"Oh! if it comes to that," said Paul, hotly, "I'll grease 'em myself.
+Why should you bother, Blanche?"
+
+"Now that is _so_ like a man! Someone must bother; and really servants
+are so troublesome about boots, though I must own one would think you
+men were centipedes; there are fifty pairs in the laundry at present.
+And Mrs. Woodward says her husband has smoked too many cigars and
+drunk too much whiskey and soda. As if it were my fault." Poor Lady
+George spoke quite tearfully.
+
+"Well, I offered to take him out, but he said his waterproof wasn't
+waterproof. What the dickens does a man mean by coming to the West
+Highlands without a waterproof? One doesn't expect anything else in a
+woman, of course, but a man!"
+
+Lady George dried her eyes disconsolately. "Oh! it is no use, George,
+importing the antagonism of sex into the matter. It is bad enough
+without that. If we only had a billiard-room I could manage. Do you
+know I think it quite criminal to build a house in the country without
+one."
+
+"There are the Kindergarten toys, my dear," suggested her husband;
+"the children seem to have tired of them."
+
+"Oh, don't try to be funny, please!" retorted his wife; "that would be
+the last straw. And nurse says it is because they cannot get out that
+they are so cross. Just when I was counting on them, too, as a
+distraction."
+
+"Well, Blazes was that effectually this morning," replied her husband,
+with an air of conviction; "he howled straight on end for two hours,
+and when I went into the nursery to see what was up, I found the poor
+little beggar sobbing over some grievance or another."
+
+Lady George flushed up. "It was only because he couldn't come down
+with the others--I really can't have him; he is so unreasonable, and
+Mrs. Woodward doesn't believe in my system."
+
+"Never mind, my dear Blanche," said her brother, consolingly. "It
+seems to answer nicely with good children, and children ought to be
+good, you know. And the barometer is going up, it really is."
+
+"For wind, I suppose," replied his sister, tragically. Apparently it
+was for wind; at any rate, Will Cameron coming up to see the laird on
+business next day observed casually that this must be about the end of
+it; an optimistic remark which has a certain definite significance in
+a land of gales. Even the sportsmen were driven to the cold comfort of
+examining the action of each other's weapons with veiled contempt,
+discussing the respective merits of each other's accoutrements, from
+cartridge cases to leggings, and trying to forget that the wild
+weather was making the birds still wilder than they had been already.
+It appeared to have the same effect upon humanity. Sam Woodward, who
+had been a thorn in poor Lady George's side from the beginning, fell
+out with the only man who could tolerate him, and thereafter told his
+sister it was a beastly hole, and that he meant to make the _mater_
+give him some oof, when he would cut and run to some place where
+they weren't so beastly stuck up. Mr. Woodward, senior, after
+roaming about disconsolately waiting for the post, was only
+appeased by Lady George's suggestion that he would be doing yeoman's
+service to the cause of civilisation if he composed a letter to the
+Postmaster-General, calling attention to the disgraceful irregularity
+in her Majesty's mails to Gleneira; whereupon he retired into the
+library and wasted several sheets of foolscap.
+
+It was on the children, however, that the weather had the most
+disastrous effect; so much so that Lord George, returning in the
+afternoon from a blow with Paul--whose patience had given way over a
+point-blank refusal on the under footman's part to stop another hour
+if he was not allowed a fire in his room before dinner--found his wife
+in the nursery standing helplessly before Blazes, who, in his flannel
+nightgown, was seated stolidly on the floor. Adam and Eve, meanwhile,
+were eyeing the scene from their beds, where, however, they had a
+liberal supply of toys.
+
+"Oh, George!" she cried appealingly, "he has such a hard, hard heart;
+and I am sure he must get it from your side of the family, so _do_ you
+think you could do anything with him?"
+
+"Put him to bed like the others," suggested his father, weakly,
+showing signs, at the same time, of beating a retreat, but pausing at
+the sight of his wife's face, which, to tell the truth, was not far
+from tears.
+
+"So I have, but he gets out again, and nurse can't hold him in all the
+time. Besides, it was Mrs. Woodward's fault for being so disagreeable
+about my system; but the children were naughty, poor dears; only, of
+course, Adam and Eve went to bed when they were told--you see, they
+are _reasonable_, and knew that if they _did_ they would be allowed to
+come down again to dessert--and then they didn't really mind going to
+bed to please me, the little dears. But Blasius actually slapped Mrs.
+Woodward's face, and then she said he ought to be whipped. So we had
+quite a discussion about it, and, in the heat of the moment, I told
+Blasius he must stop in bed till he said he was sorry. And now I can't
+make him stop in bed or say a word. He just sits and smiles."
+
+Here their mother's tone became so unlike smiles that Adam and Eve,
+from their little beds, begged their ducksom mummie not to cry, even
+though Blazes was the baddest little boy _they_ had ever seen.
+
+"If he won't say it, you can't make him," remarked Lord George aside,
+with conviction. "If I were you I'd chance it."
+
+"But I can't. You see, I told Mrs. Woodward I could manage my own
+children, and so I've made quite a point of it with Blasius. I can't
+give in."
+
+Lord George, who was in the Foreign Office, and great on diplomatic
+relations, whistled softly. "Always a mistake to claim when you can't
+coerce--or retaliate." Then he added, as if a thought had struck him,
+"Look here! has he had his tea? No! then hand him over to me; I'll put
+him in the little room by the business room. Nobody will hear him
+there even if he does howl, and as he gets hungry he will cave in, I
+expect. At any rate, he can't get out of bed there, and I don't think
+he can like it."
+
+But for some unexplained reason, possibly original sin, Blasius
+elected to be quite cheerful over the transfer. He informed the nurse,
+as she put on his dressing-gown, that he was going to "'moke with
+daddy," and when he reached the little bare room, which was almost a
+closet, he tucked the same dressing-gown round his little legs very
+carefully as he plumped down on the floor.
+
+"Blazeth's goin' to stay here a long, long time," he said,
+confidently. "Dood-night, daddy dear."
+
+In fact, he was so quiet that more than once his father, smoking in
+the next room, got up to open the door softly and peer in to see if by
+chance any evil could have befallen the small rebel; only to retire
+finally, quite discomforted by the superior remark that "when
+Blazeth's horry Blazeth's 'll let daddy know." To retire and meditate
+upon the mysterious problem of fatherhood, and that duty to the soul
+which, somehow or another, you have beckoned out of the unknown. In
+nine times out of ten, thoughtlessly, to suit your own pleasure; in
+ninety-nine times out of a hundred to bring it up to suit your own
+convenience, to minister to your amusement, to justify your theories.
+
+Lady George, coming in with the falling twilight, when the duties of
+afternoon tea were over in the drawing-room, found her husband, minus
+a cigar, brooding over the fire.
+
+"I've done it, Blanche," he said defiantly.
+
+"Done what?"
+
+"Beaten him. I knew I should some day."
+
+His wife gave quite a sharp little cry. "Oh, George! and I trusted
+you. I trusted you so entirely, because you knew it was wrong. And now
+it can never be undone--never! You have ruined everything--all the
+confidence, and the love--Oh! George, how could you?"
+
+The man's face was a study, but it was one which few women could
+understand, for there is something in a righteous disregard of
+weakness which seems brutal to most of them; for to them justice, like
+everything else, is an emotion.
+
+"The little beggar bit me," he began, rather sheepishly, and then
+suddenly he laughed. "He was awfully quiet, you know, and I thought he
+was really getting hungry; so I went in, and by Jove! Blanche, he had
+eaten nearly a whole dog biscuit! Paul keeps them there, you know, for
+the puppy. Well, I felt he had me on the hip as it were, and if it
+hadn't been for your face, I'd have given in--like a fool. So I sate
+down and talked to him--like--like a father. And then he suddenly
+slipped off my knee like an eel, and bit me on the calf. Got tired, I
+suppose, and upon my soul, I don't wonder--we had been at it for
+hours, remember. And then--I don't think I lost my temper, Blanche--I
+don't, indeed; but it seemed to come home to me that it was he or I--a
+sort of good fight, you know. So I told him that I wasn't going to be
+bothered by him any more. He had had his fun, and must pay for it, as
+he would have to do till the day of his death. And then I gave him a
+regular spanking--yes! I did--and he deserved it."
+
+There was the oddest mixture of remorse, defiance, pain, and pride in
+her husband's honest face, but Lady George could see nothing, think of
+nothing, save the overthrow of her system, her belief.
+
+"I wonder you aren't ashamed of yourself!" she cried, quite
+passionately. "It isn't as if he could reason about it as you can--it
+isn't as if he understood--it is brute force to him, nothing more----"
+
+"That's just it, you see," protested the culprit, feebly, "if he
+_could_ reason."
+
+"And now the memory must be between you two always, and it isn't as it
+used to be in the old barbarous days. Parents nowadays care for
+something more than the old tyranny. We have a respect for our
+children as for human beings like ourselves. And now you will never
+be--or at least you _ought_ never to be able to look him in the face
+again! Just think what it means, George!" Blanche, as she stood there
+with disclaiming hands and eloquent voice, felt herself no mean
+exponent of the new order of things, and rose to the occasion. "If he
+had been a man, you dared not have beaten him, so it was mean, brutal,
+unworthy. How can you expect the child to forget it? Would you, if you
+were in his place? No! He will never forget it, and the memory must
+come between you----"
+
+"Blazeth's horry."
+
+A round, full, almost manly voice, and a round, broad face, seamed
+with tears, yet strangely cheerful withal, as if, the bolt having
+fallen, the sky was clear once more.
+
+Blanche dropped to her knees, and, secure in her own conscience, held
+out her arms to the little advancing figure, but the child steered
+past them. It was fact, and fact alone, which impressed the sturdy
+brain, which day by day was gathering up its store of experience
+against the hand-to-hand fight with life, which, please God, would
+come by and bye--the life which was no Kindergarten game, the life of
+strange, unknown dangers, against which the only weapon is the sheer
+steel of self-control. And this was a little foretaste of the fight in
+which daddy had won; daddy, who could do nothing but clasp the little
+figure close to his heart as it climbed to his knee, and then walk
+away with it to the window to hide his own tears.
+
+His wife, standing where Blasius had passed her by, could see those
+two round, red heads, so strangely like each other, though the one had
+a shock of rough hair and the other was beginning to grow bald. And
+she could hear that round full voice with a ring of concern in it.
+
+"Blazeth's horry he hurt daddy such a lot. And daddy hurt Blazeths
+awful; but he's a dood boy now. And oh, daddy! I don't fink them
+bickeys is half as nice as daddy's--and Blazeths would like one,
+becauth he's a dood boy."
+
+The storm was over. The sky was clear, and Lord George, as he carried
+his youngest born pick-a-back upstairs to the nursery, felt that there
+was a stronger tie between them than there had ever been before; a
+strange new tie between him and the little soul he had beckoned out of
+the unknown--the little soul to whom in future "Daddy says not" would
+represent that whole concentrated force of law and order from which it
+was at present sheltered, but which by and bye would be its only
+teacher. And yet, when brought face to face with his wife's arguments,
+he, being of the dumb kind, could only say:
+
+"You see, my dear, Blazes is _not_ a Kindergarten child, now is he?"
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+And still it rained!
+
+"Paul, this is awful," mourned poor Lady George, on the eighth
+morning. "The post hasn't come at all for two days, and it is
+positively heartrending to see poor Mr. Woodward trying to read
+Monday's share-list for the third time. Then the beef hasn't come
+either, and their maid won't eat any other meat. Hot roast twice a
+day, and cold for lunch. All the servants have given warning, and I
+don't believe the Woodwards will stand it."
+
+"Let them give warning, too," broke in her brother, hotly; then seeing
+his sister's face, went on after his wont, consolingly. "Don't bother,
+please, I'm not worth it. Besides, if Miss Woodward is going to do me
+the honour of marrying Gleneira, it is as well that she should learn
+to stand a little damp."
+
+"A little damp! Besides, she will have time to learn afterwards--women
+always do after they are married--till then, they really have a right
+to be amused. Can't you suggest something to cheer us up? I'm at my
+wits' end. Even the book-box has gone astray, and it is so hard to
+make conversation when you don't see the society papers."
+
+"Shall I black my face or stand on my head and sing a comic song? I've
+done both in my salad days."
+
+"Oh, don't be unkind, Paul, when I have taken so much trouble!"
+
+"You have, indeed," he echoed, walking to the window moodily, feeling
+at once irritated and annoyed. Personally he would have found no
+difficulty in amusing himself with Marjory, whom he had not seen for a
+week, so close at hand. And suddenly the thought of someone else who
+had had the knack of making time pass pleasantly occurred to him.
+"I'll tell you what I'll do, Blanche, I'll wire to Mrs. Vane to come
+at once. I expected to hear two days ago if she was to be with us this
+week or next; but she would come anywhere to do a kindness, and she
+would keep us alive--rain or no rain."
+
+"It would be too late," returned his sister, dejectedly. "To do any
+good she should be here to-day. I will not be responsible for another
+hour--another minute of this detestable climate." She spoke quite
+tragically, but her brother was staring out of the window with all his
+eyes.
+
+"By all that's impossible! Yes, it is. Hooray, Blanche! There she is."
+
+"Who! What!"
+
+"Violet! Violet Vane in Macniven's machine. How on earth----" He was
+out of the door full of excitement, followed by his sister, who was
+heard giving tragic orders for hot baths and blankets.
+
+"She must be half drowned," said Mrs. Woodward, hastening from her
+room at the sound of wheels to join the little circle crowding round
+the window to watch the arrival. "She will go to bed at once, of
+course."
+
+"And have something warm," said one voice.
+
+"More likely inflammation of the lungs. I remember----" suggested
+another.
+
+"Bronchitis, at least--poor thing--poor thing----" put in a third.
+
+To which Cassandra chorus came the sound of a musical laugh and a
+perfect ripple of chatter, as Paul, with a new cheerfulness in his
+face, ushered in the daintiest little figure, which, as he held the
+door open, looked back at him to finish the recital of her adventures
+with words, "It was such fun."
+
+"My dear Mrs. Vane," cried Lady George, "you must be dead!"
+
+"Only with laughing, I assure you. I am not a bit wet, thanks. I got
+them to lend me a tarpaulin jacket and a sou'-wester. But Captain
+Macleod tells me I was not expected--I am so sorry, but really I did
+write."
+
+"The post is shamefully irregular," put in Mr. Woodward, majestically;
+"it did not come yesterday, and I have no doubt it will not come
+to-day."
+
+"But it has! I brought it. Peter Macniven--that was my
+driver--proposed I should give it a lift, and Donald Post said it
+would save time if I took out the Gleneira letters myself. So I did.
+They are in my bag downstairs, Paul--quite a large bundle for Mr.
+Woodward; and all the picture papers, and a packet of chocolates from
+Fuller's. And, oh! by the way, Lady George, there was a basket of beef
+and a box of books lying for you at the Oban pier, so I took the
+liberty of bringing them along."
+
+"My dear--my dear Mrs. Vane!"
+
+Lady George positively could say no more. Here was a guest, indeed. It
+was as if a glint of sunshine had come into the house; so that after a
+time the young man with a big head, whom Lady George had invited
+because he could recite poetry to the young ladies, and who had for
+the last few days been elaborating a sonnet on suicide, went hurriedly
+out of the room to commit to paper the opening lines of a lyric, "To a
+sea breeze sweeping away a storm." It was the same with everyone in
+the house, and even the maids bustled to get her room in order, and
+the butler, after laying an extra place at the dinner-table, remarked
+in the housekeeper's room that now, perhaps, the dining-room would
+have conversation that was worth listening to.
+
+Only Paul, remembering her ways of old, and that, spirits or no
+spirits, the long journey must have fatigued one who was past the
+first untiringness of youth, urged her to rest; but with a little
+familiar nod of comprehension she set the very idea aside with scorn.
+Thereby, to say sooth, starting fair with him by arousing once more
+that tender admiration for pluck which, despite asseverations to the
+contrary, most men have for courage and fire in a woman. Paul Macleod,
+at any rate, felt it keenly when she came, plumaged like some delicate
+butterfly, into the drawing-room before dinner, causing Mr. Woodward
+to put down the share-list without a sigh, and Sam, who had been
+laying down the law loudly, to become bashfully silent. And then when,
+in consequence of her being the Honourable Mrs. Vane by virtue of a
+most dishonourable husband, Paul took her down to dinner, how
+different that dinner was! He recognised it gratefully; recognised the
+readiness of her smile, the art which her bright eyes had of making
+people believe in themselves and feel that they, too, had something to
+say worth the saying. The art, in short, of the hostess, which Lady
+George, with all her cleverness, had not; for the simple reason that
+she thought too much about the effect she was producing. And Violet
+Vane's worst enemies might call her artificial, but they could never
+have called her self-conscious or selfish. While, as for the
+artificiality, a woman must needs be that who is deadly weary, and who
+has given herself bright eyes and a ready tongue by means of chloric
+ether. Violet had to slip away for another dose ere she could face
+what to her was the dreariest, deadliest hour of the day--the time
+when the ladies wait patiently for the men to come up from the wine
+and the cigars; for she was frankly, unblushingly, a man's woman, and
+would confess as much to anyone with a smile. And wherefore not? She
+had lived among them all her life. She had no babies to discuss, had
+no experience of English housekeeping, and felt no sympathy with
+woman's rights or wrongs; for the simple reason that she herself had
+never felt the least disqualification of sex. She was _bonne camarade_
+in every fibre of her mind and body; yet withal a thorough little
+lady.
+
+"Paul, my friend," she said, as he made his way straight to her sofa,
+where, with wide, bright eyes, she had been taking sights for future
+steering, "you can have five minutes by the clock, and then monsieur
+will be on duty again. Will he not? Yes! no doubt five minutes is
+short; it will not suffice to tell me all you have to tell, will it?
+But I would rather leave it for to-morrow. For I am tired, Paul, so
+tired, and I don't want to be cross."
+
+Something in her voice touched him. "Of course, you are tired. I know
+that. But when was our dear lady ever cross?"
+
+The old familiar title, given in the remote Indian station to the
+dainty little woman who had made life so pleasant to so many, came to
+his lips naturally, and the scent of the jasmine she wore carried him
+back to the days when it had seemed an integral part of consciousness;
+since life was divided into delirium-haunted forgetfulness and
+confused awakenings to the familiar perfume. And those are things a
+man never forgets. She laughed, though the words sent a throb to her
+heart.
+
+"Cross?" she echoed; "I am always cross when people are dull. And you
+are dull to-night, Paul. Why?"
+
+Those bright eyes were full of meaning, and he hesitated over the
+remark that he had been waiting for the sunshine of her presence. She
+laughed again, this time with an odd little ring in it. "My dear Paul,
+you should not need sunshine nowadays." There was no mistaking her
+intent, and he winced visibly.
+
+"I always said you had antennae, Violet," he replied, with a flush;
+"but how on earth have you found that out already?"
+
+She paused for a moment, and a mad desire to quote a proverb about
+thieves came over her. So it was true, then! True, and she--she was
+too late! She set her teeth firmly over her own pain. "Does it
+generally need such great acumen to discover when Paul Macleod is in
+love, _mon ami?_"
+
+The sarcasm struck home, and he rose, feeling the position untenable.
+"Come and sing," he said; "it is years since I heard you."
+
+She shook her head. "It will not do, Paul; not even though it is five
+years six months seventeen days and a few hours or so since we sang
+'La ci darem' together. The five minutes is not up yet, so sit down,
+please, and tell me who these people are whom you want to amuse. Or,
+stay! I will catalogue them, and then you can correct my mistakes.
+Your sister? How handsome she is, yet not in the least like you. Lord
+George? A perfect angel, with a twinkle in his eye. He is to be my
+best friend. Your Miss Woodward? Alice is a pretty name, Paul; and her
+hair shall be of what colour it shall please God. Am I right,
+Benedict? Papa Woodward? Have a care, Paul! he studies the share-list
+too much; so have it in Government securities. Mamma Woodward? What
+her daughter will be at that age; it is such an advantage to a man,
+Paul, to see exactly what his future will be. Master Woodward? No! I
+will leave you to describe him."
+
+Paul winced again. "You are very clever, Violet--suppose you pass on
+to the others----"
+
+"I told you I was evil-tempered. Then there is the young man who
+wrote a sonnet to somebody's eyebrow--probably mine--between the soup
+and fish. Two young ladies colourless--your sister is clever, too,
+Paul--and a couple of men to match. Finally the Moth."
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Miss Jones, or is she Miss Smith? I met her in Devonshire with
+another school friend. She was Watteau then--cream and roses. I met
+her, too, on a yacht--anchors and lanyards. And here, like Lady
+George, she is _moyen-âge_."
+
+"But why the Moth?"
+
+"Because she takes her colour from what she preys upon; and she frets
+my garment! That is all, except the lady who bicycles and thinks
+Gleneira too hilly, and the man who takes photographs."
+
+"My dear Violet!" laughed Paul; "you are a witch."
+
+"Pardon me! I am an ass--all ears. And Bertie, Palmer, and Gordon come
+next week. I'm glad of that; one can't make bricks without mud. Straw
+requires the baser clay."
+
+"Straw! that is hardly complimentary to your sex!"
+
+"Pardon me again! the highest duty of a woman is to please man, and he
+is proverbially tickled by a straw. So now for the neighbours."
+
+"None."
+
+Violet Vane's eyebrows went up in derision. "There is no Sahara in
+Lorneshire, and you have been here for three weeks--or is it a month?"
+
+"To be accurate, a month and four days."
+
+"Dear me! what a long time it takes to put up curtains."
+
+"Very. I am sure those five minutes are over, Violet. Won't you come
+and sing for us?"
+
+"How--how dreadfully dull you must have been, Paul!"
+
+"Dreadfully. Blanche! will you try and persuade Mrs. Vane to sing to
+us--she is obdurate with me."
+
+Lady George, delighted at her brother's virtue in seeking to break up
+a _tête-a-tête_, was urgent in her appeals, and Mrs. Vane passed to
+the piano, airily.
+
+"There is music here," cried Lord George, officiously producing a book
+from the canterbury. Mrs. Vane took it with a gracious smile.
+
+"Bach! Corelli! This is yours, I suppose, Miss Woodward?"
+
+"No! I don't play," replied Alice, and Mrs. Vane turned instantly to
+the flyleaf.
+
+"There are no songs in that book," remarked Paul, black as thunder,
+laying his hands on the volume. "Not that it matters--for Mrs. Vane
+used not to need music----"
+
+"Nor does she now," retorted the little lady, laughing, as she sate
+down, saying as she did so, in an undertone, "Does Marjory Carmichael
+play Bach well, Paul? I hope so; he is dreadful when murdered."
+
+The reply, if reply there came, was lost in her sudden burst into one
+of those French _chansons_ in which laughter and tears are so closely
+interwoven that the mixture is apt to confuse the insular
+understanding. Her singing was, like herself, bright, gracious,
+fluent, with the rare perfection of training which conceals art.
+
+"She reminds me of Piccolomini," said Mr. Woodward, in pompous
+delight, feeling himself the better for the remark, after the fashion
+of men who are no longer afraid of being considered old. "A most
+charming little person altogether. Who is she?"
+
+"The widow of an Honourable--a Colonel--one of the Wentworths, I
+suppose," replied Lady George, yielding to the reflected glory of a
+successful guest. "She was very kind to Paul when he was ill in India,
+and we are all very fond of her. A most desirable friend for him to
+have."
+
+"Most desirable!" echoed Mr. Woodward; and Blanche felt that she had
+been wise, since no one could tell how Paul would behave with a woman
+of that sort. She might have felt still more doubtful if she had seen
+the desirable friend after she reached the seclusion of her own room,
+sitting dry-eyed and haggard before the looking-glass, as if to read
+the ravages of time in each faintly-growing wrinkle.
+
+"I have been a fool!" she said, half aloud, as she rose; "but it may
+not be too late. I thought at first he was in love with that girl; but
+it is not she. Oh, why! Why didn't I tell him I was rich now, instead
+of waiting like a romantic idiot to see if he could still care for me?
+Care for me! As if any man wouldn't care for a woman such as I, if she
+chose to let him care. Well! I must sleep now; I can't afford to look
+older than I am." So she opened her dressing-case, took out a bottle
+of chloral, measured herself out a full dose, and half an hour
+afterwards was sleeping peacefully, like a child.
+
+When she woke the sun was streaming in at the open window--for she was
+one of those to whom the close atmosphere of English houses is
+unendurable--and she curled herself round comfortably in her bed to
+consider the new aspect of affairs before rising to face them. In a
+way she was to be pitied, for in sending Paul Macleod to Kashmir, in
+order to buy a silk carpet, she had really touched the highest point
+of self-abnegation of which she was capable. She had done it to save
+him; for what? For this colourless girl who would never understand his
+odd mixture of sentimentality and worldliness? No! not for that. Even
+as a friend she could not stand by and see him ruin his prospects of
+happiness in that fashion. Had she not hesitated herself in those old
+days, when, by simply leaving a man who disgraced her every hour and
+moment of his life, she could, after a brief period, no doubt of
+horrible humiliation, have married Paul herself? She had hesitated
+because of his future, for nothing else; and was she to stand by and
+see him ruin it for no just cause, since she was wealthy enough now
+for all his wants? There was a sufficiency of high moral tone in this
+view of the question to serve her purpose, which she strengthened by
+telling herself that if she had found Paul properly devoted to his
+heiress, she would once more have sacrificed herself. All is fair,
+says the proverb, in love and war; but Mrs. Vane felt much was fair
+because it was not love, and came down to breakfast determined to see
+what could be done. For Paul's sake first, of course, and then?--for
+the present Mrs. Vane decided to leave that alone.
+
+Despite the sunshine, the menkind came down slackly, grumbling at a
+real shooting day being just "nippet awa by the Sawbath." Obedient,
+nevertheless, to the order for church parade at the schoolhouse,
+which, being of modest dimensions, overflowed after a time into the
+road, where the latest comers contented themselves with sitting on the
+turf-capped dyke beneath the chestnut tree, where they could just hear
+the swell of the responses, and join in the hymns if they chose. Mrs.
+Vane, standing during the _Venite_ beside Paul, could see these
+outdoor worshippers, and rather envied them, being at heart a thorough
+little Bohemian. Yet the interior interested her quick brain also, and
+she watched Lady George with furtive amusement, as the course of
+service brought to that lady a dim suspicion that she had lost her
+place. For, despite Mr. Gillespie's suggestion of a second and English
+"diet" for the visitors, Blanche had preferred to bring them to the
+Gaelic; moved thereto by a vague feeling that it gave, as it were, a
+_cachet_ to the laird of Gleneira, with whose importance she was
+anxious to impress the Woodwards. The effect, however, was somewhat
+disastrous, since Alice looked shocked and surprised, Sam laughed, and
+Mrs. Woodward, after a frantic effort to follow the Psalms, gave up
+the struggle. Mr. Woodward had--Blanche felt fortunately--remained at
+home, for he was of the stern, uncompromising section of British
+laymen who only attend service on high days, and have, in consequence,
+strong opinions as to the necessity of the Athanasian Creed to the
+stability of the English Church. Paul, tall and listless, looked so
+persistently towards one dark corner, that at last Mrs. Vane's
+watchful eyes, following his, discovered an attraction in the girl
+playing the harmonium. And then it struck her that the voluntary had
+been a bit of Corelli! Yet that was not the sort of face to make Paul
+stare, as he undoubtedly was staring. She looked up at him quickly,
+and with a real shock recognised something in his expression which she
+had not expected, something which roused her to a sudden flame. It was
+almost a relief when Donald Post, stealing in on tiptoe noisily,
+caused a general stir, followed by an all-pervading smell of
+sealing-wax from the other dark corner, which showed that Mr. McColl
+was sealing up the bag; Lady George's face the while being an
+unsuccessful attempt to combine horror and unconsciousness, while her
+husband's, much to her annoyance, openly reflected the children's
+unabashed interest. It was a greater relief still, when the sermon
+came to an end, the letters were handed round, and, with joyful barks,
+the collies rushed out, followed by the quality. All but Mrs. Vane,
+who stood listening to a fugue of Bach's with a little fine smile on
+her face. Inaction was over, and she must survey this new difficulty
+without delay.
+
+"Don't wait," she said to Paul, lightly; "I love Bach, and Miss
+Carmichael plays charmingly."
+
+He said a bad word under his breath as he passed out, and yet for the
+life of him he could not be angry with her. She saw through him, of
+course; right through to the very worst part of him, and yet she was
+his friend. When he joined the gathering outside Lady George was
+already shaking hands benignly with all and sundry, whispering between
+whiles to Mrs. Woodward that it was a Highland custom, and so much
+more conducive to proper relations between landlord and tenant than
+the English standoffishness. In fact, she was in her element, in a new
+part of great capabilities. Paul, on the other hand, merely nodded and
+smiled; but his great personal beauty, his reputation as a soldier and
+a sportsman, went further towards popularity among both the men and
+the women than all his sister's condescension. And still the Bach
+fugue went on, being, in truth, susceptible of many repeats and _da
+capos_, while Marjory, over the music desk, gave annoyed glances at
+the dainty little figure at the door. During the past week of Paul's
+absence, the charm of his personality had faded, leaving behind it the
+memory that he was hardly of her world; that even if he had been, he
+was hardly the sort of man with whom she could have sympathy. And yet,
+with the sight of him, had come back the old excuses, the old
+conviction that he slandered himself. It did not make her feel any the
+more kindly towards the world which held him back from his better
+self; towards women, for instance, like this one at the door.
+
+"Are you not coming, Violet? The others have gone on."
+
+Paul's voice had a note of warning in it, but she never heeded his
+thunderings like others did, and in that lay the secret of her power
+over him.
+
+"I am waiting for you to introduce me to Miss Carmichael," she said
+calmly; "then we can walk home together. I want to ask her where she
+learned to play Bach."
+
+A transparent prevarication, but one it was impossible to set aside;
+nor, to tell truth, did Paul wish to set it aside. The temptation
+presented to him by this little Eve in a Paris costume, was far too
+welcome for that; so welcome that the very excess of his own fierce
+desire to yield to it made him silent, while Mrs. Vane set herself
+deliberately to pierce through the girl's shield of stiff politeness.
+Not a difficult task with one so quick to respond to the least touch
+of sympathy; besides, Mrs. Vane in her girlhood had lived in the great
+world of music, among people who were to Marjory as prophets and
+kings. So she was soon deep in eager inquiry, and positively felt
+impatient as, when they were passing old Peggy's cottage, little Paul
+started up from the brackens with a quick message that his grannie
+would like to see Miss Marjory, if she could spare time.
+
+"What a pretty little fellow," remarked Mrs. Vane. "Is Paul a common
+name about here? or is it a compliment to the laird?" She asked the
+question carelessly, and was genuinely surprised at the look it
+brought to the elder Paul's face.
+
+"It is certainly not out of compliment to me, so I presume it is a
+common name--since you gave no other alternative." This was a manifest
+loss of temper on his part, not to be justified so far as she could
+see; therefore, in her opinion, a thing to be decently covered at the
+time, however much it might mean when considered. So she remarked
+that, common or not, it was a name she liked. And then she said
+good-bye charmingly, warning Miss Carmichael that she must expect to
+be disturbed for more Bach; and so drifted on daintily.
+
+"She is quite delightful, your Miss Carmichael," she began,
+negligently, after a pause.
+
+Paul, who, after a handshake with Marjory, had rejoined her, looking
+better pleased with himself, decided on adopting her mood.
+
+"Very; though I fail to see why you should use the possessive pronoun.
+She would not thank you, believe me."
+
+"Because you discovered her, that is all. She is charming. Like
+Brynhild, brave and bold."
+
+"Cruel and cold."
+
+"Nonsense. Men like you, my friend, of the earth earthy, are alarmed
+by the glistening circle of fire. Few have the courage to leap it and
+wake the heart within. Gudrun, duly decked in diamonds and given away
+by her father in St. George's, Hanover-square, is more in your line.
+Better so, for Sigurd is a double-faced scoundrel, and Brynhild's
+heart is too good to break." Her voice grew serious, a little bitter
+smile came to her face; for Violet had a heart of her own.
+
+"I quite agree with you."
+
+The jest was gone both from his mind and hers, and she changed the
+subject adroitly, certain of one thing, that here was a weapon ready
+to her hand. Love _versus_ Greed-of-Gold! Really, that method of
+putting it sounded quite pretty. And then suddenly a fierce pang of
+jealousy shot through her as she thought of the look she had caught
+unawares on Paul's face. Alice Woodward would never rouse such a look
+as that--never! Would it not be better to leave things as they were?
+But, then, why should they not be turned to something better? If,
+somehow, they could be manipulated so as to disgust him both with mere
+money and mere affection, it would be better for all concerned. For
+him, above all, since he could neither live without love or money; and
+she could give him both.
+
+As they talked commonplaces during the remainder of the walk, Paul
+felt more contented than he had done for a week, even while he was
+asking himself captiously why this should be so. To see the girl you
+like, and say not a single word to her ear alone, to shake hands with
+her and feel no desire to prolong the touch, to look in her face and
+see nothing that was not clear and cold in her eyes, was not, could
+not, be comforting. Clearly his feeling for her was not to be classed
+as a passion. And yet how glad he had been to see her. How contented
+he had been to walk beside her, and what a sense of _bien-être_ her
+presence gave him. And it was distinctly satisfactory to find it so
+little disturbing. Then, recognising the fact that he was becoming
+absent in the effort to remember the exact look on her face as she
+shook hands with him, he set the thought of her from him angrily. He
+would not be the sport of a mere sentimental fancy, unworthy of a man
+who had the courage to face his own manhood.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XIII.
+
+
+The next morning Paul, smoking his usual cigar of proprietorship about
+the stables and dog kennels, saw Mrs. Vane coming with a pretty little
+air of hesitation along one of the shrubbery paths.
+
+"_Ben trovato!_ Who would have thought of finding you here?" she cried
+gaily, just as if she had not been watching to catch him from her
+window for the last ten minutes. "I have missed my way to the Lodge;
+show it to me, please."
+
+He looked into her clever, charming face, understanding perfectly what
+she was at, and yet the _finesse_ did not irritate him as it would
+have done in another woman. Besides, in this instance, she was just a
+little too clever, as he meant to prove to her.
+
+"By all means," he replied coolly; "I was just going there myself to
+apologise to Mrs. Cameron for my sister's negligence, but really the
+weather has been so bad."
+
+Mrs. Vane shot an amused glance at her tall companion. So Paul meant
+to ride the high horse, that poorest of all defences against a quick
+wit; like that of lance against bayonet, dignified and circumambient,
+but quite ineffectual.
+
+"But I am not going to see Mrs. Cameron," she retorted frankly; "I am
+going to see if Miss Carmichael will be kind and play Bach to me; it
+is a long time since I heard him played so well. You used to be fond
+of him, too, in the old days, Paul. Don't you remember how you used to
+lie on the sofa after that fever and declare that a wife's first duty
+was to be able to play to her husband? But girls--at least, most
+girls--don't care to play nowadays unless they are professionals. And
+if they are professionals they don't care to be wives--not even to a
+Highland laird."
+
+"In regard to the present musician," replied Paul, beginning to
+dismount, "I am sure no such scheme of self-sacrifice ever entered her
+head. Miss Carmichael is charming, I admit; but she has a mission in
+life, and it is not to regulate me. That, I think, is a fair and full
+statement of the truth, except that before I came here she used to
+practise occasionally on the piano at the Big House, and, I presume,
+left her music there by mistake."
+
+Mrs. Vane stopped in an attitude of tragic despair. "There! I have
+gone and forgotten it after all, and that was my excuse for going so
+soon. You see, your sister said it had better be taken back at once,
+as none of the girls in the house played, and so it wouldn't be
+wanted."
+
+Paul bit his lip at the double thrust. "Perhaps it is as well you
+_have_ forgotten it," he said angrily; "Miss Carmichael will, no
+doubt, be able to use it herself some day soon."
+
+"That will be delightful," replied Mrs. Vane, with a sudden cessation
+of attack.
+
+Five minutes after, rather to his own surprise, Paul Macleod found
+himself talking to Marjory as he might have talked to any other girl
+of his acquaintance, and wondering how he could have been such a fool
+as to imagine himself to be in love with her. After all, he told
+himself, his first theory had been right, and the ridiculously
+unconventional familiarity of the past idyll was mainly responsible
+for the mawkish sentimentality which had attacked him of late, but
+which, thank heaven! was now over. How could it be otherwise with a
+girl like Marjory--a perfect iceberg of primness and propriety?
+
+His sense of security, joined to a certain unconfessed resentment at
+her apparent indifference as to whether he came or not, drove him into
+more effusive apologies on his sister's behalf than he would otherwise
+have made, and brought down on him a remark from Mrs. Cameron that
+"Indeed and in truth Marjory would no be going to make strangers of
+the laird and his sister, and he so kind, in and out o' the house for
+weeks, just like a bairn of her own." Whereat Mrs. Vane, stifling a
+desire to laugh at Paul's evident confusion, came to the rescue with a
+well-timed diversion about some of the household troubles which had
+been occupying Lady George.
+
+'"Deed!" said Mrs. Cameron, after listening sympathetically, "I can
+well believe it! But the warld will come to an end soon, that's one
+comfort. You see, it'll just no be possible' for Providence to put up
+wi' it much longer, for it's a' I can do to have patience wi' my small
+corner of the vineyard, an' that, praise be, is no sae bad as it might
+be, seeing that I can hand my ain wi' most folk."
+
+"But Providence can do that also, surely, Mrs. Cameron?" laughed Paul.
+
+"Maybe, an' maybe not. I grant ye it comes quits at the hinder end,
+what wi' worms that die not, an' fires that be not quenched. But it's
+a weary long time to blow at the flames o' wrath, and wadna suit me
+that's aye for havin' it out and done wi'. Lord sakes! life wad no be
+worth havin' if I had to write down a' the servant lassies cantrip's
+in a big bookie against term day, an' keep my tongue on them
+meanwhiles. And it is little the hussies would care if I did, for they
+wad ken find I'd just forgive them when the day of reckoning came, an'
+forgiveness just beats all for spoiling folk."
+
+"It's lucky for some of us," put in Mrs. Vane, with a laugh, "that
+Providence isn't of your way of thinking."
+
+"'Deed, I am not as sure of that neither. Folk would think twice o'
+breaking the law if it waant for the grips they have on mercy. It is
+just, you see, in the nature o' man to stand by his luck if the odds
+are even; but if he knows he'll get paicks he will just keep the body
+in subjection. It is the same in all things. Just look at the
+difference in the manners o' folks nowadays! Not half so good as in
+the old times when they had to stand sponsor for each word with a
+pistol shot. Why, I mind, Gleneira, your grandfather calling out
+Glenrannooh for passing him on the kirk steps without a reverence!"
+
+"I didn't know you were so bloodthirsty," remarked Paul; "and though I
+quite agree with you, theoretically, I must be careful, since you
+evidently don't believe in apologies."
+
+"Apologies," echoed Mrs. Cameron, scornfully. "No! no! Gleneira.
+They're fine healin' balm to the sinner, but I'll have none coming
+between me and my rights. There was James Gillespie telling little
+Sandy McColl to go an' apologise to wee Peter Rankin for pulling his
+hair, instead o' just giving the laddie a good skelping, and daring
+him to do it again. So the bairns just bided their time and had it out
+in a natural way, and you never saw such sichts they were. I'm no
+saying folk should not be repentant o' their sins, but they should
+just take the consequences along wi' the forgiveness."
+
+"Or follow my example and take neither," suggested the laird.
+
+Mrs. Cameron looked at him sharply, then shook her head. "Havers! that
+is what no mortal man can do, least of all, you, Gleneira, with your
+soft heart."
+
+"Soft heart!" echoed Paul, derisively. "It is only that towards you,
+Mrs. Cameron; to the world in general it is hard as adamant. Don't you
+agree with me, Miss Carmichael?"
+
+"Hard enough to ensure your peace of mind, I hope," she replied
+quietly.
+
+Violet Vane's bright eyes were on them both, and she gave an odd
+little laugh. "I wonder if it is! I should like to vivisect you and
+find out, Captain Macleod; only the process of seeing the 'wheels go
+wound,' as Toddie says in 'Helen's Babies,' might end in stopping them
+altogether. Perhaps it would be as well--for other people's hearts."
+
+"The heart is no easily damaged, anyway," put in Mrs. Cameron, with
+the air of one who knows. "Folks like to think it is, but it is
+maistly the stomach that goes wrang. I've seen a heap o' broken hearts
+in my time cured wi' camomile tea; it's just grand for the digestion."
+
+"I shall order Peter Macpherson to lay down a large bed at once,"
+began Paul, gravely.
+
+"For the sake of your victims, I suppose," interrupted Mrs. Vane.
+"Commend me to Captain Macleod, Mrs. Cameron, for shameless conceit."
+
+"Pardon me," put in Paul, "for my own." He gave a glance at Marjory,
+who was standing apart with a little fine smile of contempt on her
+face, but she took no notice of him. To tell truth she scarcely knew
+why she felt scornful, and, when they had gone, she sate down in
+defiance of her promise to her books again, telling herself that Paul
+by himself, willing to fall in with her life, was quite a different
+being from Paul expecting her to be friends with his friends--people
+whose dresses fitted them like a glove, and who looked charming. Yes,
+that was the right word!--charming from the sole of their feet to the
+crown of their heads. As if she had anything in common with such
+people!--or, for the matter of that, with Paul, himself--she, whose
+fate it was to work, and who liked that fate? Yet almost before
+Captain Macleod and his companion had reached home after the _détour_
+he begged for round the garden, Marjory had thrown down her book in a
+temper at her own stupidity, run upstairs for her hat, and was off for
+a wild, solitary scramble over the hills.
+
+Paul and his companion, meanwhile, strolling idly through the vineries
+and hothouses, she with dainty dress, draped gingerly from fear of
+stain, and vivid, whimsical face, diving like a honey-sucker at the
+perfumed flowers, were enjoying themselves thoroughly in their own
+way; so that the former, coming out at last from an atmosphere of
+stephanotis and tropical heat to face the bright, sharp air of a
+Highland glen, gave a little shiver, and told himself inconsequently
+that Violet was the most charming companion in the world. And so she
+was, being blessed with the infallible range-finder called tact; for
+half the misunderstandings of life come from people either blazing
+away at a bird that is out of shot, or blowing one to pieces,--that is
+to say, from a failure to appreciate distance and the fact that,
+though our best friend may be, so to speak, well within range over
+night, that is no reason why we should reach him with the same sight
+the next morning. In most of us feeling, tastes, dislikes, fluctuate
+with every hour; nay, more, the individual, as a whole, hovers like
+the needle of a barometer on either side of change, so that the more
+sensitive of us are conscious of the difference in ourselves at
+different times in the day, and it becomes possible for us to be
+certain that we might do that at ten o'clock at night which we could
+not do at ten o'clock in the day. Yet, despite this undoubted fact,
+most of us resent the change of position in regard to our outlook in
+life which it entails, the change of key which strict harmony
+requires. Mrs. Vane, however, was not one of the many, and, as a rule,
+when she played a dissonant note she did it out of malice
+aforethought; as she did now when, looking back at the garden with its
+low espaliers and broad walks bordered by old-fashioned flowers, she
+paused to say sweetly, "It is a charming place, Paul; you ought to be
+very happy here with her."
+
+He frowned as he held the door open for his companion to pass through;
+but he was beginning to remember that she used the bayonet deftly, and
+came to close quarters at once.
+
+"The personal pronoun, third person singular, feminine gender,
+accusative case, is rather too vague to interest me, I'm afraid. Can't
+you suggest something more concrete?"
+
+She laughed as she pointed gaily to an upper path which, after a time,
+would merge into theirs. "See! yonder are the young ladies, going
+home, as we should be also, since you will be wanted. Don't let me
+keep you, please. They will walk faster than I do, and I am used to
+being left behind to fend for myself."
+
+"Not by me," he replied, with a certain self-complacency, "and you
+never will be, I trust. I should be a brute indeed were I to forget
+all your kindness."
+
+"_Dieu mercie_," she flashed out, in sudden, uncontrollable
+resentment, "how I hate gratitude! It takes half the flavour out of
+life. I often think I should have been happier if I had not been so
+kind to people."
+
+"I have no doubt you made _them_ much happier, if that is any
+consolation to you."
+
+"Not in the slightest." Then as suddenly her irritation passed, and
+she looked up at him with a whimsical smile. "Paul," she said, "I
+believe Miss Carmichael used to set you copies--or is it Miss
+Woodward? anyhow, you are detestably didactic to-day; so it is just as
+well the others are joining us, or you would be telling me that 'Evil
+communications corrupt good manners.'"
+
+"The process is pleasant, anyhow," he replied, in one of those moments
+of recognition which come to us, even with familiar friends, as some
+quality or charm strikes us afresh; "and you couldn't corrupt my good
+temper, for you always put me into one, somehow. I believe you use
+arts and spells."
+
+She shrugged her shoulders gaily. "Burn me as a witch, by all means!
+You can afford it since the next fairly good-looking woman you meet
+will have exactly the same consolatory power. As you said, the
+personal pronoun, feminine gender, third person singular, has a wide
+application for Paul Macleod. Ah! Miss Woodward, what lovely ferns! We
+have just been going round the houses, and there is a hibiscus out
+which you ought to see. It put me in mind of India; you sent the seed
+home from our garden, I think, didn't you, Captain Macleod? We might
+go back and look at it now, and return by the beach, mightn't we? It
+is no longer, and far prettier."
+
+The result of which easy, deft manipulation of a chance meeting being
+that, ere the memory of his pleasant stroll with her had passed from
+Paul's somewhat vagrant mind, he was performing the same pilgrimage
+again under different guidance. Now, Alice Woodward was always counted
+a most agreeable girl in her world, and Paul, as in duty bound, laid
+himself out to please; yet all the time they were chatting amicably
+about Shakespeare and the musical glasses he was conscious of an
+effort, and of a desire to know what the other girls who were lagging
+behind with Violet could be laughing at so gaily.
+
+"That is the hibiscus," he said, stopping abruptly before the flower
+which, with its creamy petals and crimson heart, had ten minutes
+before carried him back to another hemisphere, another life--a
+pleasant, younger life, with more possibilities of passion in it than
+the present one.
+
+"It is very pretty," replied Alice, blandly, rather absently. "The
+colours are lovely. I really think colours improve every year. Do you
+remember at Constantinople, Captain Macleod, everyone agreed that
+there was a decided advance on Venice? In that ballet before the
+procession, you know, they really were exquisite."
+
+Paul assented cheerfully, even though he felt such memories were as
+water after wine to Mrs. Vane's appeal to the past. "It used to grow
+by the well. Ah, Paul! how young you were on those days, and how you
+used to enjoy life."
+
+That was true; and yet a well-cooked dinner and roomy stalls at a
+first-class _spectacle_ brought solid comfort more suitable to the
+coming years; besides, Violet had always had the knack of taking the
+colour out of other women, and while adapting herself more readily to
+her surroundings than most, never lost a peculiar piquant charm of her
+own which did not clash with her environment. Yet, as they strolled
+home by the beach, it occurred to him that they were all, himself
+included, out of touch with the glorious world of sea and sky and
+mountain in which they stood. And Mrs. Vane agreed, or, at any rate,
+was quick enough to read his thought, for as the girls trooped up the
+stairs finishing a discussion on the relative merits of two balls, she
+lingered in the hall to say quizzically:
+
+"Is her name Virginia, Paul? and do you fancy a desert island? That
+comes of having so much of the natural Adam left in you."
+
+"Oh, dear me! what has Blasius been doing now?" asked Lady George,
+plaintively, overhearing the last words as she came out of the morning
+room. At the same moment, as if in answer, the sturdy stump
+intermingled with bumps which usually marked Blazes' rapid descent
+from the nursery regions, was heard as a sort of running accompaniment
+to a steady stream of violent objurgations delivered with immense
+zest, in his round, full voice: "_Haud up! Ger' out, ye brute! Stiddy,
+yer deevil! Stiddy yer!_"
+
+"Nurse!" cried poor Blanche, aghast, to the stately figure, descending
+behind the stumbling, bumping, yet swift offender, "what does this
+mean? Where has Master Blasius picked up----"
+
+"Oh! if it comes to picking up, milady, that's easy sayin'. Master
+Blazes told me last night 'is bath was 'devilish 'ot,' and when I
+spoke to him serious told me it was the Capting."
+
+"Really, Paul, I think you might be more careful," began his sister,
+aggrievedly, when he interrupted her.
+
+"I'm not responsible for _that_, anyhow! What on earth is he up to
+now?" For Blasius, having reached the bottom of the stairs, had, so to
+speak, fallen tooth and nail on the sheepskin rug, which he was
+bestriding with vehement kicks and upbraidings, as he clutched on to
+the wool wildly--
+
+"_Ger' up, ye deevil! Haud still, ye dommed brute!_"
+
+"It is through Mary's young man as she's took up with bein' a
+shepherd, milady," said nurse, swooping down on the child. "An'
+through her never 'aving seen sheep shore, that's what it is."
+
+Paul burst into a guffaw of laughter. "Old Angus! I swear to you,
+Violet, it's the living image of old Angus. What a mimic the child
+is!"
+
+"Do be quiet, Paul!" said his sister, hastily. "How can I---- Nurse,
+tell Mary that I am much displeased, and that if I hear of her
+watching the shepherd again----"
+
+"I 'ave told her, milady," retorted the nurse, with as much dignity as
+kicks and strugglings left to her, "and there an't no fear. Master
+Blazes'll forget it sharp enough when he don't 'ear it. It is the
+things 'as he do 'ear, constant"--a backward glance at Paul from the
+turn of the stair emphasised the reproach.
+
+"It is really very distressing," mourned Lady George, turning in grave
+regret to Mrs. Vane, and then, seeing unqualified amusement in that
+lady's face, yielding a little to her own sense of humour. "But he
+really did it splendidly, though where the child gets the talent from,
+I don't know. But fancy, Paul, if Mrs. Woodward had been here! I
+should have died of shame, for she spent half an hour yesterday in
+lecturing me. 'Dear Lady George,' she said, 'you mean well, and of
+course the younger generation are always right.' Now, what are you all
+laughing at?"
+
+"At you and your son, my dear," replied Paul. "That was Mrs. Woodward
+to the life! So cheer up, Blanche. He will make his fortune on the
+stage--or as a sheep farmer." And so full of smiles over the
+recollection of the small sturdy figure struggling with the woolly
+mat, he went off, feeling that in one way or another the morning had
+passed pleasantly enough. Rationally also, without any attempt at
+Arcadia. That danger was over, and incidentally he owed Mrs. Vane
+another debt of gratitude for having driven him into calling at the
+Lodge, and so discovering that Marjory, seen in ordinary society, was
+not nearly so distracting a person as she had been when earth, and
+air, and water had seemed to conspire in suggesting a new world of
+dreams, where love was something very different to what it was in real
+life.
+
+But Paul Macleod was not the only one of the party who felt satisfied
+with the morning's work. Mrs. Vane, as she idled away an hour or two
+in her room--one of her country-house maxims being that the less
+people saw of you between meals the better--told herself that there
+was time yet to stave off the immediate danger with Alice Woodward.
+That was the one thing to be attained somehow--how, she did not care.
+Paul had been flirting with Marjory, of course. Deny what he would,
+the look she had surprised on his face on the Sunday did not come
+there for nothing; besides, the girl herself had been too cold, too
+distant, for absolute indifference. That farce of everything being
+over for ever was easily played in absence, but was apt to break down
+at a renewal of intimacy. It would be well to try if it would, at any
+rate; and under any circumstances Paul was not likely to settle
+matters with Alice until the party was on the eve of breaking up;
+since it was always more convenient in these matters to have a way of
+escape if you were refused.
+
+Mrs. Woodward was of the same opinion, and said so to her husband
+when, on laying his night-capped head on the conjugal pillow that
+evening, he began to sound her as to the prospects of escape from the
+dilatory posts, which, to tell truth, afforded him daily occupation.
+For on the stroke of eleven he could fuss round, watch in hand,
+counting the minutes of delay, and, after Donald had come and gone,
+there was always that letter to the _Times_, exposing the iniquity of
+whiskey bottles and pounds of tea in Her Majesty's mail bag, to be
+composed against Lord George's return from the hill to the
+smoking-room, when it had to be read aloud, amended, discussed, and
+finally set aside till the next day. Then Donald would be later than
+ever, and Mr. Woodward, tempted by the thought of detailing still more
+horrible delinquencies, would withhold his letter for further
+amendment.
+
+"I suppose it is all right, mamma," he began cautiously. "At least, I
+noticed that the young people seemed to be--er--getting on to-day."
+
+"Quite right," yawned the partner of his joys and sorrows. "How lucky
+it was that Jack had to go to Riga about that tallow business."
+
+Even in the dark, with his head in night-cap, Mr. Woodward's paternal
+dignity bristled.
+
+"Lucky! You speak, my dear, as if he had had claims, and I deny----"
+
+"You can deny what you please, Mr. Woodward. I think it was lucky, for
+now he need know nothing of the engagement till he returns."
+
+"Perhaps. My dear, by the way, have you any idea when the engagement
+is likely to--ahem--er--come off?"
+
+Mrs. Woodward yawned once, twice. This was a detail scarcely
+sufficient to warrant her being kept awake. "I can't say--not till we
+are going to leave, I should think. That sort of thing breaks up a
+party dreadfully. Why?"
+
+Mr. Woodward sighed. "Only the posts really are so irregular. As I
+said in my letter of to-day----"
+
+But this was too much for anyone's patience. "You can tell me
+to-morrow, my dear," said the wife of his bosom, firmly. "I shouldn't
+wonder if it were later than ever, for Lady George told me it was fair
+day, or fast day, or something of that sort in Oban."
+
+Mr. Woodward gave a groan, and turned over to compose a still more
+scathing report of the Gleneira mail.
+
+About the same time Blanche Temple, who, on her husband's late arrival
+from the smoking-room, was found by him in dressing-gown and slippers
+over the fire, reading a novel, and enjoying the only free time, she
+said, a Highland hostess could hope for, was telling her lord and
+master much the same tale. The young people were getting on, Paul was
+really behaving charmingly, and little Mrs. Vane, contrary to her
+expectations, seemed quite inclined to throw them together, so that
+the future seemed clear. And Alice Woodward, had she been awake, would
+doubtless have added her voice to the general satisfaction, for it was
+distinctly pleasant to see the other girls' evident admiration of
+Paul's good looks, and to hear their raptures over the beauty of
+Gleneira. For a few months in autumn it would certainly be pleasant to
+play the part Lady George was playing now, and for the rest of the
+year there would be Constantinople, and civilisation generally.
+
+But the very next day at dinner something occurred to disturb one
+person's peace, for Paul, as Mrs. Vane used to say, was a bad landlord
+even to himself. His mind was not well fenced, and the gates, which
+should have barred vagrant thoughts from intrusion, were as often as
+not wide open or sadly out of repair. And this interruption was
+trivial, being only a remark in his sister's clear, high-pitched
+voice:
+
+"Mr. Gillespie was here again about that bazaar, and I believe, Paul,
+he is in love with that Miss Carmichael of yours. At least, he talked
+of her in a way--it would be most suitable, of course, and I really
+think we ought to encourage it. It would give us old fogies something
+to amuse us, wouldn't it, Mrs. Woodward?"
+
+"I disapprove of matchmaking on principle, Lady George," replied that
+lady, severely; "but this, as you say, appears very suitable indeed.
+She is a governess, or something of that sort of thing, I believe, and
+they generally make admirable wives for poor clergymen. Understand
+Sunday-schools, and don't expect to be taken about everywhere."
+
+"What an admirable wife for any poor man," put in a subaltern from
+Paul's regiment, who had been asked down to make the sexes even; a
+nice, fair-haired lad, given as yet to blushing over his own successes
+in society. "If you will introduce me, Lady George, I might cut out
+the curate."
+
+"He isn't the curate," said his hostess, smiling. "By the way, Paul,
+what are they in Scotland?"
+
+"Dissenting ministers!" retorted her brother, sullenly, angry with
+her, and with himself; the one for inflicting, the other for feeling,
+this sudden pain. Blanche's face was a study in outraged dignity.
+
+"My dear Paul!" she began, and then paused, speechless.
+
+"He is very good-looking, I think," said the echo diligently, "and I
+hear----"
+
+"What is that?" put in Lord George from afar. "Miss Carmichael and the
+parson! Pooh! she is far too good for that blatant young----"
+
+"George!" exclaimed his better half, this time with authority, "pray
+remember that he is our clergyman--our parish clergyman."
+
+"We are not likely to forget his pretensions to that position,
+Blanche, considering how often he comes here," put in Paul, at a white
+heat over what he told himself was an unwarrantable liberty with a
+young lady's name, and feeling as if he could rend the whole company;
+especially the unsuspecting subaltern.
+
+"What a refreshing thing it is," came Mrs. Vane's half-jesting voice,
+"to find the sexes have so high an opinion of each other! Go where you
+will, Lady George, the news of an engagement makes nine-tenths of the
+men swear she is too good for him, and all the women say he is too
+good for her. Touching tributes; but what gender is truth?"
+
+"Masculine, of course!" put in her next-door neighbour, who prided
+himself on being smart. "That dissentient tenth proves discrimination
+the unanimity prejudice."
+
+"Pardon me, it may only mean that men mix their prejudices as they do
+their wines, while we women are consistent and prefer simplicity."
+
+"I can hardly be expected at the present moment to say that I do,"
+retorted her companion.
+
+"I shall remember that against you," laughed the little lady.
+"Meanwhile I agree with the men. The young lady is too good for any of
+you; she is charming."
+
+"Give me first introduction, please," pleaded the subaltern. "I always
+like people who are too good for me."
+
+"That explains the universality of your affections, I suppose, Mr.
+Palmer," remarked Mrs. Vane, demurely.
+
+"But really, Paul," said his sister, returning to the subject with
+injured persistency when the laugh had subsided. "I cannot see why Mr.
+Gillespie should not pay his pastoral visits if he chooses; besides we
+had to discuss the church."
+
+"Then I trust the service won't be a repetition of the last one,"
+replied her brother, still woefully out of temper; "I, for one, will
+refuse to go if it is. You agree with me, don't you, Miss Woodward?"
+
+She smiled at him placidly. "Well! it was rather funny, wasn't it?"
+
+"Funny!" echoed Sam Woodward. "I'll tell you what, it was the rummiest
+go!" and he was proceeding to detail the whole to the new arrival whom
+he had taken down to dinner, when Lady George, with a withering glance
+in his direction, proceeded in a higher key.
+
+"The new church, I mean, Paul. We have arranged it all delightfully
+while you horrid men have been killing birds. Alice is making a
+subscription book with a Gothic window on the outside--illuminated,
+you know--and a little appeal on the first page. It is to have an
+initial letter, is it not, dear? Then by and bye, next year, perhaps,
+when London isn't quite empty, Mrs. Woodward has promised her house
+for a Highland fair--tartan things, and snoods--and--and----"
+
+"Queighs," suggested her husband, demurely, but she scorned the
+interruption. "And spinning chairs."
+
+"Spinning chairs?" echoed Mr. Woodward, who, hearing for the first
+time that his house was to be made use of, felt bound to show some
+interest in the matter.
+
+"Yes! those things with very little seat, no back, and a lot of
+carving. All the stall-keepers are to be dressed out of Scott's novels
+and Mr. St. Clare is going to write--what was it, Mr. St. Clare?"
+
+"A rondelet," muttered the poet, gloomily, looking up from the
+chocolate creams with which he was trying to make life worth living.
+
+"Of course! a rondelet--that is the thing with very few words and a
+great many rhymes, isn't it? And of course you, Paul, will wear the
+kilt--local colour is everything."
+
+"My dear girl," cried Paul, too aghast for ill-humour. "I haven't worn
+the kilt for years--pray consider----"
+
+"The local colour of your knees," put in Lord George, brutally. "Never
+mind, old man, a bottle of patent bronzine, like Blanche uses for her
+slippers----"
+
+"George!" cried his wife, rising with an awful dignity. "Shall we go
+into the drawing-room, Mrs. Woodward?"
+
+"It was only his knees, my dear," protested the discomforted nobleman
+in a whisper as she swept past him. "Hang it all! if a man mayn't
+mention his brother-in-law's knees or his wife's slippers."
+
+But she was out of hearing, so he sate down in his chair again and
+poured himself out a bumper of port viciously.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XIV.
+
+
+While the Big House was going on its way from cellar to attic, as if
+it had been within the sound of Bow Bells instead of in a remote
+Highland glen, Marjory for the first time in her life felt time heavy
+on her hands; a thing not to be tolerated for an instant by a young
+person of her views and prospects. She told herself that if this was
+the result of her holiday, the sooner she set to work and forgot that
+pleasant, idle time the better. For it had been pleasant, and Paul
+Macleod had been kind. But what of that? His ways were not her
+ways--his thoughts were not her thoughts; and then suddenly would come
+the memory of that short instant on Isle Shuna when they had stood
+hand in hand watching the Green Ray. Or was that only another result
+of idleness?--that she should be growing fanciful. Paul himself had
+denied seeing it, and after all, despite his kindness, he was the last
+person to have sympathy with her ideals; yet such sympathy was the
+only thing which could make her care for him or his society. She told
+herself all this, over and over again, until she believed it; for
+Marjory had not yet learnt to differentiate her head from her heart.
+Many women never learn the art, and though some, no doubt, find the
+difficulty lies in discovering their heads, a far greater number stop
+short at a calm affection in the catalogue of their emotions.
+
+Still, for some reason or another, as yet inexplicable to the girl
+herself, the melodious carol of a blackbird singing his heart out in a
+cherry tree sent a pain to her own. It seemed to fill the world with
+unrest, even though the house lay still as the grave; for Mrs. Cameron
+and the lassies were away at the milking. She covered her ears to shut
+out the sound and bent closer to her book, until suddenly she found
+herself blindfolded by a pair of strong, slender, supple hands--hands
+that could not be mistaken for an instant.
+
+"Tom!" she cried. "Oh, Tom! is it you?"
+
+"Tom it is," said a voice with a pleasant intonation scarcely foreign,
+and yet assuredly not wholly English. "_E' bene!_ Mademoiselle
+Grands-serieux! So this is the way you hold high holiday?"
+
+He pointed to the open book, then, as she clung delighted to his arm,
+put on an air of simulated disgust, perhaps to conceal the keen joy
+which her welcome afforded him.
+
+"Conic sections again, and I wandering round 'permiskus' calling for
+some of my relations to kill the fatted calf!"
+
+"The prodigal didn't come 'permiskus.' He wired ahead and they saw him
+from afar."
+
+"Then he didn't get an unexpected holiday, come express from Paris to
+Oban, and then walk thirty miles over the hills because he had missed
+the mail cart and was a fool----"
+
+"But why a fool?"
+
+"Why? Because the bosom of my family was absorbed in conic sections!
+And if that reason won't do, you really must wait until I have had
+some veal--for to tell truth I'm ravenous--mostly for drinks!"
+
+He watched her as she flew off, singing as she went like any blackbird
+out of sheer lightness of heart, and asked himself if this were not
+enough? If he were bound to wait for something more? For Dr. Tom
+Kennedy was not a man to require much time for such thoughts,
+especially when he had been thinking of Marjory and his welcome all
+that trudge of thirty miles over bog and heather. But the answer came
+slowly, for he was quite as much in the dark on the vexed question of
+Love and Marriage as most people, and the little Blind Boy with the
+bow and arrows was as yet a part of his Pantheon. And yet there was
+temptation enough to set mere romance aside, when, after anticipating
+his every want, and fussing over him after the manner of a hen with a
+solitary chicken, Marjory drew a low stool beside his chair, and, with
+her elbows resting on her knees and her radiant face supported on her
+hands, looked over him, as it were, in sheer content.
+
+"You don't know how nice it is to have you back," she said, suddenly
+stretching out one hand to him--a favourite gesture of hers when
+eager. He took it in both of his, bent over it, and kissed it.
+
+"'Tis worth the parting, child, to come back--to this."
+
+She laughed merrily. "You have such pretty manners, Tom! I expect you
+learnt them from grandpapa the Marquis and the _haute noblesse_. And
+then in Paris, I suppose----"
+
+His heart contracted, but he interrupted her gaily. "I decline to be
+scheduled in that fashion. My manners are my own, thank Heaven! in
+spite of Galton on heredity. Oh! Marjory, my dear! what a relief it is
+to get away from it all--from the eternal hunt for something that
+escapes you--from the first chapter of Genesis to the Book of
+Revelation; and now that I come to think of it, there is something new
+about you--what is it?"
+
+She shook her head hastily. "Nothing. You said that last time, I
+believe--people always look different. You have got greyer."
+
+He rubbed his close-cropped head disconsolately. "Have I?--well, I
+can't help it. I'm getting old."
+
+"Nonsense! And I won't have you say you are glad to get away from
+work--from the best work in the world! How can you tire of the only
+thing worth anything, and of the search for truth?"
+
+"Because I'm forty-three--more than double your age. By the way, there
+was a man I know who married a girl of sixteen when he was thirty-two.
+And when he saw it down on the register it struck him all of a heap
+that when she was forty he would be eighty. Matrimony, apparently,
+isn't good for arithmetic--nor for the matter of that, arithmetic for
+matrimony!"
+
+"What silly stories you have, Tom," laughed the girl, "and in other
+ways you really are so sensible."
+
+He rose suddenly and went to the window--a small, slight man, with a
+keen brown face--and then, as if in excuse for the move, he picked a
+spray or two of white jasmine and stuck them in his buttonhole. Then
+he turned to her with a smile. "I should have been a deal more
+sensible if people hadn't taught me things when I was young. Original
+sin isn't in it with education. Come, Marjory! let us go and find my
+cousin--or there will be a row in the house."
+
+"I like that!" retorted the girl, taking possession of his arm; "as if
+anyone in the place dare say a word against you. Why, she told Dr.
+Macrea the other day that she didn't intend to die till she could have
+you to attend her!" Whereat they both laughed.
+
+But, in truth, there was much laughter and general good-will at the
+Lodge that evening, when Dr. Kennedy insisted on Mrs. Cameron bringing
+her knitting to the garden bench, while he and Marjory and Will
+strolled about among the flowers, or stood talking here and there as
+the fancy took them.
+
+"Why do you always wear jasmine, Tom?" asked the girl, idly bending to
+catch a closer whiff of the buttonhole. "I suppose _she_ used to give
+it to you."
+
+"What she?"
+
+"The one _she_ of a man's life, of course."
+
+"Fabulous creature! If they come at all, they come in crowds. Yes! now
+I think of it, I fancy you are right. I was twelve, and she a
+distracting young flirt of six. Her name was Pauline. I remember it,
+because she was the last!----"
+
+"Oh, Tom! how can you!"
+
+"Fact; for twenty years after that the responsibilities of searching
+for truth prevented my thinking of fictions."
+
+"And after that?"
+
+"My dear Marjory, no history is ever written up to date. Even in your
+beloved school-primers the last years of Her Gracious Majesty's reign
+are glozed over by generalities. You see it is never safe to hazard an
+opinion till events have proved it to be right. And then decent
+reserve over the immediate past saves a lot of worry. I should hate to
+confess that I had told a lie yesterday, though I might own up
+placidly to one seven years ago. Yes! seven years should be close time
+for confession. A man renews his vile body in that period, and can
+take credit for having changed his morals also."
+
+"But it is more than seven years since you were thirty-two."
+
+"You have a head for arithmetic, my dear, not for--the other thing;
+and it is possible that I am still only in the second volume of my
+fiction."
+
+"You mean in love. What a delightfully funny idea!"
+
+"Mrs. Cameron!" cried the doctor, "do you see anything comic in the
+spectacle of Methuselah wishing to get married; for I don't. I think
+it is melancholy in the extreme."
+
+In truth he did think so, for though, when he was away, his own
+sentimentality seemed sufficient for them both, the first look at
+Marjory's face always told him that, if the received theories were
+true, there was something yet to come before he had any right--in a
+way any desire--to ask Marjory to be his wife. If they were true!
+There lay the problem which he found so much difficulty in solving.
+Like most men of his profession, he was almost over familiar with the
+material side of the question, and, being naturally of delicate fibre,
+an instinctive revolt made him exaggerate the part which romance was
+to play in the purification of passion. To marry when you loved each
+other was one thing; for one to love, and both to remain friends, was
+another! And between these two ideals he hesitated; for Dr. Kennedy's
+power lay not so much in strength as in a certain fineness of
+perception and delicacy of touch. And yet at times a doubt
+lingered--the doubt which had made him fall foul of the things he had
+been taught in his youth. But even through this there ran a vein of
+protest against the lack of colour which a more prosaic, more
+material, and yet less animal view of the relations which ought to
+exist between a man and woman would involve. For he was sentimental to
+a degree, and told himself that the very fact of his age made it more
+than ever necessary that his wife should be inspired to do her duty by
+something more than mere affection. That is to say, once more, if
+current theories were true! He came back to this point again and
+again, unable to settle it to his own satisfaction, and finding his
+chief comfort in the fact that Marjory had, hitherto, never shown the
+least sign of loving anyone. If that were to continue in the future,
+he could imagine the doubts and difficulties disappearing altogether;
+but for this time was required, time for her to understand her own
+nature. His knowledge, his experience of life, the position in which
+he stood towards her, all combined to make him hyper-sensitive lest in
+any way he should wrong her innocence and ignorance. Besides, he
+himself would have been bitterly dissatisfied with the position. That
+was the solid truth, which went further than anything else in making
+him stand aloof; though, no doubt, he would have denied the fact
+strenuously, since to men of his stamp a sentimental grief is better
+than no sentiment at all. Yet the grief sate on him lightly because of
+its very sentimentality, and because--though this again he would
+strenuously have denied--in his heart of hearts he felt that it was
+largely of his own making, and that one part of his nature was
+satisfied and to spare. In these days, when the happiness of the
+individual is both aim and end, it is curious to see how persistently
+one form of happiness is ignored; the happiness which indubitably
+comes from doing what you would _not_ wish to do, unless you conceived
+it to be your duty. And yet the very people who deny the possibility
+of this content are the first to point out that, when all is said and
+done, a man can only do what he wishes to do.
+
+So that when, on the next morning, Dr. Kennedy, who had listened to
+the tale of what had been going on and what was going on in the Big
+House with a certain foreboding, came to Marjory and urged her to
+accompany him on a visit there in the afternoon, he did so with the
+distinct intention of feeling the self-complacency of duty performed.
+And Marjory, in her turn, thus brought face to face with the very
+reasonable proposition, found it hard to make an excuse that did not
+rouse her own indignation by being over serious. After all, why should
+she not comply with Captain Macleod's urgent invitations? There was
+nothing to be afraid of. Nevertheless, when she appeared, clothed in
+white raiment with her best gloves on, she had so solemn and sedate an
+air that the doctor felt aghast at his own act.
+
+"Don't look so like Iphigenia, my dear," he said; "or let us give it
+up."
+
+"Certainly not. If it's the right thing to do, it has got to be done;
+but I do feel like a sacrificial lamb. You don't, of course; but then
+you are accustomed to society, a great deal of society, and I'm not.
+Do you know, Tom, I have scarcely ever seen more than three or four
+people of my own rank together in my life, and I positively don't know
+any girls."
+
+"Time you did," he replied stoutly.
+
+"But I doubt if I have any manners," she protested.
+
+He had, at any rate; and new as the experience of the large party
+gathered in the big drawing-room was to her, she found immediate
+confidence in the perception that her companion would stand the test
+of any society; indeed, as she sate talking to Alice Woodward, she
+could not help noticing with a certain amused pride Lady George's
+frigid politeness give way to interested endeavours to find out who
+this most unusually well-bred specimen of a country doctor could be;
+for Paul was not there to aid his sister's ignorance.
+
+But by and bye Mrs. Vane came in and made her way straight to Marjory
+with pretty little words of welcome, yet with the Anglo-Indian lady's
+reminiscent interest at the sight of a real live man at afternoon tea.
+
+"Who is he?" she asked; "did he come with you?"
+
+"He is my guardian--Dr. Kennedy."
+
+"Kennedy! not the famous Dr. Kennedy--Tom Kennedy of Paris?" And
+before Marjory could get beyond the first syllable of acquiescence,
+Mrs. Vane had crossed the room and was standing opposite Lady George.
+
+"I would ask you to introduce me to Dr. Kennedy," she said, "but it
+would be of no use, for while he has made a name for himself since I
+knew him, I have lost mine. So I will only ask him if he remembers the
+jasmine bush at the Château Saumarez?"
+
+There was an instant's bewilderment, and then Tommy Kennedy, who had
+risen at her first word, took a step forward and both his hands went
+out gladly.
+
+"Pauline!"
+
+"Just so--and you are Alphonse! What a small place the world is after
+all! To think of finding you at Gleneira. Lady George, you were
+talking of theatricals this morning, and the idea fell through because
+no one--not even your brother--would do the _jeune premier_ with me.
+He is found! Dr. Kennedy is one of the best amateur actors in Paris."
+
+"The past tense, if you please, my dear lady," protested the doctor.
+"Consider my grey hairs."
+
+"That is a remark which should not have been made, for we are
+contemporaries. He was my first--no! one of my first loves, Lady
+George. We used to give each other sweeties over the garden wall when
+his grandmother, the Marquise de Brisson, was not looking; but the
+jasmine bush, Alphonse, was at your uncle's, Prince Rosignacs's. Why!
+you have a bit in your buttonhole now, and I----" She pointed to the
+spray fastened into the laces of her tea-gown.
+
+"_Ce soir ma robe en est tout embaumée_."
+
+"_Respires-en moi l'adorant souvenir_," quoted Dr. Kennedy, looking at
+the lapel of his coat tenderly; and Marjory, standing a little apart,
+a mute spectator of the scene, felt a sudden sense of loneliness. He,
+too, was at home in this idle, careless life, and she was the only one
+who was out of it. It came upon her by surprise, for though she had
+known and been proud of the fact that her guardian belonged by virtue
+of his mother's birth to the best of French society, she had had no
+actual experience of him in the part of a man of the world. But he was
+that, and of a good world, too, she recognised frankly as she sate
+listening to the now animated conversation about people she had never
+heard of, things she had never seen, and at the same time trying to be
+agreeable to the girls who, dutiously, had taken her in hand. She felt
+that it was a duty, and a sort of indifferent resentment possessed
+her, even when Lady George hoped she would accompany Dr. Kennedy, who
+had kindly promised to dine with them next day and talk over the now
+possible theatricals. Yet, rather to his surprise, she accepted
+without even a look at his face, and made quite a polite little speech
+about hoping to see more of the girls; and so, with a certain
+independent grace, passed out into the hall, leaving him detained for
+a moment by some last remark. She could hear Mrs. Vane's light laugh,
+his voice, and then another laugh, as she stood waiting beside the
+deferential butler, and all involuntarily her lip curled.
+
+"Miss Carmichael! How glad I am!" It was Paul, newly in from
+the moor, looking his best, as a handsome man does, in his rough
+shooting-clothes. He had a tuft of white heather and stag-horn moss in
+one hand, and with a sudden impulse he held it out gaily to her.
+"Tit-for-tat! you welcomed me here--though I never thanked you for so
+doing, did I? It is my turn now."
+
+He had meant the offering for Violet Vane or Alice Woodward, whichever
+he met first, but now it seemed as if fate had sent it for Marjory and
+for no one else. He felt as if it were so, he looked as if it were so,
+and for the first time in her life Marjory felt an odd little thrill
+run through her veins.
+
+"Thank you," she said soberly. "Yes! I did give it to you; so now we
+are quits--I mean," she corrected hastily, "that--that we are on the
+same footing."
+
+There was quite a tremor in her voice, too, as, seeing Dr. Kennedy
+beside her, she turned to him quickly. "This is Captain Macleod,
+Tom;--he has been very kind to me."
+
+In nine cases out of ten Paul Macleod on being introduced to a man
+belonging to a girl in Marjory's position, and, as it were, having a
+claim on her, would have been studiously, frigidly courteous, and no
+more; and so might have once and for all chilled Marjory's sudden
+confidence and relief in finding an old friend in her new environment;
+but it is difficult for an emotional man to be cold, when a sudden
+glow of content makes him feel absurdly happy. Consequently he went
+out of his way to be frank and kindly in expressing his pleasure at
+making the acquaintance of one of whom Miss Carmichael had so often
+spoken.
+
+"In terms of reprobation, no doubt," replied Dr. Kennedy, lightly; "a
+guardian is a disagreeable appendage, though I try to be as little of
+a nuisance as I can."
+
+"So do I," retorted Paul, with a smile; "but Miss Carmichael is so
+dreadfully hard to please."
+
+As Dr. Kennedy's keen brown eyes took in the figure before him, he
+told himself that the girl must be hard indeed to please if she could
+find fault with it.
+
+"That is the handsomest man I've seen for a long time," he said as
+they walked home. "What is he like inside?"
+
+Marjory paused with her head on one side, considering. "Oh! nice in a
+way--the way of the world, I suppose, and I thought him nicer than
+ever to-day; being in his own house agrees with him. Oh, Tom! how I
+wish you hadn't accepted that invitation to dinner!"
+
+Yet when she returned from the Big House, she had a little flush on
+her cheek, and when Dr. Kennedy challenged her to tell truth in answer
+to Mrs. Cameron's inquiry as to how she got on, she answered with a
+laugh and a nod: "Why not--it was rather interesting; quite an
+evolutionary process. Before I went I was protoplasmic--all in a
+jelly. Then at dinner we were all amoebic--digestive apparatus and
+nothing else. Afterwards, with the ladies, I felt like a worm, or a
+fish out of water. Then I wanted to have wings like a bird and fly
+away, but I couldn't, for the quadrumana appeared from the
+dining-room, and we all became apes!"
+
+"What is the lassie talking about?" put in Mrs. Cameron, with a toss
+of her head. "Can you no answer a straight question wi' a straight
+answer? What then, I say, what then?"
+
+"Yes! what then, Marjory?" asked Tom Kennedy, quickly; he knew the
+answer, and yet he wanted to hear it from her lips, because it would
+satisfy him that so far he had been right.
+
+"And then--why then I suppose I became a girl--at any rate I enjoyed
+it. They were all so kind, and Mrs. Vane--I suppose in your world,
+Tom, there are heaps of women like that?"
+
+"Not many so charming," he answered heartily. In truth it had been
+very pleasant meeting her again after so many years; for a man, even
+when he is in love, or supposes himself to be in love, with one woman,
+is never proof against the pleasure of being made much of by another.
+And Dr. Kennedy, with a quaint simplicity and wisdom, was perfectly
+aware of his own reputation as one of the boldest adventurers in new
+fields of discovery, and told himself that people made much of him for
+their own sake, and because he carried his restless energy with him
+into society as well as into his work. For energy is, as a rule, a
+godsend to _fin-de-siècle_ men and women. So the conceit of it slipped
+off him like water from a duck's back, leaving him free to take his
+world as he found it.
+
+But Marjory felt once more the little chill of regret for the things
+she had not known in his life.
+
+"There is one thing I forget to ask you," she said quickly. "Your name
+is not Alphonse, is it?"
+
+"No! But she thought Tom unromantic, and so I promised to change my
+name if she changed hers."
+
+"Men don't generally do as much as that," grumbled Will. "So they are
+going to have theatricals, are they? That means that all the horses
+will be dead lame, and the laird will be wanting more."
+
+"How on earth do you make that out?" asked Dr. Kennedy.
+
+"Women," said Will, laconically. "Something will always be wanted in a
+hurry, the telegraph station is ten miles off, and women seem to think
+a horse can change its legs when it comes home."
+
+There was some truth in his remark during the next ten days. Gleneira
+House lived in a continual bustle which gave no time for thought,
+save, perhaps, to Mrs. Vane, who, busy as she was, found time to
+congratulate herself so far on the success of her plans; for Marjory
+and Paul had perforce to meet constantly, and more than once something
+occurred to encourage her belief that there was material for mischief
+ready to her hand if it was needed.
+
+But other material came to light also, or so it seemed to her cynical
+experience; and the clue to it came one day when she and Marjory, who
+had grown keen, as was only natural, over the novelty of amusement,
+were searching through an old portfolio of Paul's sketches for hints
+likely to be of use for a drop scene.
+
+It was nothing more than the portrait of a girl with a bunch of red
+rowans held up to her cheek.
+
+"That is very well done, Paul," said Mrs. Vane, holding it up for him
+to see, as he stood a little way off. "Who was the beautiful model?"
+
+He came over to her hastily. "Oh! no one you know; and it isn't really
+worth looking at. A wretched caricature--I did not know it was there."
+
+Something in his voice roused the amused malice which always lurked
+behind Mrs. Vane's treatment of Paul's foibles.
+
+"I disagree with you; look, Miss Carmichael! Don't you think that
+quite the best thing we have seen of Captain Macleod's doing?"
+
+"It is a lovely face," said the girl, "and it reminds me of someone----"
+Then she looked up in sudden interest. "Surely it is Paul--little
+Paul, I mean, Peggy Duncan's grandson; perhaps----" She stopped
+abruptly, remembering the big Paul's confession, and blushed, she
+scarcely knew why. Then, feeling vexed with herself for doing so, put
+down the sketch, and taking up another, made some trivial remark about
+its being very pretty. But Mrs. Vane had not done with the sketch.
+"That Highland type of face----" she began.
+
+"There is no need to theorise over the likeness in this case,"
+interrupted Paul, seeing through her, as he nearly always did. "It was
+little Paul's mother; and as I think I told you once, Miss Carmichael,
+the most beautiful woman I ever saw. That is why I call it a
+caricature, Mrs. Vane."
+
+The anger in his voice was not to be mistaken, and Marjory, as he
+moved away to resume his _tête-a-tête_ with Alice Woodward, was left
+with an uncomfortable feeling that she had somehow betrayed a secret,
+though her common, sense resented the imputation. But Mrs. Vane looked
+after his retreating figure with one of her fine smiles. So the memory
+of this particular most-beautiful-woman-in-the-world--there must have
+been a good many of them in Paul Macleod's life--was not pleasant to
+him. Wherefore? The question came quite idly, and passed from her mind
+without an answer. Marjory, on the other hand, took hers--as to
+whether she was to blame or not--seriously to heart. So much so, that
+when she had speech with Paul alone, which occurred naturally enough
+when he brought her a cup of tea, as she sate stitching away for dear
+life at some ridiculous theatrical property near the window, so as to
+get the full advantage of the waning light, she reverted to the
+subject at once.
+
+"Don't," he interrupted hurriedly, almost before she had begun.
+"Please don't; I would so much rather you said nothing more about it."
+
+"But I don't understand."
+
+"Thank heaven you don't," he replied.
+
+"Why should you say that?" she cried reproachfully. "I cannot see why
+I should not, if I can. I am not a fool----"
+
+"Marjory!" interrupted Dr. Kennedy, coming forward, "little Paul
+Duncan has just come round from the Lodge with a message that his
+grannie wants to see you. We might go round that way; it is getting
+late as it is."
+
+"There's no hurry," put in Paul. "I will tell them to give the boy a
+piece, and he can wait till Miss Carmichael has finished giving me
+absolution."
+
+"That is the wrong way about, surely?" she said.
+
+"It is the usual way between a man and a woman," replied Paul, "and
+will be to the end of the chapter, I'm afraid."
+
+Half an hour afterwards Mrs. Vane, who had come out into the hall with
+some parting instructions to Marjory, stood looking down with the
+others at little Paul Duncan, who, weary of waiting, had cuddled
+himself round on the doorstep and fallen into the heavy sleep of
+childhood. "He looks very delicate," said Violet, kindly stooping over
+him as he lay with one hand tucked into the back of his neck in rather
+an unusual posture; and then suddenly she looked up at the big Paul,
+for the trick had taken her back to the old days when she had watched
+his sleep with jealous care, lest her patient should be disturbed; and
+how often had she not wondered why he chose so uncomfortable a
+position?
+
+Impossible! and yet there was a likeness. The name, too, and his
+evident dislike to the mention of the boy's mother! It must mean
+something--what? The thought left her pale, so that Paul, turning back
+with her when those two had gone, noticed it, telling her that she was
+overworking herself.
+
+"Of course I am overworking," she retorted, with a strange mixture of
+self-pity, blame, and fierce resentment. "I always do. Is it my fault
+if I do things quicker than other people? Is it my fault if I see
+things more clearly? You think I am always managing, managing; and so
+I am. How can I help it when, everything keeps coming into my mind,
+and no one thinks or cares?"
+
+"My dear Violet! You have been overworking, indeed. You must take it
+easier, or we shall be having you laid up----"
+
+"And then what would Paul Macleod do?" she went on, with a reckless
+laugh. "No! I won't make myself so disagreeable as all that--if I can
+help it, Paul; but how can one help being disagreeable at times when
+one is wise--wise and old? Oh, Paul, how old I am!"
+
+"I don't see it," he answered, with an amused smile.
+
+"You! you never see anything," she began; then suddenly returned to
+her own light, half-jesting manner. "No! that is not true; you see
+most things, but you are too young to understand me. Dreadfully young
+for your age, Paul, so it is lucky there are so many of us to look
+after you."
+
+When she went upstairs to dress for dinner she sate down before the
+looking-glass and stared at herself with a sort of repugnance. Yes!
+she was old, hatefully old, in mind, in knowledge of the world, in
+experience. That thought which had flashed through her brain at the
+sight of little Paul lying asleep on the doorstep was not a nice
+thought. Yet could she help its flashing? and, if there was anything
+in the thought, might not the knowledge strengthen her hand in the
+coming fight? For a fortnight's daily experience of Alice Woodward's
+calm attractions had raised Mrs. Vane's opposition to her marriage
+with Paul to virtuous horror. No true friend, she told herself, would
+hesitate to throw every difficulty in the way of so disastrous a
+connection. At the same time she felt almost afraid to reach out after
+this new weapon, lest it might prove too heavy for those delicate
+hands of hers, accustomed for the most part to leading reins. It was
+one thing to goad and guide people into the right path, another to
+split open their heads with a sledgehammer. Though how this could be
+such a lethal weapon she could not see, since she knew enough of Paul
+Macleod to doubt if he would have had the hardihood to mention Jeanie
+Duncan to Marjory if there had been anything between them in the past.
+And yet? So she stood before possibilities, shivering on the brink,
+and finally telling herself there would be time enough to think of
+such things if less heroic measures failed. It was a mistake to touch
+pitch needlessly; at the same time it was as well to make sure there
+was pitch in the pot. So the next day saw her, on some airy pretence
+of getting old Peggy to knit stockings, sitting beside the old pauper
+and bringing to bear on her ailments and wrongs all the gay
+cheerfulness and sympathy which Paul declared always put him in a good
+humour.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XV.
+
+
+Apparently it had the same effect on Peggy Duncan, for the next
+Saturday when, as usual, her ancient schoolfellow and crony, Janet,
+came to give the hovel that weekly redding up which was beyond little
+Paul's ability, the old lady lay in her bed discoursing at length on
+the "bit thing just made up o' fal-lals that sits in the auld chair as
+if 't belonged to her, and chirrups awa like the lady's o' heaven's
+hen. A sicht guid for sair e'en, no like what the house was maistly
+acquaint wi'--just puir, ill-fa'ured warlocks."
+
+Whereupon Janet Faa tossed her head, and muttered in an undertone that
+Peggy might speak for herself; she was no warlock whatever. But she
+went on with her work, patiently, being accustomed to such sly hits
+and finding the description of Mrs. Vane's dresses and the puckles o'
+tea that appeared from her pocket far more interesting than the old
+lady's usual snappishness. But then, under any circumstances, Peggy's
+tongue would have been softened by the knowledge that help was more
+than ever necessary that day, since visitors were expected to tea. So
+the old woman watched the preparations with wrathful eyes, and did not
+even quarrel with the polish of the two silver spoons, which, usually
+secreted with her other treasures in the bottom drawer of the bureau,
+now graced the clean tablecloth. To tell truth, however, fault-finding
+would have had no practical effect, since Janet never took the
+slightest notice of it, beyond remarking every now and again: "Whist,
+woman! whist! It is no breath you will be having to crack with the
+doctor."
+
+On the other hand, wee Paulie, who contributed his share by timidly
+presenting a mug full of early rowan-berries and heather for the
+middle of the table, was sternly bidden to take away the ugly trash,
+and solemnly warned against the sin of mistaking weeds for flowers,
+and thus setting himself up to be a judge instead of abiding by the
+will of Providence. The rebuke, however, did not seem to touch the
+child, who, with many previous memories of Miss Marjory's liking for
+the said "ugly trash," set the posy aside on a shelf at the back of
+the bed, and so beyond the reach of his grandmother's eyes.
+
+"If Towpie wad lay anither egg," said the old lady at last, surveying
+the _tout ensemble_ with a smile struggling with the frown which was
+necessary to keep Janet Faa in subjection, "it wad nae be sae bad; but
+I misdoot the silly thing is for clucking."
+
+"But it is two eggs there are, Peggy, woman, and the shentlemans is
+never for eatin' but one egg," protested Janet, who occasionally
+helped at the Big House, and was great, in consequence, on the ways
+and customs of the quality.
+
+Peggy sniffed. "That may be your way o' thinkin', it's no mine. Ye
+soudna press on a guest what ye're no able to tak' yoursel'. And I'd
+no cook it, ye ken--I'd just offer it up to show there was ane--Lord
+sakes! wha's yon at the door, an' me wi' my bald head. Quick, Janet,
+woman, my mutch, and pit it straight, woman! I'll no have it cockit
+over an ear as if I were tipsy."
+
+"It will only be the master," said little Paul, coming from the door.
+"He will be having a letter for you he says with a penny to pay."
+
+"Then bid him tak' it back and pay himsel' if he's carin' for it. I'm
+no. There's no letters for me that I'm carin' to have, and I'll just
+no be fashed wi' them when there is company comin'--Hoot awa' wi' the
+man comin' pryin', pryin', and me puttin' on my mutch for him."
+
+"But, Mistress Duncan," came in remonstrant tones from the door.
+
+"Oh! you're there are ye. Weel! I'm obleeged to ye, sir, for comin'
+sae far oot o' ye're road. An' I must pit ye to the trouble o' takin'
+it back again, and tellin' them as sent it that Peggy Duncan is on the
+pairish an' hasna a penny to spare for their trash."
+
+Mr. McColl, standing outside, looked longingly at the blue envelope,
+with the seal of a well-known firm of Writers-to-the-Signet upon it,
+and hesitated. Was it worth paying a penny on the chance of being the
+first to spread news? A momentous question, which left a tremble in
+his voice as he called again. "But there will be naethin' to pay,
+Mistress Duncan. Here! Paulie, my man, rin with it to your grannie.
+And it will be Scriven an' Plead's name on the anvelope, and they will
+be the foremost Writers-to-the-Signet in Glasgow, whatever."
+
+"They may be Writers to onybody else," retorted Peggy, taking the
+bulky letter, however, and nodding to Mr. McColl, who had seized the
+opportunity of slipping in so far. "But I dinna ken what right they
+have to be Writers to me."
+
+The master put in a deft suggestion. "Then ye can see inside, Mistress
+Duncan. If you are carin' for't I could be readin' it to you before I
+was goin' on. I'm no in a hurry."
+
+Peggy's black eyes glittered with sheer malice as she tucked the
+envelope away under her pillow, and lay back on it defiantly.
+
+"An' I'm no in a hurry, either, Mr. McColl, an' I would be asking you
+to have a sup tea, but that I'm expectin' the quality; sae gude day to
+ye, and mony thanks for your kindness."
+
+And yet when poor Mr. McColl had retired discomfited, bemoaning the
+loss of his penny, and Janet Faa, having done her part of the
+business, had left the kettle in charge of little Paul, who sate
+outside watching for the first glimpse of Miss Marjory, the old woman
+brought out the envelope again and looked at it wistfully. Perhaps the
+thoughts of the long years, during which she had waited in vain for
+some word of the husband who had deserted her, came back to her; yet
+as she muttered to herself--as she did often when alone--it was not
+that thought which came uppermost.
+
+"Aye! aye! it's a fine thing the readin' o' writin'. If it were aboot
+the lassie now; and me promising never to speir, never to let ony
+other body know! I canna break my word, an' me sae near the Judgment.
+It is no as if I were a Papist, like Janet, puir body, that can just
+awa' an' get absolution, ye ken. I maun carry my sins wi' me, and it
+will be ill eneuch flyin' wi' what I've got."
+
+"May I come in, Mrs. Duncan?" said a clear voice, breaking in on the
+old woman's preoccupation. As a matter of fact, however, the
+permission was scarcely needed, for Violet Vane was already in the
+room, close to the bed, her eyes on the letter; yet her first words
+made it appear as if her attention had been given to something else.
+
+"Ah! you are expecting visitors, and I shall be in the way."
+
+"Naethin' o' the sort, ma'am," replied Peggy, hastily, as usual on the
+lookout for a grievance. "I'm no sae sair put to it yet but that I can
+spare a cup o' tea for them that takes the trouble to come and see the
+auld wife."
+
+"And a very good cup of tea, too," put in Mrs. Vane. "What you gave me
+the other day was delicious. I only meant that strangers may not be
+welcome when friends are talking secrets."
+
+"I've nae friends and nae secrets," retorted the old woman, looking up
+quickly.
+
+"Then you are lucky," continued her visitor, lightly. "Friends are
+often troublesome, especially over secrets; nine times out of ten you
+daren't ask their advice for fear of their knowing too much."
+
+"Ye'll no be askin' mony folks' advice, I'm thinking," said Peggy,
+shrewdly. "Ye've plenty brains; eneuch for yoursel' and ithers to the
+bargain."
+
+Mrs. Vane laughed. "Perhaps; but other folks' brains are better than
+one's own sometimes. When I am in a difficulty I go to someone who is
+as near a perfect stranger to me as possible and ask for advice. I
+needn't take it, you know--Gracious! what is that?" That was a
+clamorous cackling at the foot of the bed, and the stately march
+therefrom of Towpie, the hen, triumphant over the laying of an egg in
+her favourite nest.
+
+"Oh ye o' little faith!" cried Peggy; "and me misca'ing the puir
+beastie! It's a special Providence, aye, aye. He neither slumbers nor
+sleeps, ye ken. And you will no be goin' to stop at Gleneira long, I'm
+thinking." The question followed fast on the quotation as if there was
+some connection in the old woman's mind between them.
+
+"I leave it very soon, I'm sorry to say, as I think it the loveliest
+place in the world; and it is sad to know that I shall not see it
+again."
+
+The envelope had come put of its hiding-place again during this
+speech, and Peggy was turning it over and over as if to attract
+attention to it; but she failed, and had to resort to more direct
+methods.
+
+"I canna think why they pit sic'can a big seal to a letter. Will there
+be something on it that shoudna be broken?"
+
+"Not that I can see," replied Mrs. Vane, taking it up carelessly.
+"Only the name, 'Scriven and Plead'--lawyers, Peggy--for there below
+is W. S. Glasgow. It is what people call a lawyer's letter, I expect."
+
+"An' what will that be about?"
+
+"Heaps of things. I couldn't say without reading it; shall I?" But
+Peggy's claw-like hand shot forth in quick negation.
+
+"I'll no be troubling you. I thocht, maybe, ye micht hae had
+experience o' such things."
+
+"So I have, Peggy. Sometimes they are wills, and sometimes they are
+money."
+
+"Aye!" interrupted the old woman, with a sinister chuckle, "but when
+they're written to bit pauper bodies like me?"
+
+"Then they are generally questions," replied Mrs. Vane, and though she
+spoke easily she was conscious of a certain agitation of mind.
+"Agreeable or disagreeable. Something to help a lawyer in tracing
+somebody, or finding out some secret."
+
+Peggy lay back on her pillows with a sort of groan. "'Tis only the
+pain, ma'am," she explained, then paused awhile; "I was thinkin' maybe
+'twas that. An' if you coudna answer them, what then?"
+
+"Nothing; they can't make you; only it is impossible to tell if you
+can or cannot till you know the questions."
+
+"But if I canna know them without breaking a covenant? I might just
+let the letter bide, maybe?"
+
+Mrs. Vane hesitated an instant to run over the pros and cons hastily.
+There was some secret, that was evident, and though the letter might
+not be concerned with it, on the other hand it might. Peggy was
+disinclined to trust it to her on the instant, but might think better
+of it by and bye; anyhow, the first thing to ensure was that no one
+else should have the chance.
+
+"In that case, of course, you should, as you say, let it be. If it is
+really important they will write again, and then it would be worth
+while considering the matter. In the meanwhile, as a perfect stranger,
+I should advise your setting it aside."
+
+Peggy looked at her admiringly. "It's a fine thing to hae deceesion o'
+character, and me just fashing myself about it."
+
+"Shall I put it away for you in a safe place?" asked her visitor, as
+the old lady proceeded to put the letter back under the pillow.
+
+"It's safe eneuch there," she retorted sardonically. "I'll no move
+till they lift me to my coffin, an' that will no be far, for it's to
+stand on the table whaur the tea is setten oot. I've planned it a' ye
+see wi' Janet, and there's twa bottles o' gude whiskey wi' the deid
+claes in the bottom drawer. Ye canna expec' sinfu' man tae sit wi' a
+corp without spirits."
+
+Despite the humour of the thought, which at another time would have
+outweighed the grimness, Mrs. Vane shivered. It seemed to her as if
+old Peggy were a corp already in that dim box bed, where she lay so
+still, only her angry eyes and twitching fingers showing sign of life.
+It was a relief to hear the grumbling voice again.
+
+"Weel, yon's settled, thanks to you, an' I'll no be kep' lingerin' in
+the deid thraw about papers that, for a' I ken, wad be as weel in the
+fire. O, ma'am! ye dinna ken what it feels like to think o' bein'
+called to the Throne, an' no bein' able to stir for the weight o' yer
+sins. For a broken word is as heavy as lead ye ken."
+
+"Why should you talk of being called, Peggy," protested Mrs. Vane,
+uneasily. "You are no worse than you were." But here in her
+nervousness she forgot her tact, and the old woman was in arms at
+once. "Maybe ye ken better nor me, ma'am, that's only tholing the pain
+alone in the night watches."
+
+"Then you should get some of the neighbours to sit up."
+
+"Neebors!" interrupted Peggy, with an eldritch laugh. "They'll have
+eneuch to do in settin' up wi' my corp; sae let them sleep on now an'
+take _their_ rest."
+
+Mrs. Vane shivered again, and, a sudden distaste to the whole business
+coming over her, made an excuse to escape; yet when, almost at the
+threshold, she met Marjory and Dr. Kennedy on their way to Peggy's
+entertainment, she paused with the lightest of laughs to tell them
+that the old woman was in one of her worst moods, and would make their
+hair stand on end. For her part she had had her fill of horrors, and
+intended to shock Mrs. Woodward by asking for a spoonful of brandy in
+her tea! It was a relief to joke over it for the time, even though in
+her heart she knew that she would have a _mauvais quart d'heure_
+sooner or later; most likely later, when the time came for sleep and
+she would have to seek the aid of that bottle of chloral--for Mrs.
+Vane's mind was fragile as her body, and could not stand any great
+strain. She could handle the reins deftly, and drive her team gaily
+along the turnpike road, but she had never driven across country. So
+it was a further relief to meet the butler in the hall carrying a
+fresh teapot of tea into the drawing-room, while the footman followed
+decorously bearing eight cups on a tray. Lady Hooker, the former
+functionary replied, in answer to her inquiries, had driven over from
+the Forest to see her ladyship in a _châr-a-banc_, with seven other
+ladies, some children, and a piper playing on the box. He added the
+last item in tones of tolerant contempt, born of a dispute downstairs
+as to whether the musician should have his tea in the housekeeper's
+room or the servants' hall; the womenkind, dazzled by his gorgeous
+array, favouring the former, the menkind the latter, on the ground
+that fine feathers did not make fine birds, and that without them he
+was only Roderick the gillie's brother and a "hignorant 'ighland
+beast" to boot.
+
+Lady George's face relaxed even at the sight of another woman, seeing
+that that other was Mrs. Vane; for as she said afterwards, "It is
+nearly twenty miles, you know, and a bad road, so the horses were
+bound to have an hour's rest, and it requires a dreadful expenditure
+of tissue to make tea last an hour; yet, if you don't, you have to put
+on your boots in a hurry and begin the conservatories and the garden,
+which no one wants to see in the least. Really, in the country, it
+would be a charity to have a room where people could wait until the
+horses came round, or rather, till the coachman got tired of flirting
+with the maids, for in the end it comes to that, you know."
+
+To tell truth, there was cause for Lady George's welcome of
+reinforcements, for, despite the fact that the hall positively reeked
+of mackintoshes, the drawing-room was redolent of the shower-proof
+mantles worn by a bevy of ladies of the type so common on Mr.
+McBrayne's steamers; ladies whose conception of the Highlands and
+islands might be likened to a volume of Scott bound in waterproof!
+
+"We brought our sandwiches for lunch with us," explained one in reply
+to Mrs. Vane's commonplace about the long drive; "and dear Lady Hooker
+said we might rely on Highland hospitality for tea; and really it was
+exquisite, a dream of beauty, and so interesting, too! Dear Lady
+Hooker says that a portion of Waverley was really written in this
+neighbourhood."
+
+"I hope they were not the opening ones, then," remarked Mrs. Vane,
+carelessly. "They always make me inclined to agree for the time with
+the man who said it was a pity Sir Walter wrote in such small print."
+
+A perfectly bovine silence fell on her group, broken, however, by a
+determined voice from over the way:
+
+"I agree with you absolutely, at least, as absolutely as the
+limitations of human life allow. There is a lack of spiritual insight
+in Sir Walter, a want of emotional instinct, an almost brutal content
+with things as they are. His style is doubtless good, but personally I
+confess to being unable to appreciate it fully. Even on a second
+reading I find the story distracts my mind."
+
+The speaker was a slim, rather elegant-looking girl, with an odd
+mixture of eagerness and stolidity on her face.
+
+"She writes a great deal," said Mrs. Vane's next-door neighbour in an
+undertone of gratification, as if she gained a certain distinction by
+being of the same party.
+
+"Only a hundred brace!" came Lady Hooker's voice, compassionately.
+"That's very poor, scarcely worth writing for--but then, you don't
+rent the place, of course; that makes the difference. Sir Joseph
+doesn't go in for grouse, of course; he is a deer man. But we couldn't
+get on under five hundred brace for the table, we really couldn't.
+Cooks are so extravagant. You will hardly believe it, Lady Temple, but
+my Glasgow beef bill last week was over nine pounds, and we had three
+sheep besides, and--how many deer was it, Miss Jones? Six? Yes, six
+deer."
+
+"That seems enough even for Noah's Ark or a menagerie," said Mrs.
+Vane, sympathetically, and Lady George gave her a grateful smile.
+
+"But then, of course, the servants won't touch venison," went
+on Lady Hooker, contentedly; "though really it makes very fair
+clear soup--it does, indeed. Even Sir Joseph does not object; and
+he is so particular. When we had the Marquis of Steyne's place in
+Ross-shire----"
+
+"Ah! there are the children," said Lady George, with a sigh of relief.
+"I thought, Lady Hooker, that my little boy and girl--oh, nurse! I did
+not intend Master Blasius----"
+
+But nurse apparently had other views--possibly that of hearing the
+pipes downstairs--for she feigned not to hear, and set Blazes down on
+his feet with that final "jug" behind to his smock frock which is the
+usual parting admonition to behave nicely.
+
+"Eve, my darling! Adam, my love! go and shake hands' with your little
+visitors," said Lady George, keeping an apprehensive eye on Blazes,
+who, with his legs very far apart, was clacking the whip he had
+brought down with him, and making extraordinary cluckings in the roof
+of his mouth, like a whole bevy of broody hens, in which occupation,
+what with his close-cropped hair and white smock, he looked a carter
+to the life. "Really, nurse!" she continued nervously; "I think,
+perhaps, it would be better. He is so much younger than the others,
+you see, Lady Hooker."
+
+But nurse was not to be put off with this subterfuge, and as she
+happened to be keeping company with the carrier, she felt outraged by
+the palpable suspicion. "Indeed, your ladyship," she said, in an
+indignant whisper, "it is only the man as drives the ferry cart, and
+'e is most respectable!"
+
+So it appeared, for beyond the usual "_ger'up_" Blasius' vocabulary
+was, if anything, too endearing. So much so, that Lady George
+suggested that since the children had had their tea, she thought it
+would be nice for them to play on the lawn. She would ring for the
+nursemaid to keep an eye on them, not that it would be necessary,
+since she could trust darling Adam and Eve not to get into mischief
+anywhere--out of Paradise. But here a difficulty presented itself. One
+little girl, a very pretty child dressed in white serge and fur,
+refused to go, and stood burying her face in the window curtain, and
+digging the toe of one shoe into the carpet after the manner of
+children who have made up their minds to give trouble.
+
+"She isn't my girl," came Lady Hooker's loud voice. "Sir Joseph
+wouldn't tolerate that sort of thing, he is so particular. When we had
+the Duke's place in Sutherland----"
+
+"Cressida, my sweet!" said the authoress, plaintively; "if you can
+possibly wish to go, do wish; it would be so much more convenient for
+dear little mother. I never coerce her, on principle, Lady George--she
+is the only tie I have to life."
+
+"Separated from her husband," put in Mrs. Vane's next-door neighbour,
+in the same self-complacent whisper. "It is quite the proper thing
+when you write, you know."
+
+"That is what Lady George says also," broke in Mrs. Woodward, a little
+spitefully. "And I tell her that children were made to obey their
+parents----"
+
+"Should be made to obey them, you mean, dear Mrs. Woodward,"
+interrupted her hostess, rising to the bait; "but, as I say, it
+depends upon experience. You may have found it necessary with--with
+yours, but mine----"
+
+"And mine also!" broke in the lady who wrote, enthusiastically.
+"Cressida's mind is so beautiful in its intense naturalness, so
+delicate in texture. It is the instinctive shyness of a sensitive
+organism which----" She started, and turned round, for a loud, full,
+yet childish voice rose confidently above her words.
+
+"Blazeth' goin' to kiss the little gurl, then she won't be flighted,
+but come along o' Blazeths."
+
+And she did, hand in hand, admiringly, while he cracked his whip and
+cried, "_Ger'rup!_" to amuse her.
+
+"And he can do old Angus awful well, too," whispered Eve to her
+companion, as they passed out of the door. "We'll get him to do it by
+the burn when Mary isn't looking. Mary doesn't like it, you know,
+because her young man is a shepherd, too; but he really is quite a
+genteel young fellar, and kept company with the under 'rouse last year
+at the Forest--that's your place, isn't it?"
+
+"It's a deal bigger than this," remarked the other. "And we have deers
+and grouses."
+
+So the game of brag--which children play more naïvely than their
+elders--began, while the authoress was explaining at length how it
+came about that Cressida had consented to Blasius's methods of
+persuasion.
+
+"I don't think you need distress yourself," remarked Mrs. Vane, with
+an odd little smile; "Blazes is really a remarkable boy; he invariably
+goes down straight to first principles, and that is a deadly method of
+argument--especially with our sex."
+
+"Sex!" echoed the authoress, scenting the foe. "I deny the right of
+man----"
+
+"Lady George!" said Mrs. Vane, hastily, "perhaps some of these ladies
+might like to see the conservatories. I have on my boots."
+
+Blanche gave her another glance of heartfelt gratitude, and as she saw
+her bear off a large contingent, told herself that she was worth three
+of Alice Woodward, who was only equal to the bread and butter! And
+Paul was anything but bread and butter! The thought, as such vagrant
+ones have a trick of doing, begged for more consideration as she sate
+turning a polite ear and tongue to the task of amusing the authoress,
+who had remained behind; Mrs. Woodward meanwhile appearing deeply
+interested in a certain place the Hookers had had in Perthshire, where
+the gillies expected champagne and _pâti de foie gras_ for their ball
+supper. And she was fast approaching that condition of mind in which
+the only thing which prevents our owning up that we are out of our
+depth is the conviction that we know quite as much of what we are
+talking about as the other party to the conversation, when the sudden
+reappearance of the garden contingent bearing two bundles wrapped in
+waterproofs supplied an all too efficient distraction.
+
+For the waterproofs being set on the ground disclosed the coy Cressida
+and Blasius, both dripping, and inconceivably smeared with tar; but
+both to all appearance in the highest of spirits.
+
+Poor Lady George stood up tragically.
+
+"Yes!" replied Mrs. Vane, striving to be grave. "They are bad
+children--all bad children," she added, turning to the group of elder
+ones behind.
+
+"Oh, but we wasn't there!" came in a chorus, led by Adam and Eve, "we
+wasn't, really. It's all his fault."
+
+"Don't! Don't come near me, child!" cried the devoted mother, hastily
+retreating from the embrace of her only tie to life. "Cressida!
+What--what have you been doing?"
+
+"Oh mummie! it was bewful. First he washted me, and then I washted
+him, an' then we washted each other, didn't we, Blazes? and we said,
+Haud up--ye----"
+
+"The child is dripping!" interrupted Lady George, hastily. "I will
+ring for nurse. Oh! Blasius, how could you think of such a thing?"
+
+Mrs. Vane pointed slily to the furred white pelisse. "It is rather
+tempting," she said, aside; but Blanche was not to be mollified.
+
+"And Mary? Where was Mary?"
+
+"Mary's dancing the Highland fling with James in the boot hole,"
+blabbed Eve, readily. "An' we wanted to dance too, but nursie was
+there, an' so we comed away."
+
+"But where did you go? What were you doing? How came you not to see?
+you two whom I can generally trust," persisted Lady George, growing
+tearful from vexation, yet feeling vaguely that it all arose from
+people bringing a piper with them when they came to call--a piper who
+disorganised the household and introduced Highland flings into the
+boot hole! "I insist, children, on hearing what you were all doing."
+
+There was a dead silence, until for the first time Blazes lifted up
+his loud, mellow voice, as he stood disregarded by a chair smearing
+his tarry hands stolidly over its cover in a vain effort to amend
+matters before nurse appeared.
+
+"They was flicking piggy wif a pin, and piggy was 'quealin' louder nor
+Blazeths."
+
+And even Lady George--when the _châr-a-banc_ had driven off, piper and
+mackintoshes and all, with Cressida kissing her still tarry hands to a
+struggling figure in Mary's arms at the nursery window--was forced to
+admit that Blazes generally went straight to the point; and that after
+all it had helped to pass the time. And as for Mary, she declared that
+her ladyship might say what she liked about 'orseplay, an' lendin'
+'erself to savage an' indignified dances in a boot 'ole, but 'ighland
+flings wasn't in it--for a stetch in yer side an' no 'airpins to speak
+of--with Master Blazes when you 'ad to 'old 'im and 'e didn't meant to
+be 'eld.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XVI.
+
+
+For the next few days after the visit to old Peggy, which convinced
+her that some secret lay in the old woman's keeping, Mrs. Vane
+refrained from any attempt to interfere with Providence. To begin
+with, she felt vaguely that the Scotch marriage laws were dangerous,
+and the very fact that she knew enough of Paul to be sure that this
+was not likely to be a mere vulgar entanglement, made her hesitate
+before her own suspicions. On the other hand, this possibility of a
+new string to her bow inclined her to slack off the other; the more so
+because here again she was beginning to be afraid of her own weapon.
+She had always recognised that, but for her interference, Paul would
+have held to that discretion which is the better part of valour, have
+seen no more of Marjory, and forgotten her; also, that the girl
+herself had been quite as ready to dismiss this strange, if alluring,
+figure from her thoughts, as belonging to a society--nay! to a
+world--in which she had no part. But now? Mrs. Vane, as she watched
+the easy familiarity which had of necessity recommenced between them,
+as she noted the girl's quick, healthy response to the thousand and
+one new thoughts and ways of this new life, could not help wondering
+if the awakening to new pleasures might not rouse into action a new
+set of emotions and instincts. For Marjory, as for Paul, there was
+also danger; to her from the unfamiliarity, to him from the very
+familiarity of the environment, which threw him back on past
+experience, and rendered it well-nigh impossible for him to forget his
+own nature, and dream himself in Arcadia. And then Dr. Kennedy's
+appearance had complicated matters for Mrs. Vane, who, kindly to all,
+had a weak spot in her heart for the friend of her earliest youth. It
+did not take long for her sharp eyes to pierce through his pretence of
+mere guardianship, and it gave her quite a pang to think of giving him
+one. Yet here she comforted herself by the palpable jealousy which
+Marjory showed towards those youthful days; a jealousy she did not
+scruple to stimulate, for Mrs. Vane, with all her _finesse_,
+occasionally made a mistake, and in the present instance did not
+realise that in thus, as it were, emphasising a hitherto unknown side
+of Dr. Kennedy's life she was adding to the strangeness of the
+environment in which Marjory found herself; and at the same time
+suggesting that it was no new thing to the one person to whose opinion
+she was inclined to defer. So that, instead of helping her old friend
+by the time-honoured device of exciting jealousy as a prelude to love,
+Mrs. Vane, in reality, made it easier for the girl to drift from her
+moorings.
+
+"You are very kind to your ward," said the little lady one day,
+feeling impelled to give comfort as she noticed Dr. Kennedy's eyes
+following Marjory rather wistfully. "But virtue has its own reward. Do
+not pretend you don't understand, _Monsieur le Docteur!_ for you do.
+And I will give you my opinion--when she has seen a little more of the
+world she will see what _it_ has seen already--that there are not many
+men in it like Dr. Tom Kennedy."
+
+"She will see exactly what she chooses to see, _Madame!_" he replied,
+with one of his little foreign bows, which, to Marjory, seemed to
+reveal him in a new and worldly light.
+
+"Exactly," retorted the little lady; "and being of the Truth will
+choose the Truth." And then suddenly her mood changed, and she laid
+her hand close to his on the table as if to attract his attention to
+her quick emotion. "Ah, _mon ami_, I envy you! you can afford to wait
+for Paradise, and I have had mine. At least, I feel as if I had eaten
+my apple and been turned out into the cold, for there hasn't been much
+happiness in my life."
+
+He looked at her with 'grave pity, noting with the eye of one
+accustomed to the work the thousand and one little signs of wear and
+tear in the clever, mobile face.
+
+"You have put plenty into other people's lives, anyhow," he said, in
+kindly, if cold, comfort; and his words were true. With all her faults
+Mrs. Vane had given more to the world than she had ever taken from it.
+
+Marjory, watching the little scene from afar, felt something of this,
+as she told herself it was quite natural that Tom should enjoy the
+companionship of his old friend. Who, in fact, would not enjoy talking
+to so brilliant and charming a woman? at least, in this new world,
+which could not somehow be cleft in two by a straight line dividing
+right from wrong, darkness from light.
+
+Yet, though she acknowledged this, she was as far as ever from
+understanding it, and as ready as ever to disdain anything which
+bordered on sentiment; on that unknown ground of Love or Passion.
+
+Dr. Kennedy, repeating to her his part of _jeune premier_ in the
+little play which was to precede some tableaux, realised her lack of
+change in this respect with mingled gratification and regret.
+
+"I must keep my own counsel," he recited, in the even yet jerky tone
+sacred to the learning of parts, "em--and not let her suspect the deep
+attachment she has inspired--inspired--inspired. Now, don't tell me,
+please; I know what comes next. Yes! I do, Mademoiselle! In nine cases
+out of ten a proposal! So there! Well, where were we? Ah! 'But, soft'
+(depends greatly on the stage floor, my dear sir). 'But, soft! she
+comes!' Go on, Marjory. 'Enter Blanche--she comes,' is your cue."
+
+"'Tis he! Henri!' Oh! Tom, do let us skip all that bosh!"
+
+Dr. Kennedy put down the hazel root he was whittling into a shepherd's
+crook and looked at her in feigned surprise. "Bosh! Why, I intend to
+work this up until I draw tears from every eye."
+
+"Not from mine, Tom," smiled Marjory; "that sort of thing always makes
+me laugh."
+
+They were lounging under the beech tree which grew close to the burn
+at the bottom of the garden, and the dappled sunshine and shade from
+the green canopy overhead made the green draperies outlining the fine
+curves of Marjory's slender figure seem like a dress of leaves.
+Leaning forward on the grass, her chin resting on her hands, her curly
+head thrown back half-defiantly to look him in the face, she reminded
+Dr. Kennedy of Rosalind; yet it was of another heroine that he spoke.
+
+"Poor Juliet! I suppose she ought not to have survived to the
+nineteenth century!"
+
+Marjory's eyebrows puckered themselves in doubt. "I don't mean that;
+perhaps I don't know what I mean; but Juliet loved Romeo, and
+these"--she nodded at the little book between her elbows in careless
+contempt--"they--they--Tom! you must allow there is too much of--of
+that sort of thing."
+
+He went on whittling for a moment; it was the first time he had ever
+touched on the subject with Marjory, and he felt at once curious and
+constrained.
+
+"I am afraid that sort of thing--as you call it--will not reduce
+itself to please you; it is part, and perhaps a necessary part, of
+life," he said shortly.
+
+"A part!" returned the girl, eagerly. "Not all? Now, in the novels and
+these plays one hears of little else. It is all hero and heroine;
+work, ambition, failure, success, are nowhere. It is very
+uninteresting--don't you think so?"
+
+Dr. Kennedy's face was a study in humour and gravity.
+
+"Upon my word, I don't know, my child! But most people think otherwise
+at some time of life. And you are a little hard, surely; you should
+remember that after all the love-season is generally the crisis of
+life's fever. Put it another way; the touchstone by which we can test
+the lovers' ideal;" he paused till his innate doubt made him add: "At
+least it should be so, though I'm afraid it isn't--not always."
+
+She looked at him, and a troubled expression came to her eyes. "I
+suppose not," she said absently; "that has always been a puzzle to me.
+To love, and yet not to approve, seems to me a contradiction in
+terms." The chips flew faster from the knot Dr. Kennedy was smoothing.
+
+"You talk as if love were reducible to logic, but it isn't." Then
+the impossibility of a mutual understanding made him add more gently:
+"It isn't a thing you can reason about. It comes and goes as it
+chooses--not as you choose. That is the difficulty."
+
+"Difficulty," echoed Marjory, raising herself with a belligerent
+air to clasp her hands about her knees and subside again into a
+half-dreamy defiance as she sate looking out over the burn to the
+sunlit point stretching into the blue loch. "It is manifestly unfair
+if it is so; only I don't think it is. Else how is it possible to hold
+love sacred? How is it possible to believe in it?"
+
+"I am afraid it will be believed in to the end of the chapter all the
+same," replied her hearer, with a smile. "And it isn't so unfair when
+all is said and done, since 'a love that is tender and true and strong
+crowneth the life of the giver.'"
+
+She turned on him sharply. "Where does that come from? Some extremely
+sentimental---- Why, Tom! I believe you wrote that--now did you? Come!
+own up!"
+
+"I might have guessed it wouldn't pass muster with a young person who
+has taken honours in English literature and knows the Elizabethan
+poets by heart," he replied gravely. "Yes! Marjory, I am responsible
+for that particular version of a time-honoured, crusted old sentiment.
+I wrote it in delirium, or something like it--if that is any excuse."
+
+She edged closer to him in girlish eagerness. "This is quite
+delightful. I never knew you wrote rhymes. I do, and burn them; but
+_you!_ Come, tell me the rest at once."
+
+"Perhaps I burn them, too."
+
+"Oh! but that is only pretence, you know, just to keep oneself in
+subjection. One remembers them all the same. I do. So now, once,
+twice, thrice!"
+
+He gave an odd little grimace. "It was last year when I had fever," he
+began apologetically.
+
+"In Paris?"
+
+"No! They had sent me to the country, and there was a stream and some
+reeds. I could see them as I lay in bed, and so---- Now, mind, if once
+I begin to swear I won't leave off under half-a-crown!"
+
+"I wouldn't mind giving three shillings if it were worth it; so go on,
+Tom, why should you be bashful?"
+
+"Because I was delirious when I wrote it, of course," he replied; yet
+there was a real tremor in his voice, as he began:--
+
+
+      "Where the river's golden sheen floats by
+       The plumes of the tall reeds touch the sky,
+           Like arrows from out a quiver.
+       But one bends over to reach the stream,
+       Dreaming of naught but the golden gleam,
+           Weary for love of the river.
+
+      "'Oh, river! river! thou flowest fast;
+       Yet leave me one kiss as thou goest past--
+           One kiss, to be mine for ever!'
+       She bent her head to the shining flood;
+       On swept the river in careless mood,
+           Mocking her poor endeavour.
+
+      "'Oh, river! river! give back to me
+       Some token of all I have given to thee,
+           To show thou art my lover!'
+       But the only answer to her prayer
+       Was the shade of her own love mirrored there,
+           With the reeds that grew above her.
+
+      "The proud reeds chid her, yet still she sighed,
+       Wondering such love could be so denied;
+           While ever towards the ocean,
+       Dreaming deep dreams of that future free,
+       The river swept on to the unknown sea,
+           Careless of her devotion.
+
+      "A bird flew down when the sun set red,
+       To sing his hymn from the reed's bowed head
+           To God, the All-good Giver.
+       Bowed by the weight of the singing bird,
+       At long, long last the waters stirred,
+           As the reed's plume touched the river.
+
+      "'Oh! glad and sweet,' sang the bird, 'is Life,
+       And Death is sweet, bringing Peace to Strife,
+           But Love is God's best treasure.
+       It cometh best when it comes unsought,
+       It giveth all, and it asketh naught,
+           For true love hath no measure,'
+
+      "The bird flew home when its song had ceased.
+       The reed, from its one dear kiss released,
+           Shall give another never;
+       But a silver crown of dewdrops shone,
+       Telling of true love given, not won,
+           In the reed's bright plume for ever.
+
+      "Go forth, my song! so that all may learn
+       Love, like the reed's, needeth no return,
+           Save the baptism of the river.
+       Though the heart be sad, and the way be long,
+       A love that is tender, and true, and strong,
+           Crowneth the life of the giver."
+
+
+Dr. Kennedy recited well; the tremor of his voice had soon passed, and
+with it, apparently, all sense of the personal application of the
+verses; for as he sate, still whittling away at the hazel root, his
+keen brown face wore a half-humorous and half-puzzled look, and after
+a decent pause he gave an odd sort of laugh.
+
+"It sounds pretty," he said; "but upon my word I don't know quite what
+I meant, and I am almost certain it was not love, not what is
+generally understood by love."
+
+Marjory looked at him judgmatically. "Nonsense! Of course it was love,
+and what is more, Tom, I think you must have been in love when you
+wrote it. Now confess, were you not?"
+
+Once again the temptation to say "Yes! with you," rose uppermost; only
+to meet with the old revulsion of feeling, born of the knowledge of
+things hidden from her, and please God! always to be so hidden. In
+love! Great heavens, no! if that were love. And yet, how could he
+answer for her nature as well as his own? For a nature which his
+practised eye told him was full of vitality, full of possibilities;
+and young, ah! so young as yet in its knowledge of itself. If he told
+her that he loved her and asked her to marry him, the chances were ten
+to one that she would say "Yes." And yet the conviction that it was so
+brought him no content, but only something of tender reluctance for
+her, of vague contempt for himself.
+
+"In love!" he echoed. "I was in a delirium if you meant that, or near
+it. Temperature a hundred and five point two, and Abbeville--he was
+nursing me--good luck to him!--had just confessed there was not much
+chance; as if I hadn't known that for days!"
+
+"And you never told me," she said, after a pause.
+
+"No; I didn't want to bother you, and----" He looked up to see her
+face white, and his manner changed. "Don't, child! it's past and
+over--besides I have a knack of pulling through--I am sorry I
+mentioned it, now."
+
+"What is it?" she asked, in a constrained voice. "I should like to
+know, if I may?"
+
+"My dear! of course you may. Pyæmia; the knife slipped, that was all.
+The veriest scratch. What a fool I was to mention it!"
+
+"Don't say that," she flashed out suddenly. "Don't you know that I
+like to hear everything--everything----" She paused, and her quick
+resentment seemed to die down before a keener thought, and she sate
+silent for a while. "I can scarcely think what it would have meant to
+me," she went on, half to herself, before she turned her face to him
+again. "I should have been quite alone in the world then, you know,
+Tom."
+
+"Until you made a home of your own, perhaps," he replied quietly,
+being, like most men of his temperament, somewhat given to
+self-torture.
+
+"Perhaps; but it would never be the same," she said, as quietly. "It
+would never seem to be the haven of rest that the thought of your
+goodness is to me now. Do you know, Tom, that I always hearten myself
+up by saying that if I am tired I can always ask you to let me rest,
+and you would, wouldn't you?" As she spoke she stretched out her hand
+towards him in her favourite gesture of appeal, and both of his,
+leaving their work, had reached to it eagerly and clasped it close.
+
+"Marjory!" he said, a surge of sheer happiness flooding heart and
+brain with unalloyed content. "Promise me that always--and--and I am
+satisfied."
+
+"Promise what?" she asked, smiling through the sudden tears which
+brightened her eyes. "That I will come home to rest if I am tired? Of
+course I shall. What is the use of having you, Tom, the best, the
+kindest, if I don't make use of you? And I will. I'll come home fast
+enough, you'll see, if----" She paused to give a wise shake of her
+head, and then, clasping the hand he had released over the other which
+lay upon her knee, she looked out absently over the running water at
+her feet.
+
+"I wonder how I shall like it?" she continued. "I wonder if it will be
+what I have fancied it?"
+
+"Probably not," replied her companion, with a quick dread at his
+heart. For how could it be so? What could this girl's imagining have
+to do with that world which he knew so well: so well that the finer
+tissue in him rebelled against the teaching which his very profession
+forced him to accept as true, at any rate for the majority of men and
+women. "Probably not," he repeated more quietly, "though that is just
+the sort of thing it is impossible to predict of a girl who has been
+brought up as you have. So it must be settled by experience."
+
+Half an hour afterwards Paul Macleod, coming over to the Lodge on the
+pretence of giving notice of an afternoon rehearsal, found them still
+busy over the loves and woes of Henri and Blanche. In fact, Dr.
+Kennedy was on his knees disclaiming his part passionately; whereat
+the newcomer frowned. First at the sight, secondly at his own dislike
+to it.
+
+"I have been trying to teach Miss Carmichael how to refuse an aspirant
+firmly, yet sympathetically," said the doctor, coolly, rising to his
+feet and putting the handkerchief he had spread on the ground into his
+pocket; "but she finds a difficulty, apparently, in keeping her
+countenance. It is a mistake, Marjory. Half the unhappy marriages in
+the world come from the difficulty which the untutored mind has in
+saying 'No' with decent courtesy. It is so much easier to say 'Yes,'
+since that requires no diplomacy. If I had daughters I should always
+impress on them that the eleventh commandment does not consist in
+'Thou shalt not refuse.'"
+
+"I shouldn't have thought it necessary to impress that on the girls of
+the present day," remarked Paul, rather hastily, and Marjory flushed
+up at once.
+
+"It is never safe to generalise from a single experience, Captain
+Macleod," she retorted, "and yours may have been exceptionally
+fortunate--hitherto."
+
+"Perhaps it has--hitherto," he replied, and, after delivering his
+message, went off in a huff. Yet he felt himself more on a plane with
+Marjory than he had ever done before, slightly to his discomfiture;
+for this atmosphere of quick give and take, this suspicion of jealous
+anger, was familiar to him, and he could not mistake its
+possibilities. So he devoted himself more than usual to his duty, and
+though, of course, he made up his tiff a trifle sentimentally with
+Marjory, he chose to be rather lordly over her relations with Dr.
+Kennedy, and even went so far as to mention to his sister that he
+suspected her _protégé_, Mr. Gillespie, was forestalled.
+
+"My dear Paul!" said Lady George, distractedly, "I really don't care
+at the present moment who marries who. I might be in a better world
+for that matter, if I weren't in Purgatory."
+
+"Wherefore?" asked Paul, kindly.
+
+"Oh! the supper, and the servants, and the general civility," replied
+Blanche, who was in reality enjoying the bustle, but, at the same
+time, liked to pose as a victim. "Really, in these out-of-the-way
+places one has to be a virtuous woman, and bring one's food from afar;
+and then there is always Blasius. I suppose it is the name, as you
+say, George, but, really, I don't believe that child _can_ do what is
+right."
+
+"Nonsense, my dear," retorted her spouse, who ever since he undertook
+to interpret the laws of nature to his youngest born had been a trifle
+jealous of his pupil's reputation. "Blasius won the Derby in '73. What
+has the child been doing now?"
+
+"Oh! nothing much; only he wouldn't eat his dinner just now because it
+was only an egg, and the others had mutton. He really is too young to
+have meat every day; so, as I was busy, I told nurse to put him to
+bed, and he is sitting up in it making the most unearthly noises, as
+if the whole farmyard were in the top landing. Listen! you can hear
+him down here."
+
+There could be no doubt of it, and as they stood in the hall, looking
+up involuntarily, a perfect babel of cluckings and cacklings, crowings
+and quackings, seemed to come down the stairs with Mary, the
+nursemaid, who was bearing the dirty dishes from the nursery dinner;
+among them Blazes' despised egg.
+
+"The worst of it is," went on Lady George, in her high, plaintive
+voice, "you never really know what the child means. Why, for instance,
+should he cackle, as if he had laid an egg himself?"
+
+'"Um!" grumbled her husband. "More to the purpose why he refused his
+dinner? Here, let me look at that tray, will you? By Jove, Blanche!"
+he went on, holding out the egg-cup excitedly, "it's bad--no child
+could be expected to eat that--what a fool!"
+
+He was half-way up the stairs impetuously when his wife begged him to
+be discreet, and wait for her.
+
+"It is just what I said," she confided to Paul, who followed full of
+laughter. "You never can tell what he means till afterwards; now, of
+course, I can guess that--that----" She paused, feeling that words
+were unnecessary before the spectacle of Blasius, standing beside the
+round, white pillow of his cot, and cackling vehemently. But Lord
+George was too angry for amusement, and after an elaborate apology to
+Blazes for the mistake, handed him over to the nurse with a sharp
+order to re-dress him and take more care in future, which enabled that
+functionary to veil her real regret under a show of indignation until
+Blasius, who was sitting on her knee, and could presumably see more of
+the truths than others, said consolingly:
+
+"Never mind, nursie! Cocky eat his own egg next time." Whereupon, she
+burst into tears and hugged him for a darling, and a treasure, and the
+one comfort of her life.
+
+"I don't think his meaning was obscure that time, Blanche," said her
+husband, as they went downstairs. "If Cocky had committed the
+indiscretion of laying a bad egg, why then--God bless the boy, he is a
+little trump!"
+
+"And has a wisdom beyond his years," added Paul, rather cynically;
+"for he lays the blame where it should be given--on the Creator."
+
+"My dear Paul! what a dreadful thing to say; please remember he is
+your god-son."
+
+"Well, if he doesn't hear it from me he will from others, my dear
+girl," replied her brother, with a shrug of the shoulders. "It is the
+teaching of to-day. We are none of us responsible beings."
+
+"And upon my soul," growled Lord George, "I'm inclined to agree with
+it in one sense--think of that fool of a nurse!--you should dismiss
+her, Blanche."
+
+"But, my dear Paul," persisted Lady George, disregarding her husband's
+suggestion, "the question of heredity does not exclude the forces of
+education. We can be altered----"
+
+"I've heard you say a dozen times, Blanche, that an altered body is
+never satisfactory, even with the best of dressmakers," interrupted
+Paul, as he turned off to the smoking-room. "So why should you think
+it would answer with a soul?"
+
+"There is something the matter with Paul," remarked his sister, who
+disliked above all things to have the logical sequence of her own
+theories flung in her face; "but that is only to be expected. When one
+is busy troubles come crowding in on every side. However, I have
+written to Lady Hooker, and begged her as a personal favour not to
+bring the piper to-morrow night; for, though I have warned the
+servants about Highland flings, you cannot expect people to overcome
+their natural instincts nowadays, and of course we shall be enjoying
+ourselves, in a way, upstairs."
+
+"I hope so," assented her husband, gloomily; "and I suppose, my dear,
+I shall get my towel-horse back when it is all over."
+
+"Now, George! isn't that like a man?" cried his wife, triumphantly,
+as if appealing to him for verification of a new and interesting
+fact about himself. "As if you didn't know that tableaux in the
+drawing-room and towel-horses in the bedrooms were quite incompatible
+when scenery is required--especially rustic scenery. And Mrs. Vane
+requires so many rocks! You may be thankful it wasn't _boulders_, for
+then the pillows would have gone, and what would you have said to
+that?"
+
+Lord George said nothing, but as he followed his brother-in-law's
+example and turned off to the smoking-room, some connection of ideas
+made him hum to himself:--
+
+
+             "Out of my stony grief Bethels I'll raise."
+
+
+"Really, George!" called his wife, indignantly; "you and Paul are
+_impayable_. It is a wonder Adam and Eve are so good."
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XVII.
+
+
+Private theatricals as a rule need no description, but these in the
+barn at Gleneira House merit at least so much attention, in that,
+for the major part of the audience, they were the first attempt at
+play-acting it had ever seen; since even in the British Isles culture
+and civilisation have not harried the glens which are hidden away in
+the hearts of the hills. To tell truth, not a few of the audience came
+doubtfully with a fear lest they might be backsliders; but, as luck
+would have it, the Free Church section, being in process of choosing a
+new minister, felt it could afford, for once, to test the iniquity of
+the stage by actual experience. Besides, if the laird led the way,
+there were still sufficient of the clan to follow him even to the jaws
+of hell. So they came and waited for the curtain to rise, with a
+quaint trepidation lest they should really enjoy themselves, and so
+give place to the devil.
+
+But there was someone else besides the "_unco guid_" who felt vaguely
+as if it would have been better she had not been there, as if she
+wished that both the immediate past and the present had never come to
+pass. And that was Marjory, as she stood at the far corner by the
+door, whence she could escape easily when she was wanted behind the
+scenes. Perhaps her face showed something of this, for Paul Macleod,
+pausing beside her for a moment, said in a low tone:
+
+"I've seen Mrs. Vane act in 'Her Bitterest Foe' before, and she alone
+would carry it off. Then Bertie is splendid at the heavy parts, and
+Dr. Kennedy, by all accounts, is almost professional. There is no
+fear, I'm sure."
+
+She turned to him quickly. "Do I look nervous? I think I am, chiefly
+from the novelty. It is the first play I've ever seen, remember."
+
+He knew that, and yet the idea struck him again with a certain regret
+for her and for himself. For her that she should see one at all, for
+himself that he should have seen so many. "After all," he parodied
+lightly, "it is better sometimes never to have lived than to have
+lived it all! There goes the prompter's bell, so keep your eyes open,
+Miss Carmichael."
+
+There was no need for the advice, since the first look filled the girl
+with astonishment at the almost ridiculous reality which the glare of
+the footlights gave to the shreds and patches of scenery she had
+helped to put together. No wonder, therefore, if Mrs. Vane, in her
+simple black dress, looked the _ingenue_ to perfection, and Major
+Bertie's honest English face had quite a German cut about it. And how
+well they acted! The ring of rough tenderness in the General's voice
+was all that could be desired, while Mrs. Vane was faultlessly simple
+and girlish. It could scarcely, Marjory told herself, be better; and
+oh, how dreadful--how unbearable it would be if Tom fell below that
+high standard! Another minute and his cue would come; so much she
+knew, and a really hot regret rose up in her that she had not insisted
+on invading the privacy of the rehearsals; then she would have known
+what to expect. Yet what could he do with such a part? A part which
+had always sounded to her so unreal, so unlike the man himself, so
+unlike---- Then who was this hasty, hot-headed, imperious, impetuous
+boy who burst upon the stage? She gave quite a little gasp of dismay,
+and then forgot everything save that figure kneeling at its mistress's
+feet, and pouring out its love, its grief, its remorse.
+
+"Bravo!" said Paul, under his breath, then added, in a different tone,
+"You see there is no need to be nervous--he does it _con amore_."
+
+A sudden jealousy had leapt up in him at the thought that Marjory
+might listen to such wooing, and as he moved away to the vacant place
+left for him by Alice Woodward, he told himself, with resentful
+cynicism, that it was not the first time Dr. Kennedy had played the
+lover's part, and that even Marjory should be satisfied by the
+plaudits which were sure to follow.
+
+But she was not thinking of applause. She was too startled, too dazed
+to think at all, for something new and hitherto undreamt of in her was
+responding passionately to the passionate appeal to which she
+listened, and her clasp on the chair behind which she stood slackened
+in relief as the kiss of forgiveness was given. Oh, that was right!
+Who, loving the man, would not forgive? Who could help it in such
+case? And this--yes! this was love!
+
+It seemed to her as if the play passed in a moment, and yet that it
+had stolen the reality from all the rest of her life; nor did she
+realise who the actors were until, amid the applause with which the
+curtain came down, she heard two familiar voices from the row of
+chairs in front of her.
+
+"Bravo! Bravissimo!" said one. "That was well done. He has my
+compliments."
+
+"And mine," quoth the other, solemnly jocose. "But to think of it? Oh,
+Thomas, my lad, _quod medicorum est promettant medice_, but this is no
+healing o' hearts, man! Eh! Father Macdonald, but we will have at the
+learned impostor; we will!"
+
+"_Amor al cor gentil ralto s'apprende_," put in the gentler voice, in
+the same jocose strain; and then they both laughed.
+
+Marjory stepped back involuntarily as if to avoid hearing more; but
+she had heard enough, for there, as she raised her eyes, stood Dr.
+Kennedy and Mrs. Vane, bowing their acknowledgments of the recall. The
+old life had come back again, but with a strange new thrill in it
+which made her heart beat, yet left her dazed and weary.
+
+"If I could always act with Tom Kennedy," said Mrs. Vane, jubilant
+over the success, when Marjory went behind the scenes to aid in the
+coming tableaux, "I should make my fortune. He is the only amateur I
+ever saw who knows how to make love!"
+
+"He did it very well," assented Marjory, coldly. She felt glad that he
+was too busy with the scenery for her to have speech with him; she
+would not have known what to say--for she had liked it--she had
+understood--and yet!---- It was bad enough to listen for a moment to
+Paul's approval when he came round, escorting Alice Woodward, who was
+wanted for the statue in "Winter's Tale."
+
+"You should be satisfied," he said with intent. "Personally I never
+saw it better done, on--or off the stage."
+
+But then a look at the girl's face drove him back quick as thought to
+the old Arcadian days when they had been so friendly.
+
+"I wish the whole business were over," he said sharply. "It's an awful
+nuisance, and you will all be dead tired to-morrow."
+
+"But Lord George will have his towel-horse again!" she answered,
+lightly turning to a current jest as a shelter from the sense of his
+thoughtfulness for her. "And there are but three more tableaux."
+
+"Three," he echoed; "there are only two on the programme."
+
+"But the other is Mrs. Vane's _bon-bouche_ to the house party. She
+said they deserved a surprise; but I believe she would just as soon
+let it slide--for she is very tired, Captain Macleod. Only it would be
+hard on Mr. Gillespie, who is full of his part; besides it really
+should be the prettiest of all--Mrs. Vane took so much trouble over
+it."
+
+"Are you in it--and Dr. Kennedy?" he asked quickly.
+
+"No, only I--and Mr. Gillespie, of course. You see it was for the
+house party."
+
+And Paul, as he went off to do host, wondered angrily what Violet
+could mean; she always meant something--at least that was his
+experience of her. The wonder lingered as he sate decorously between
+Mrs. Woodward and Lady Hooker in the front row, listening between the
+scenes to the account the latter gave of some tableaux she had got up
+when they rented the Marquis of Tweedie's place in Peebleshire, and
+whispering to the former, when the curtain rose finally on Alice as
+Joan of Arc at the stake, that he hoped it was the last time her
+daughter would suffer martyrdom in his house. For Paul invariably said
+the right thing, if it paid him to do so, no matter what his real
+feelings were at the moment; at the present time they were somewhat
+mixed; the preponderant one being irritation at the whole round world.
+
+And now, that being the last tableau on the programme, the guests were
+manifestly becoming filled with uneasy wonder as to whether they were
+expected to make the move or not, when the tinkle of the bell warned
+them of something more, and after a minute's pause the lights went out
+suddenly. Then from the darkness came Wagner's "March of the Gods to
+Walhalla," and the curtain, rising slowly, showed a scene which well
+deserved the murmur of recognition which ran round the more critical
+part of the audience.
+
+"Shouldn't have thought towel-horses could have done it--but she is a
+deuced clever little soul," murmured Lord George to his neighbour, and
+in truth, considering the resources at Mrs. Vane's command, the effect
+was well-nigh marvellous. In the distance lay a stretch of sea and sky
+lit by the light of a dying sunset which gained an almost real
+radiance from the darkness of the foreground, where, with its back to
+the audience, its foot upon the brink, a mailed figure, sword in hand,
+bent, as if meditating a leap over the shadowy gulf which lay between
+it and a low platform of rock overhanging the misty blue depths of the
+distant sea. And on the rock, her silver helmet laid aside, her head
+pillowed on her white arm, slept a warrior-maiden with her face turned
+to the sunsetting. She was clad in soft, filmy, white draperies, but
+the corselet of silver she wore above them rose and fell evenly with
+her calm breathing; while round about her--so close that it seemed to
+touch her wavy hair and silver, wing-shod feet--flickered and flamed a
+mystic circle of fire.
+
+"What is it? What is it meant to be?" came eagerly from many of the
+audience. And Paul knew--knew all too well--but he sate silent,
+crushing down his anger at the skill of the thrust.
+
+"What is it?" echoed Alice Woodward, who, with an opera cloak thrown
+over her last costume, had returned to her rôle of spectator. "Why,
+Brynhild, of course, mamma! The Nibelungen, you know--we heard that
+German tenor in it, if you remember. Mrs. Vane has staged it
+beautifully, hasn't she, Captain Macleod; and how well the dress suits
+Miss Carmichael's style. That is Mr. Gillespie, of course; he looks
+taller in armour. You know, mamma, it is a sort of allegory. Sigurd
+has to leap----" She paused abruptly to look at her companion. He had
+started to his feet, and a quick cry of "Take care! Take care!" rose
+from various parts of the house, for a breath of wind, coming from
+some opening door, had bent the flames perilously near to those filmy
+draperies.
+
+"Look out, Gillespie! for God's sake look out!" he shouted; but the
+mailed figure, failing to understand, turned to the audience, and the
+next instant Paul, tearing off his coat the while, had leapt over the
+footlights, and scattering the circle in his hurry was on his knees
+beside Marjory crushing out the fire which had caught her dress. The
+heated spirit spilt on the floor blazed up fiercely, almost hiding
+those two, and rousing a shriek of dismay from the ladies.
+
+"Down with the curtain and keep the draught out!" shouted Paul; "and
+run back the carpet some of you. Lie still a moment, please--it is
+beyond you."
+
+As a matter of fact the sudden burst of flame was nearer to the mailed
+figure, who, being penned in between it and the falling curtain, chose
+the footlights and landed in Mrs. Woodward's arms a second before Dr.
+Kennedy's voice rang out reassuringly to say it was all right.
+
+"You might bring a blanket, Kennedy," said Paul, still with his arms
+round Marjory. "If you will excuse me a moment longer, Miss
+Carmichael, it will be wiser--muslin is so apt to flare. Tell me if I
+am hurting you."
+
+Perhaps he did not mean--being a gentleman in most ways--to lower his
+voice in the least, and yet he did lower it. He could scarcely help
+himself with that touch thrilling through him, and at the sound of the
+tenderness in his own tones something in him seemed to cast itself
+loose from all anchorage and, spreading white wings over the tempest
+of emotion that arose in him, to bear him swiftly to a haven of
+perfect content.
+
+"I'm not hurt at all," she said; yet she looked at his face so close
+to hers with startled eyes, and gave a little shiver; then went on
+hastily. "But you--your shirt sleeve is all burnt--it is smouldering
+still. Tom! come quick! No! No!--not for me. There was a spark still,
+Captain Macleod--I saw it----"
+
+"It is out now at any rate--be still for one more second, please.
+Thanks, Kennedy--just slip it under while I lift. So--a perfect
+roly-poly! That is well over!"
+
+He spoke lightly again, but he had grown very pale, and much to his
+annoyance found himself in the doctor's hands for a scorch on his arm.
+However, as his sister said plaintively, that and the unfortunate
+break-up of Lord George's lamented towel-horse in the hurry was the
+only mischief done. It might have been much worse, and though of
+course it was really quite a lovely tableau--for which Mrs. Vane
+deserved the highest praise--still it was a dangerous experiment. It
+generally was dangerous to play with fire, remarked Paul, impatiently,
+and had not his sister better make some diversion among the guests, or
+they would be leaving with a sense of judgment on their souls. A reel
+or two would hearten them up, while a glass of whiskey, and some weak
+negus for the ladies before they went away, would finish the business.
+Of course there was no piper, but Miss Carmichael could play "The
+de'il amang them" to perfection, and would do that much to help
+Gleneira, he felt sure.
+
+There is no greater test of the quality of a man's fibre than the way
+in which he stands the goad of mental pain. Paul Macleod, smarting
+under the sting which the certain knowledge that he loved Marjory
+Carmichael as he had never loved any woman before and yet that she was
+beyond his reach brought to him, showed this indubitably. All his
+reckless self-will, all his wild resentment against controlling
+circumstance, rose up in him, and only the fact that he had no
+possible opportunity of so doing, prevented him from then and there
+making his proposal to Alice Woodward. This may seem a strange
+sequence to the discovery that you love another woman, but it was just
+this discovery which set him in arms against himself. For this love
+was a new emotion--a love which suited the girl with her clear eyes--a
+love such as he had hitherto scouted as a dream fit only for
+passionless, sexless idealists.
+
+And the result of this deliberate choice of lower levels was in its
+way stranger still. For Alice Woodward, whose emotion under any
+circumstances could never have risen to a higher point than calm
+affection, felt more content than she had ever done over the future,
+and actually lingered in her mother's room--a most unusual event in
+that reserved family--to remark that Gleneira was really delightful in
+the fine weather when the house was full of people.
+
+"Captain Macleod showed immense presence of mind, too," assented Mrs.
+Woodward, contributing her quota to the general satisfaction.
+
+"Very!" admitted Alice, colouring a little, "and he behaved so nicely
+afterwards. In such good spirits, you know, though of course he must
+have been in pain."
+
+So they retired to bed, well content with the state of affairs. Not so
+Mrs. Vane, who, long after the others were asleep, sate waiting for a
+well-known footstep to pass her door, on its way to the laird's own
+room, which lay, quaintly apart from the others, with a little further
+flight of stairs all to itself. And none came, though from below she
+heard the voices of the menkind dispersing when their smoke was over,
+and from above Lord George's stealthy tread as he passed the nursery.
+And yet she had made up her mind that she must say a word to
+Paul--must make certain of the truth--before she slept. She had not
+been deceived; he was angry with her. Nay, worse! he was unhappy, yet
+in a mood to make that unhappiness permanent. That must be prevented
+somehow; so after a time she stole out into the passages, dark save
+for the master's light--that light which has brought home the pang of
+widowhood to so many a woman's heart, as she pauses on her way
+upstairs to put it out. If she knew anything of Paul's nature, he
+would not be in the smoking-room; once the necessity for restraint was
+over, he would have taken the earliest opportunity of escaping from
+the eyes of others. The business-room most likely, where he was secure
+from most interruptions; but not from hers, though as he started to
+his feet as she came in, he looked as though he had expected
+otherwise.
+
+"I waited for you upstairs," she said boldly, "for I must speak to you
+to-night"--then she paused, startled; for she had expected anger, and
+Paul had sunk wearily into his chair again, resting his head on his
+hand.
+
+"Can't you let me be--surely you have done mischief enough already?"
+he said; and then he turned to look at her, and think, even in his
+resentment, that she had always liked him, always been good to him. "I
+don't understand why you brought this about--not the accident, of
+course; that no one could have foreseen, but all the other part. For
+you did bring it about. Why? Do you want me to marry----_her?_ You
+know you don't. Then why should you have schemed to give me pain?"
+
+He spoke with a concentrated bitterness which told her that his
+patience was far spent. When she had left her room to seek him she had
+been prepared to speak the truth, if need be, to a certain extent, but
+now her quick wit showed her that she must risk all.
+
+"No!" she answered quietly. "I do not wish you to marry Marjory
+Carmichael; but neither do I wish you to marry that iceberg of a
+girl, and be miserable. Let me have my say, Paul, for the sake of old
+times. She does not love you, my poor Paul--I doubt if she can love
+anything--and you do not love her, you do not even admire her. But you
+did love the other, and when I saw you pretending that you did not, I
+said to myself, 'He shall know the difference.'"
+
+"That is a kind of knowledge a man can generally find out for
+himself," broke in Paul, cynically. "But, still, I don't see--what
+possible use?----" He paused, and turned from her again to his old
+attitude.
+
+"What use!" she echoed, laying her hand on his shoulder. "Listen! and
+I will tell you the truth--tell it you utterly. You are very dear to
+me, Paul, and come what may I am your friend. Do you think, then, that
+I could stand by and see you bring misery into your life needlessly;
+quite needlessly, for you could do better for yourself than that. Long
+ago, Paul, so long ago that the folly of it is over for you, and so I
+can speak of it--you loved me; and I----" she paused, but went on
+steadily. "I loved you--don't start, my friend, it is true; see! to
+your face I say it is true. I loved you. But I kept the secret then,
+Paul, for the sake of your future, as I tell it now for the sake of
+your future, so that you may believe that I am a friend indeed; for a
+woman will not stand by and see another woman sacrifice the happiness
+of a man for whom she once sacrificed her own. That is why I say you
+must not marry Alice Woodward--you must not, Paul! Give her up!"
+
+"And, then?"
+
+Her eyes met his unflinchingly.
+
+"Yes, Paul! think what you like; I do not care. As for that, I should
+make you a better wife than Alice Woodward, for there would be the
+memory of a past love between us, at any rate--a fair, honest love."
+He had risen from his chair, and stood looking down on the brave,
+spirited little figure before him with irrepressible admiration. What
+pluck, what address she had! How skilfully she had steered her way
+through dangers that would have wrecked another woman's self-esteem!
+And with the memory of the past surging up in him he could not deny
+her right to speak.
+
+"I am no fool, Paul," she went on, holding up her hand to check some
+half-hesitating words upon his lips. "I know what I say. I know, too,
+what most men would say if a woman spoke to them as I have spoken to
+you to-night. Well! I risk all that. I never lacked courage in your
+cause, Paul, and if I gave up my love in those old passionate days for
+your sake, do you think I would let its shadow come between you and
+happiness? You are marrying the girl for her money. Well, others have
+money also. I have it now, if it comes to that. I do not ask you to
+marry me, Paul," she added, with a sudden, hard little laugh. "I have
+not needed Leap Year in my calendar of life, but I do ask you to
+think. There are rich girls whom you might love."
+
+"That is so like a woman! Have you forgotten your own handiwork
+already? You would have me forget now that I am in love, but I shall
+never forget."
+
+"Never is a long word," she answered, resuming her ordinary manner,
+"and you forget so easily, my poor Paul!"
+
+"You have no right to say that, Violet," he broke in, hotly. "Have I
+forgotten you? Have I forgotten your kindness? Do you think I would
+let any other soul alive speak to me as you have done to-night?"
+
+She swept him a swift, gracious little curtsey. "_Dieu mercie,
+Monsieur!_" she laughed, "the temptation would be too great, I
+suppose? But I will tell you, if you like, why you have not forgotten.
+Because I have kept myself _en evidence_; that is why. You say that I
+see clearly, my friend. It is true. I see so clearly that the glamour
+goes even from my own actions. You are the captive of my bow and
+spear, Paul, but you would have escaped if you could. And Alice
+Woodward cannot spin webs as I do; she will never be able to keep you,
+and then----? Good-night." She held out her hand suddenly, but Paul
+stood irresolute.
+
+"You are clear sighted, indeed. God knows you read me like a book
+sometimes." He hesitated, then went on hurriedly, "I wonder if--if
+Miss Carmichael----"
+
+Violet Vane shook her head with a smile. "That is the kind of
+knowledge a man can generally find out for himself, my friend!
+Personally, I think she will marry Tom Kennedy if she is left alone."
+
+"Thank you. You certainly have courage, Violet."
+
+"The courage of a surgeon who sees the knife is kindest in the end. I
+have told you that you would be miserable with the woman you do not
+love. I now tell you that you would not be happy with the woman you do
+love."
+
+"And why?"
+
+"Because you have not the making of an archangel in you; that is why.
+Do you think you have, Paul?" She stood for a moment at the door to
+look up at him, as if she were making quite an ordinary remark. "But
+there is the earth in the middle between the heavens above and the
+waters beneath. Don't forget that, _my friend_."
+
+When she had left him he lit another cigar out of sheer inability to
+think of doing anything more decided, anything which in any way
+affected his future, even to the extent of taking a night's repose;
+that feeling of uncertainty being largely a result of sheer surprise
+that he should have allowed Violet Vane's man[oe]uvring to pass
+unreproved. And this, in its turn, convinced him, as nothing else
+would have done, that she understood him as no one else could do.
+
+And she? When he, coming up to his room, turned out the lamp on the
+stair, he left the house in darkness, save for the candle he carried.
+Yet Mrs. Vane was not even undressed. She was face down on her bed
+trying to forget everything; above all, that old Peggy Duncan
+possessed a secret which might--which might----
+
+For her own reference to the past had brought that other past back
+upon her, and, as she buried her hot face in the pillow, she told
+herself that she had not, after all, spoken the truth. She had said
+that his happiness was her motive, when it was her own. And wherefore
+not?
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+
+Marjory sate at the window pretending to be busy over laces and
+ribbons, but in reality watching Dr. Kennedy's deft hands lit up by
+the shaft of light from his microscope lamp, as, with the aid of a
+tiny pair of tweezers, and a watchmaker's glass fixed in one eye, he
+laid out the almost invisible film of some sea plant on a slide. For
+they, that is to say, Marjory, Will, and the doctor, had spent the day
+after the theatricals in dredging for oysters, as a relief to what the
+latter called fishing for men; and something interesting had come up
+in the dredger, which had to be set up despite the waning light. He
+looked more natural when so employed, and yet, despite the grizzling
+hair and the thin brown face, she seemed to trace in him as she had
+never done before a hint of that figure on last night's stage, which
+had opened her eyes to love in its passion, its unreason. And with
+this fancy came the remembrance of Paul Macleod's swift resource, his
+kindness, his courage. And both memories confused her, making her feel
+as if the old landmarks had been removed, and she could not be certain
+even of those she knew intimately; as if a man's ideals might yield no
+clue to his actions. For Tom must surely have felt that storm and
+stress before he could portray it so vividly? And then, even if this
+were not so, his vast experience of things which she had been
+accustomed to despise remained inexplicable.
+
+"I had no idea that you were so frivolous, Tom," she said suddenly,
+laying down even her pretence of work.
+
+He wheeled round in his chair instantly, and let the glass fall from
+his eye. "Are you aware that that is a very odd remark to make to a
+man who believes he has found a new infusorian which may revolutionise
+all our theories, especially when it is made by a young lady who is
+busy, or ought to be busy, over her first ball-dress."
+
+"Ought I?" She smiled back a little wearily. "I'm afraid I'm a bad
+pupil, Tom. I was just wishing Lady George could have postponed it
+till you had gone."
+
+He gave a little grimace. "Thank you, my dear, I daresay it would be
+pleasanter,----"
+
+"Don't tease, Tom. You know what I mean, perfectly; it interrupts the
+holiday."
+
+"Which is perilously near its close, by the way. I have to go back
+next Thursday."
+
+"Yes, I know. But don't talk of it; let us enjoy it while it lasts!"
+
+He turned back to his work again hurriedly. "Now, that is what I
+should call truly frivolous. So be it. However, _Vogue la galère!_ It
+is a very easy philosophy, at any rate."
+
+They were silent again for a space, and then she began again. "What I
+meant was, that you must have seen so much of the world; and then you
+are so interested in it. Last night," she hesitated a little, "it
+struck me, Tom, that for all I knew, you might have--have seen
+something like it when you were through the Franco-Prussian war, for
+instance. You--you were quite a boy then, weren't you?"
+
+"A baby, so to speak. I remember nearly fainting over the first wound
+I saw. Yes, Marjory, I've seen such romantic young fools many a time.
+I see a good deal of that sort of thing necessarily in my profession.
+It is human nature."
+
+"I suppose so," she said curtly. "Well, I suppose I ought to go and
+dress. Oh, Tom! why couldn't Lady George have put it off, and why
+won't you let me stay at home?"
+
+"Because, when, after infinite toil, you have caught a netful of
+mankind for theatricals, you naturally choose the next day for a
+dance. And because a girl ought to go to a ball. How can she tell her
+_metier_ if she only keeps to one? Besides, it is your holiday."
+
+"I shan't like it a bit, and I shall feel dowdy in this thing."
+She held up a white stuff gown, with the oddest mixture of
+self-complacency and disdain. "Of course, it will do quite well, and
+it would have been recklessly extravagant of me to get another, seeing
+that I shan't want evening dresses at a Board School; but I shall be a
+dowdy all the same."
+
+"I doubt it," remarked her guardian, busy adjusting his screws. "Now,
+you really ought to go and dress, my dear. In my time girls----"
+
+"In your time!" she flashed out. "Why? Why, you are quite up to date,
+Tom, and I--I am hopelessly _arriérée_, especially in my dress! Oh,
+dear f I suppose I must----"
+
+A minute afterwards she came flying down the stairs, followed by Mrs.
+Cameron, who had evidently been on the watch for the occasion in
+Marjory's room, and was determined not to lose the scene downstairs.
+It was rather a pretty one, though the first words were distinctly
+sordid.
+
+"Oh, Tom! what did it cost?"
+
+"Now, that really is the rudest question! I'm surprised at you,"
+returned Dr. Kennedy, trying to jest, though something in the girl's
+face told him she was not far from tears.
+
+"But it is dreadful," she began.
+
+"Naethin' o' the sort," broke in Mrs. Cameron, breathlessly. "Just
+don't belie the nature God gave to you. It's just beautiful, and the
+doctor and me has been agog these three days lest it should not come
+in time, for it is ill getting things to Gleneira from Paris."
+
+"Paris!" echoed Marjory. "Yes, I thought it looked like Paris! How
+foolish of you, Tom!"
+
+"And so that is all the thanks you're giving him. Wait, my lass, till
+you're as auld as I am, with no a soul in the wide world caring a
+bawbee if you're clad in sackcloth and ashes, and then see if ye
+woudna like to be made a lily o' the field. Just arrayed in glory
+wi'out a toil or a spin."
+
+"Quite right, Mrs. Cameron," put in Dr. Kennedy, with a laugh. "She
+will have plenty of toiling and spinning by and bye; why shouldn't she
+be a flower and do credit to us all for one evening?"
+
+She looked at him from head to foot. "A flower for you to wear in your
+buttonhole, apparently. Tom, are all men alike?"
+
+"I am human, at any rate," he said quietly.
+
+"Oh, come away, come away!" cried Mrs. Cameron, impatiently. "Come and
+put it on, like a good lassie, and don't be chopping logic. It's time
+enough to be an angel when you've done being a girl, and you'll have
+more chance o' bein' one if ye make the best o' your gifts in this
+world, I can tell you. So come away, my dear, there may be a stitch or
+two a-wantin', and the time is none too long."
+
+But Marjory stood her ground even after the old lady had bustled
+upstairs again, and she looked so serious that Dr. Kennedy was driven
+into suggesting that if she preferred it, she might wear her old gown.
+
+"It is not that," she said slowly. "It is beautiful. I could see that,
+at a glance; but--Tom, did Mrs. Vane choose it?"
+
+His laugh had a certain content in it. "My dear child, I prefer people
+to be dressed as I like, and I am generally supposed to have good
+taste."
+
+"Very, I should say," she remarked, with a curious accent of regret in
+her voice.
+
+But the fact was indubitable. When she came down again in a shimmer of
+silver and white, set cunningly with frosted rowan berries showing a
+glint of scarlet here and there, she knew so well that her dress was
+perfect, that from a new bashfulness she turned the tables on him
+swiftly.
+
+"Tom," she cried, "I declare you have waxed the ends of your
+moustache!"
+
+"And if I had been in Italy, I should have curled my hair, too," he
+replied imperturbably. "It is not a crime."
+
+"And that coat! It is not your ordinary one."
+
+"It is not. The one I use here--since you are so particular--is a
+dress jacket; the correct thing, I assure you, for a shooting lodge.
+But I have the misfortune to be honorary surgeon to a potentate
+somewhere, who insists on brass buttons on state occasions, so I don't
+happen to have the intermediate affair. Besides, there are to be
+lord-lieutenants and generals hanging round this evening from the Oban
+gathering. If that is satisfactory to your highness, we should be
+going."
+
+"And that red thing in your buttonhole?" she persisted, going close up
+to him and touching the bit of ribbon with dainty curious finger. "It
+is the Legion of Honour, I suppose."
+
+"It is called so; you look as if that were a crime also."
+
+"I did not know you had it, that was all," she said. And then, Will,
+coming in full of fuss because his very occasional white tie had not
+been folded properly in the wash, changed the _venue_ by declaring
+that fine feathers make fine birds, and that he was half ashamed to
+belong to them.
+
+"Naethin' o' the sort, Will," snapped Mrs. Cameron. "It's the fine
+birds that grows the fine feathers, as ye'd see ony day o' the week if
+ye went to my hen yard."
+
+"And it is always the male bird which attends most to personal
+appearance," remarked Marjory, sedately. Yet, despite her pretended
+disdain, as they passed down the drawing-room corridor at Gleneira
+House, she paused involuntarily to look for a second at what she saw
+reflected in a pier glass at the end.
+
+"We do look nice, Tom," she said, with a faint laugh; "but I feel like
+the old woman. I'm sure it isn't I. Now, you look as if you were born
+to it."
+
+He had not the heart to tell her that she looked it also, so took
+refuge in claiming his right of the first waltz.
+
+"But I can't dance. You seem to forget, Tom, that I have never even
+seen a waltz danced."
+
+His face fell. "What an ass I am, when I could have taught you in half
+an hour. But you would pick it up in the first turn; let us try, at
+any rate."
+
+"Please don't ask me," she began. "I don't want to dance. In fact, I
+didn't tell you--on purpose."
+
+"That was unkind," he replied, and this plain statement of his
+unvarnished opinion making the girl see her silence in the same light,
+she added, hastily, "I will dance later on, if it will please you."
+
+He laid his hand on hers as it rested on his arm and looked at her
+with a kindly smile. "That is right! It always gives me pleasure when
+Mademoiselle Grauds-serieux unbends a little. I want you to enjoy
+yourself to-night. Why not? You are young, happy, and will probably
+be--pardon my incurable frivolity--the best-dressed girl in the room.
+But there is our hostess, and after that I had better go and find a
+partner. It is a duty at the beginning of a ball. Shall we say number
+four or six for ours?"
+
+"Oh, six, please; something may have happened by that time."
+
+She felt, to tell the truth, as if something must be going to happen,
+as she sate watching the scene from the quiet corner where Dr. Kennedy
+left her. The lights, the music, the buzz of conversation seemed to go
+to her head, and the sight of him skimming past like a swallow made
+her suddenly regret her refusal. It seemed easy and pleasant. Yes; it
+must be pleasant, and there were four more dances to sit out before
+her chance came.
+
+"Is it one of the mortal sins, Miss Carmichael?" came Paul's voice
+behind her. He had seen her enter with Dr. Kennedy, and, aided by Mrs.
+Vane's one-syllabled verdict "Worth," had guessed the history of the
+dress. And there he was looking very handsome, his arm still in a
+sling so as to give him a pretext for laziness if he chose, and
+meaning mischief out of sheer contrariety.
+
+"I can't dance," she answered, flushing a little, "but I am going to
+try number six with Tom. I am almost sorry now I didn't say four; I
+think I should like it."
+
+"Try four with me," he answered, seating himself beside her.
+
+"But it will hurt your arm," she began.
+
+"If it does we can sit down again; but I don't think it will. I find I
+can generally do what I want to do without serious injury either to my
+mind or my body." And then he added in a lower tone, "I should not ask
+you if I was incapable; but if you would rather not trust me I must
+submit."
+
+"But Tom--Dr. Kennedy----" she began, doubtfully.
+
+"Is dancing number four with Mrs. Vane. I heard them settle it just
+now."
+
+Why this information should have influenced her decision is not clear,
+since she was perfectly prepared to see them dance not once but many
+times together; yet it did, as Paul had guessed it would. Still, when
+he had gone to play the part of host elsewhere, she began to regret
+her promise, and the sight of him returning with the first bars of
+number four to claim her made her attempt escape by pleading the risk
+to his scorched arm. "It was surely," she said, "rash to have removed
+the sling."
+
+"I am always rash," he replied. "Come! you owe me some reward, and I
+am quite capable of taking care of you."
+
+His words brought back the remembrance of the night before, and sent a
+thrill through her; the next instant it seemed to her that she was
+alone with him again, despite the whirl of dancers around them. Alone
+with him, and a bunch of red rowans which, for the first time, she
+noticed he wore in his buttonhole, and to which he began drawing her
+attention at once.
+
+"We wear the same badge once more, you see, Miss Carmichael," he said
+fluently. "It must be your welcome to a new world, as the white
+heather was to me. Only, as usual, I am natural, and you are
+artificially iced. Which is best? Well, if you will defend your
+position, I will defend mine; for we must agree to differ since I
+cannot freeze, and I sometimes wonder if you can thaw. Perhaps if I
+had let you burn a little longer last night I might have found out and
+been happy. I almost wish I had, only then--only then," he repeated in
+a louder tone of triumph, "I shouldn't have had the pleasure of taking
+you a whole turn round the room without your remembering that it _was_
+your first turn--No! don't stop just because you do remember; another
+turn will finish your lesson."
+
+"That was very clever of you!" laughed Marjory, as they went on, she
+gaining confidence at every step.
+
+"I think it was," he replied; but he did not add that his art had
+extended to exchanging the bouquet he had originally worn for some
+rowan berries filched from the decorations.
+
+But Mrs. Vane, who had been more or less responsible for the discarded
+jasmine, noticed it at once, and her voice was hard as she remarked to
+her partner, "Your pupil has preferred another professor, Dr. Kennedy;
+the patient instead of the physician. It is really very foolish of
+Paul, with his arm."
+
+Tom Kennedy felt glad of the possibility of ignoring the first part of
+her remark, for he was conscious of bitter disappointment, not to say
+vexation. "He is not likely to hurt; it was the merest scorch." And
+then his obstinacy made him add, as much for his own edification as
+for hers, "She is lucky to begin so well; a tall man can steer better
+as a rule."
+
+Mrs. Vane smiled. "That is overdone, my friend; there is not a better
+steerer in the room than you are."
+
+"How can you tell; you need no guidance?" he began, when she stopped
+him peremptorily.
+
+"Don't, please; if you knew how sick of it I am. It comes, I know, as
+part of the business with the lights, and the music, and the coffee,
+and the ices; but you and I are such old friends." There was rather a
+crush at the moment, and her partner being too busy to speak, she had
+the conversation to herself for the time, and went on evenly, "How
+well they dance! and her dress is simply perfection. I must get you to
+choose mine. Yes! they look a charming couple; for he is wonderfully
+handsome--handsomer than when he was younger--don't you think so?"
+
+"I never met him before this summer," replied her victim; and, to
+change the subject, added, "but I knew his brother Alick in Paris.
+Very like him, but not so fine a fellow--rather--well! he got into a
+very fast set, and that accounts for a great deal."
+
+Mrs. Vane looked up in sudden interest. "Ah! I had almost forgotten.
+Of course, he had a brother who died."
+
+"Yes! quite suddenly. By all accounts none too soon for the estates.
+He had half ruined them."
+
+"And so the present laird has to marry money, if he will. But you
+never can count on Paul Macleod doing the wise thing. A pretty face, a
+dress from Worth's, a---- Is that the end? Then I should like a cup of
+coffee, if you please."
+
+And as they passed down the corridor she passed to other subjects,
+leaving that barb to rankle. She was not often so cruel, but, to tell
+truth, she was really angry with Paul, and told herself there was no
+use in trying to keep him out of mischief. Doubtless, she had so far
+startled him by her plain speaking as to prevent him from bringing
+matters to a crisis with Alice; but here, at the slightest
+provocation, he was flirting outrageously with Marjory, and
+looking----
+
+"A message for you, sir," said the butler, coming up to Dr. Kennedy,
+as they were about to return to the ball-room. "A little boy, sir, to
+say a Mrs. Duncan is ill, and wants to see you."
+
+"Little Paul!" cried Mrs. Vane; "poor old woman! I am sorry. Where is
+he, Grierson? In the housekeeper's room? Then don't let us disturb
+you; I'll show Dr. Kennedy the way."
+
+"Why should you trouble?" he began.
+
+"'Tis no trouble, my friend, and you may need something to take with
+you."
+
+"I may need nothing," he answered. "I was round seeing her, as you
+know, a few days ago; and she might die at any moment; her heart is
+almost worn out."
+
+Mrs. Vane's gave a sudden throb. What if she died, and carried the
+secret with her, just when it was most needed? The thought became
+insistent as she listened to the boy's frightened tale of how his
+grandmother had looked so strange, and bidden him seek Dr. Kennedy,
+and then seemed to fall asleep.
+
+"You had better keep the lad here awhile," said the latter, in an
+undertone. "He has been delayed by not knowing where to find me, and,
+without stimulants at hand, a fainting fit might pass into death." He
+turned to ask for some brandy, and was off into the still moonlit
+night hastily.
+
+She stood looking after him for a moment, and then made her way back
+to the ball-room mechanically. Another waltz had begun, and she
+hastily scanned the dancers for Paul's figure, but neither he nor
+Marjory were to be seen. Without an instant's hesitation she went to
+the conservatory, and found--what she knew she would find.
+
+"Excuse my interrupting you," she said, "but I have a message from Dr.
+Kennedy for Miss Carmichael. He has been called away for half an hour,
+but will be back then; and he hopes, my dear," she laid her hand on
+Marjory's arm affectionately, "that you will be ready for number ten.
+Meanwhile, Paul, you ought either to continue the lesson, or find Miss
+Carmichael another tutor. Ah! Major Bertie, have you found me! and I
+have turned the heel of my slipper and must go and put on another
+pair, but perhaps Miss Carmichael will console you."
+
+She waited till they had moved out of sight, and then turned to Paul,
+almost passionately:
+
+"And you--you are engaged for this dance, I presume?"
+
+"You presume a little too far, my dear Violet," he replied
+dangerously. "I am a helpless cripple, and I cannot run in harness,
+no matter how skilful the whip may be. If you are going back to the
+ball-room may I give you my one arm?"
+
+"No, thanks. I shall stay here."
+
+Never in their lives before had they come so near a quarrel, and, even
+though Mrs. Vane was wise enough to see the provocation which her own
+loss of temper had given him, the fact decided her. The change of
+slippers included other alterations in her toilette, and five minutes
+afterwards she was following Dr. Kennedy to Peggy Duncan's cottage.
+The walk was nothing on that warm September night, and the excuse of a
+desire to help sufficiently reasonable, her kindness in such ways
+being proverbial. Many a deathbed had been cheered by her cheerful
+aid, and yet, nerved as she was by experience, she shrank back at the
+sight which met her eyes as she lifted the latch of the cottage and
+entered. For the deep box bed, whereon old Peggy had passed so many
+years, had been inconvenient, and Dr. Kennedy had lifted her to the
+table, where she lay unconscious, looking like death itself, in the
+limp, powerless sinking into the pillow of her grey head. The old
+woman's dreary prophecy came back to Mrs. Vane, though this was not
+certain death, as yet; since, with his back towards her, his warm
+hands clasping those cold ones, his face bent on the watch for some
+sign of life, stood Dr. Kennedy, trying the last resource of
+artificial respiration. There is nothing in the whole range of
+experience more absorbing, more pathetic than this struggle of the
+living for the dying, whether it be for the new-born babe doubtful of
+existence, or, as here, for an old worn-out heart. And if it is so,
+even among a crowd of eager helpers, what was it here in the little
+circle of dim light hedged in by darkness? Those two alone, so
+strangely contrasted. It had been a sharp, fierce transition, even to
+his experience, from, the ball-room full of lights and laughter; for
+Tom Kennedy was not of those whom use hardens. He was one of those to
+whom ever-widening vision discloses no clear horizon of dogmatic
+belief or unbelief, but a further distance fading away into the great,
+inconceivable, infinite mystery between which and him lay Life--Life,
+whose champion he was, whose colours he wore unflinchingly, counting
+neither its evil or its good. Life--nothing else. It is a queer
+mistress, taken so, but an absorbing one, and he scarcely slackened
+the rhythmic sweep of his arms even in his surprise at the figure
+which, after a moment's pause, stepped forward.
+
+"You ought not to have come--it's no place for you; you had better go
+back and send me help; though I fear it is no use," he said
+authoritatively. For answer she slid her hands under the blanket he
+had thrown over the old woman's limbs, and began to rub them with a
+regularity matching his own.
+
+"They would not help so well as I."
+
+"You have done it before then?"
+
+"Often--once all night long in cholera--a great friend--he died at
+dawn." Yet the memory which had brought tears many a time failed to
+touch her now, for her mind was intent on something else.
+
+"Was she unconscious when you came?" she asked.
+
+"Not quite. There were some letters on her mind, and after she had
+given them to me she went off--one often finds it so."
+
+Then they were given! and she was too late! Yet stay! where could they
+be--in his coat, of course, which he had taken off and thrown aside on
+a chair for the sake of greater ease. Doubtless in the coat, for he
+must have had it on at first, when the old woman was still conscious.
+
+"Perhaps hot water," she suggested, looking towards the kettle
+swinging over the dying embers, but he shook his head, and she stayed
+where she was. Ah! that was surely a change--a greyer tinge on the
+worn, wrinkled old face, the faintest suspicion of a greater rest in
+the slack limbs.
+
+Dr. Kennedy paused, still holding the hands in his, and bent closer.
+
+In the great silence, Mrs. Vane seemed to hear her heart beating at
+the thought--not of rest, but unrest; for something would have to be
+done soon, if done at all. Nay! done now, for with a half-impatient
+sigh the doctor gave up the struggle, folded the old hands upon the
+old breast, and walked away to stand for a moment or two looking
+moodily into the dull fire.
+
+"It is always a disappointment," he said, turning to her again, and
+mechanically going over to the dresser, where in the interval,
+calculating on habit, she had set a bowl of water and a towel. And she
+calculated rightly. As with his back towards her he washed his hands,
+hers were in the pocket of his coat, and two packets of letters lay on
+the floor behind the chair, as if they had slipped out, before she
+went forward, coat in hand.
+
+"Thanks!" he said, still in the meshes of habit; but then he paused,
+and for an instant her heart was in her mouth, even though she had her
+excuse ready should he discover the absence of the letters. It was
+only, however, a remembrance of her which came to him.
+
+"I must call someone," he said; "and you should go home at once. It
+was good of you to come."
+
+"Yes! you had better call someone. I will stay till you return--I
+would rather."
+
+"You are not afraid?--Ah! I forgot you had lived your life in India. I
+shall not be more than ten minutes if I go up the hill to the
+shepherd's; that will be the quickest."
+
+"Do not hurry on my account," she replied, quietly beginning to pile
+some fresh peats on the fire. The doctor, as he turned for a last
+look, his hand on the latch, told himself she was a plucky little soul
+indeed; and yet, had he known it, her heart was melting within her at
+the deed she was about to do, and her only strength lay in the thought
+that it was for Paul's sake; for herself she would scorn such
+meanness.
+
+The candle flickering to an end gave her little time, however, for
+consideration, and almost as the door closed the letters were in her
+hands. One long, blue, red-sealed, intact, as she remembered it, the
+other an open envelope yellow with age, tied round with thread, and
+containing several papers. Her wits were quick, and even as she
+looked, the certainty came to her that if the blue letter asked
+questions the other might answer them; besides there was no necessity
+for breaking a seal; she shrank from that as yet. Even now her hand
+shook, so that as she drew out the contents of the smaller envelope,
+something fell from it to the ground. She stooped to pick it up just
+as the candle flared up in the socket, and by the sudden blaze of
+light she saw on the fallen paper a signature, and a line or two of
+print.
+
+Great heavens! a marriage certificate--Ronald Alister Macleod! Who was
+he?--Paul's brother, of course.
+
+These thoughts flashing through her brain did not prevent her
+starting, as the flickering light seemed to give a semblance of
+movement to Peggy's folded hands. The next instant she was in
+darkness, still holding the letters, and she knelt hastily to coax a
+flame from the peats, for time was passing, and she must know--must
+read. Then, in swift suggestion, came the thought of substituting
+another packet; Dr. Kennedy would be none the wiser, and that would
+give her time. There must be other letters or papers at hand if she
+could find them. Oh for a light!--and yet people deemed such deeds to
+be deeds of darkness!----
+
+As if in answer to her thought, a tongue of bluish flame leapt through
+the warmed peats, and by its light she found herself fumbling at the
+old bureau. For it was, as it always is at such times, as if fate were
+driving her against her will. Even as she acted, she felt that she had
+not meant to act thus--to search and pry! The old woman's cherished
+shroud, folded and frilled, made her shut one drawer hastily. And that
+was a step--a step surely, and yet not an atom of paper was to be seen
+anywhere! Ah! there was an old Bible on the shelf with blank pages.
+She had torn some out, and slipped them into the envelope none too
+soon, for Dr. Kennedy was at the door, breathless with running.
+
+"I hurried all I could," he said; "for I felt I ought not to have left
+you--it was not fair. But they are coming, and then I will take you
+home." The words seemed to bring a remembrance, for he paused and
+began to feel in his pocket.
+
+"What is it?" she asked, with a catch in her voice.
+
+"The letters. I had them, certainly----"
+
+"Perhaps they dropped--ah! here they are on the floor."
+
+"Thanks." Then he paused, looking curiously at them. "I wonder why I
+fancied this one was tied with thread?"
+
+Even in her anxiety she could not resist a smile at the keenness of
+the man; and how dull _she_ had been, for there on the dresser stood
+two candles in brass candlesticks. If she had only noticed them she
+would have had time--would not, perhaps, have had this terror at her
+heart.
+
+"It may have been tied," she said coolly; "and something may have
+dropped out when it fell. I'll light the candles and see." Then as she
+came forward with them in her hand, the deadly anxiety in her would
+brook no delay, and she asked, "Do you miss anything?"
+
+"I do not know--I have not the least notion what it was supposed
+to contain; but this seems only to be an entry of births,
+marriages----Great heavens! are you ill?" For Mrs. Vane, who had
+stooped down on pretence of searching the floor, but in reality to
+hide her intense relief, was standing as if petrified, her face white
+as death.
+
+"Nothing," she gasped, with an attempt at composure--"the strain, I
+suppose--it is foolish."
+
+More than foolish, she told herself. It was perfectly insensate of her
+not to have remembered the custom of entering such items in the family
+Bible; and now she might unwittingly have given away the information
+she was attempting to conceal. If so, it would be better for her to
+know at once.
+
+"Such registers contain many secrets," she began, when a look of
+curiosity in Dr. Kennedy's eyes made her pause.
+
+"Secrets," he echoed; "why should there be any? though there is one in
+a way," he added, holding out the paper to her. It was the last entry
+to which he pointed, and it ran thus: "Jeanie Duncan, born 17th April,
+18--; married----; died 20th August, 18--." "A sad blank that," he
+continued, adding, after a pause: "Perhaps the other letter may be
+more important."
+
+Perhaps it might be, and Mrs. Vane, as she waited, felt her breath
+coming fast and short. It seemed an eternity of time until once more
+he held something out for her to read, and turning silently to where
+the dead woman lay, drew the sheet tenderly over the worn face. "The
+irony of fate, indeed," he murmured as she read:--
+
+
+"Dear Madam,--We have to advise you of the death of our esteemed
+client, Mr. John Duncan, of Melbourne, Australia, and to inform you
+that under his will you, as his widow, come into property amounting to
+close on £100,000."
+
+
+Mrs. Vane's hand holding the letter fell to her side, and Dr.
+Kennedy's voice said gravely:
+
+"Strange, isn't it, that the letter was never opened? All that money,
+and a pauper's death----"
+
+The voice was his, but it might have been the accusing angel's for the
+effect it had on Violet Vane. She gave one step forward, her arms
+outstretched as if for pity, and with a little cry sank to her knees.
+Her head was pillowed on the old woman's breast when Dr. Kennedy,
+catching her as she fell, found that she had fainted, and
+anathematised himself as a consummate ass for taking her at her own
+estimation. Plucky as she was, the contrast had been too sharp. Life
+and Death--Poverty and Riches. The whole gamut of harmonies and
+discords lay in these words.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XIX.
+
+
+Mrs. Vane being one of those heaven-sent pivots or jewels, without
+which the wheels of society are apt to come to a standstill, it was
+only natural that her sudden collapse, joined to the general
+depression which invariably follows on a country house entertainment,
+should have reduced the inmates of Gleneira to a condition of blank
+discontent. To tell truth, a large proportion of them had reasonable
+cause for a vague uneasiness, if not for actual discomfort, though
+Lady George wrinkled her high, white forehead in tragic perplexity
+over some of the resulting phenomena.
+
+"Of course," she said at lunch, "I was quite prepared that the cook
+should give warning. They always do when they have worked hard, and,
+really, the supper left nothing to be desired; besides, it is an empty
+form when we are all going away next week. But why the housemaid
+should want a new set of brushes _to-day_, when she knows I have to
+send to Glasgow for them; and why Ean, the boy--such a good-looking
+boy, too--who cleans the boots, should demand an immediate rise in
+wages, I cannot think."
+
+"What's enough for one ain't enough for two," broke in Eve from her
+sago pudding, with an indescribable twang and a semi-sentimental air.
+"Mary's going to marry him; he asked her in the boot hole when the
+piper was playing the 'Blue Bells of Scotland' in the kitching. The
+thought of her 'ighland laddie bein' gone was too much for her
+feelinks, so she accepted him, and he gave her a kiss."
+
+"Eve!" cried her mother, in horrified accents, "don't say such
+things."
+
+"But it's true, ducksie mummie," retorted the young lady, unabashed.
+"Mary said so. We heard her telling nurse, didn't we, Adam?"
+
+"Yes, we did, Evie; and nursie said----"
+
+"Paul!" cried Lady George, in desperation, "you might give the
+children some of that trifle before you; it won't hurt them once in a
+way. And I really think it was too bad of the Hookers to bring the
+piper to the ball, after my making such a point of his not coming to
+the play. I call it most unneighbourly."
+
+"My dear Blanche," protested Paul, "what is the use of being a rich
+Highland proprietor if you don't have a piper, and what is the use of
+having a piper if he mayn't play at functions? You agree with me,
+don't you, Miss Woodward?"
+
+Alice, looking dainty in the elaborate simplicity of a Paris
+_batiste_, agreed with a smile, as she had learnt to do as a matter of
+course whenever he chose to make these little appeals for sympathy,
+with their underlying suggestion of a common future. He was really
+very handsome and charming; everything a girl could desire in a
+husband.
+
+"It is all very well for you to talk of functions," continued his
+sister, in aggrieved tones, "but the question is, what is a function?
+Marriages, of course, and, I suppose, funerals; but that reminds me.
+We really must have that projected picnic to the old burying-ground
+this week. I want Mr. Woodward to see it, and he was talking of London
+this morning."
+
+The end of the sentence was prompted by that desire of the hostess to
+see her team of guests working fairly together for their own good,
+which Lady George felt to be a part of her duty, and the guest thus
+challenged had not opened his mouth since he sate down, except to fill
+it with cold beef and pickles, which he swallowed gloomily, like a man
+who, having missed his connection, is trying to while away the time
+before the next train in the refreshment room.
+
+"You are very kind," he said, in sepulchral tones, "but the
+method in which Her Majesty's mails are delivered--or rather not
+delivered, in this place, renders it necessary that I should
+return at once. Just before lunch I received a letter which, I give
+you my honour, had been mislaid in the post-bag--a most important
+letter--a--a most---- However, as I was to have told you after lunch,
+I--I feel it my duty--but, of course, this--er--will not make any
+change in--in plans."
+
+He glanced comprehensively at his daughter, and Paul Macleod, seated
+at the bottom of the table, felt as if the guard had come into the
+refreshment room and said, "Time up, gentleman!" The closing scene of
+the comedy was close at hand, and though he was quite prepared for it,
+he still objected to the _force majeure_ which compelled him to go
+through with it; just as he objected to that other restraint which the
+knowledge of his absurd feeling for Marjory brought with it. The whole
+position irritated him to the last degree, and in one and the same
+breath he told himself that he wished the business were over, and that
+it had never begun. And yet, when he and Alice, in strolling round the
+garden together, found themselves among the orange blossoms, he grew
+quite sentimental. The heavy perfume and, artificial atmosphere seemed
+to suit the growth of his physical content. Then, courteous by nature
+to all women, he had already felt that this girl had a stronger claim
+on his consideration than others, and this feeling produced just that
+calm, continual attention which suited her lack of sentiment. There
+was nothing in it to disturb her placidity or shake the quiet
+conviction that in deciding on Gleneira and its owner she was
+distinctly doing her duty by everybody, herself included. For Jack had
+apparently acquiesced in her decision; at least, he wrote quite
+cheerfully from Riga. So she listened contentedly to the covert
+lovemaking which long experience had made so easy to Paul Macleod,
+provided his companion had a decent share of good looks. In fact, one
+of his chief causes of irritation in regard to Marjory was that he
+never had the slightest desire to flirt with her.
+
+Meanwhile Mrs. Vane remained in her room by Dr. Kennedy's orders, who,
+to tell truth, was rather surprised to find how severe a shock her
+nervous system had sustained. When, in consequence of a little note
+saying that if he would so far forego his holiday as to take her for a
+patient, she would far rather see an old friend than a strange doctor,
+he had gone over to see her, he had found her far worse than he had
+expected. The truth being that she was in a fever of excitement to
+know whether he suspected anything, and to hear all the particulars of
+this strange bequest to poor old Peggy. If she had only known what the
+long blue envelope had contained, she would not have advised the delay
+in opening it, which had led to the poor old soul dying a pauper's
+death, dying with bitter thoughts in her heart of the world she was
+leaving. Mrs. Vane would have liked to tell so much to the doctor as a
+sort of salve to her conscience, but she did not dare to do this.
+There was a certain packet of letters locked away in her dressing-case
+which forbade her risking the least inquiry. Yet she could not refrain
+from asking if any other papers had been found which--which threw any
+light----
+
+Dr. Kennedy, noting the nervous intertwining of her fingers, made a
+mental note of bromide for the prescription he intended writing, and
+then set himself quietly to tell her all he knew, just as if he were
+exhibiting another sedative. The somewhat romantic aspects of the case
+had evidently excited her imagination, and it would do her good to
+talk over it soberly.
+
+"Then there were no other papers, after all," she said, with a sigh of
+relief. "You seemed surprised at the time, I remember, but now you are
+satisfied."
+
+"I must be--no one could have taken them, and I certainly did not drop
+anything from my pocket when I went to fetch help, for I have been
+over the ground this morning. Besides, she only gave me two
+things--the envelope and something else. I certainly thought it was a
+bundle of letters, but I must have been mistaken."
+
+"But there was no entry in the register, was there, which would
+account for old Peggy's anxiety that you should have it?" persisted
+Mrs. Vane, with a little hurry in her breath.
+
+"None. Except that she had something on her mind always, I feel sure,
+regarding that unfortunate daughter of hers. She never behaved
+naturally to little Paul; and now, of course, it is doubtful if he
+will get the money. I must see the lawyers about it as I go through
+Edinburgh. If old Peggy had only lived to make a will----"
+
+Mrs. Vane rose from her pillow and looked him full in the face, with a
+startled expression.
+
+"You mean she would have had the power to leave it to him."
+
+"Yes, apparently she would have, to judge by the will. You had better
+lie down again, Mrs. Vane! So--quite flat, please."
+
+He chose out the smelling salts unerringly, as if he knew all
+about such things, from the bevy of silver-topped bottles on the
+dressing-table, and when he saw her colour returning, went back with
+the same certainty, apparently, of finding sal volatile or red
+lavender.
+
+"Chloral!" he said, turning to her quickly as he smelt at a bottle.
+"You mustn't take that, Mrs. Vane. I forbid it, and I expect you to
+obey orders."
+
+A touch of her own airy, charming wilfulness showed on her face as she
+looked at him while he stood dropping something into a glass for her
+to take. "I won't--not while you are here."
+
+"Nor when I am gone, I hope. It isn't worth it--Pauline."
+
+She gave him an odd look, then buried her face in the pillow and began
+to sob. Inarticulate, hysterical sobbing about Pauline--or was it
+Paul? Dr. Kennedy could not be sure.
+
+"She is utterly upset; a case of complete nervous prostration," he
+said, as he was leaving, in answer to Captain Macleod's eager
+inquiries. "I don't wonder, for she works herself to death to make
+things pleasant for everybody. Don't let them worry her by going to
+sit with her, and that sort of thing. She is best alone. Or, if you
+could spare ten minutes or so this afternoon--I've told her to get up
+for a little change--she would like it, I know. She is very fond of
+you."
+
+"We are such old friends," put in Paul, quickly. "And she has sate up
+with _me_ often enough, God knows. I shouldn't be alive but for her.
+Of course, I will go."
+
+"Talk of old times, then. It will make her forget the present, and
+that will be good for her."
+
+So Paul went up with the afternoon tea tray and a bunch of jasmine,
+which he had been down to the garden to gather, and talked about old
+times in his softest voice, while Mrs. Vane sate and listened in the
+big chair by the window. And she cheered up so much under the
+treatment, that he sent the maid down for another plate of bread and
+butter.
+
+It was very pleasant, but whether, as the unconscious suggester of the
+entertainment had said, it was good for her, was another matter,
+though, in a way, it relieved her nervous strain by making her more
+certain of what she was going to do. Of one thing there could be no
+doubt--the man who sate and talked to her, who forestalled her every
+want, must not suffer. Paul must be saved, somehow, and so, for the
+present, no one must know of that marriage certificate hidden in her
+dressing-case, which would, if it were genuine, give Gleneira to Peggy
+Duncan's grandson. Perhaps, after all, he would get his father's
+money, and if so, a hundred thousand pounds would be enough for
+anyone. Why should he rob Paul--her handsome, kindly Paul--of his
+birthright? Of course, in one way that would make matters smooth for
+her, since his engagement would certainly come to an end if he ceased
+to be a Highland proprietor. The Woodwards would, in that case, never
+hear of its being fulfilled. But it would give him such pain, and she
+was not selfish enough to gain her own pleasure at such a price, if it
+could be avoided. She was Paul's friend, his true friend, and she
+would take the responsibility of concealing this thing for the
+present; for ever, if need be. And then she gave up thinking, and took
+to dreaming of what life would be if they two lived at Gleneira. They
+would not be dull; men were never dull with her. He had not been dull
+that afternoon when they had sate and talked. Ah! how pleasant it had
+been, and surely to gain such content, both for him and for her, it
+was allowable to conceal those letters for a time--only for a time?
+
+And while they were talking upstairs, Lady George had been
+entertaining a solitary visitor in the drawing-room, the rest of the
+party having gone out to take luncheon to the shooters on the hill.
+This was the Reverend James Gillespie--who had come with a strict
+attention to those trivialities of etiquette, which the Bishop had
+often assured him should be a distinguishing mark of those set up to
+teach the people--to inquire for the ladies after their fatigues. Now,
+Lady George _was_ fatigued, hence, indeed, the fact that she had
+remained at home; and there is no doubt that she said, "Bother the
+man!" when first informed that the Reverend James was in the
+drawing-room. Then the love of posing came to her rescue. Here she
+was, alone, wearied out, unable to go forth and enjoy herself. What an
+opportunity for patient unselfishness! Besides, it was tea-time; she
+could have the children down and provoke that ardent admiration of her
+system which the Reverend James extended to everything at Gleneira.
+
+"Tell nurse to let Miss Eve and Master Adam have tea with me," she
+said, as she swept downstairs. "I expect Master Blasius has not been a
+good boy; in fact, I am sure he hasn't, but he can have jam in the
+nursery. He will like that just as well."
+
+Unfortunately, it is never safe for a grown-up to predicate the
+thoughts of a child. Perhaps, because something may strike the opening
+mind as novel, or desirable, which the mature one has tried and found
+wanting. Be that as it may, ten minutes after Adam and Eve had left
+the nursery spick and span, hand-in-hand, Blazes was captured for the
+fifth time on his way down the stairs in that curious succession of
+bumps and slides, which was his favourite method of progression. And
+the look of determination on his round, broad, good-natured face was
+not in the least shaken by nurse's vehement upbraidings.
+
+"There ain't no use talkin' to 'im when he's like that," she said,
+aside to Mary; "and he ain't a bit cross or naughty--look at 'im
+smilin' be'ind my back--but my tea I must 'ave in peace an' quiet. So
+into bed 'e goes, tucked up without 'is nighty, an' a bit of sugar to
+suck. The joke of it'll keep 'im quiet a bit."
+
+Apparently, it did, for he lay in the night nursery chuckling to
+himself, that "Blazeths wath a pore 'ickle beggar boy wif no thoes or
+'tockings, an' no thirt to hith back," until nurse, sympathising with
+the sentimental Mary, forgot to be vigilant.
+
+Meanwhile, Adam, in his green plush Vandyck suit, and Eve in a smock
+to match, were seated, with decorously still tan legs, at the
+tea-table, eating thin bread-and-butter daintily.
+
+"It is most gratifying," the Reverend James was remarking, in his most
+professional manner, "to--to see such good children as yours, Lady
+George. It is a lesson in the art of education."
+
+"It is most gratifying to hear one's parish priest say so, Mr.
+Gillespie," she replied, with meek dignity; "but, as you know, I make
+it a study. I devote myself to them. I feel that one cannot too soon
+recognise the sanctity, the individuality of the soul, the human
+rights which these little ones share equally with us. Equally, did I
+say? Nay, in fuller measure, since they are nearer Heaven than we
+are--since they are pure and innocent, with better rights than ours to
+happiness."
+
+The Reverend James cleared his throat. There was a flavour of
+unorthodoxy about the latter part of these remarks which, in the
+present position of spiritual authority to which Lady George had
+exalted him, he could scarcely pass over.
+
+"It is a fallen humanity we must not forget, my dear lady," he began;
+"these children----"
+
+Lady George's maternal pride flashed up; besides she was beginning to
+get a little tired of the Reverend James.
+
+"I see very few signs of fallen humanity about mine," she interrupted.
+
+"But, my dear lady, you must remember also that your children have
+privileges--they are baptized and regenerate--they are not in a state
+of nature--Good Heavens, my dear lady! what is the matter?"
+
+The Gorgon's stony stare was genial in comparison with poor Blanche's
+look of petrification.
+
+"Blasius!" she cried, starting to her feet, "go away! go away at
+once."
+
+But Blasius had no such intention. He advanced with a confidential nod
+to his mother, a perfect picture of sturdy, healthy, naked babyhood;
+beautiful in its curves and dimples.
+
+"Blazeth's a pore 'ickle beggar boy wif no thoes or 'tockings
+or---- Oh, mummie! that tickles awful!"
+
+The mellow chant ended abruptly, for Lady George had dashed at him
+with an Algerian antimacassar, and now held him in her arms, trying
+hard to be grave. She might have succeeded but for the Reverend
+James's face of bland concern. That finished her, and she gave up the
+struggle in a peal of laughter, in which her companion tried to join
+feebly.
+
+"Bring Master Blasius' flannel dressing-gown, please," she said, when
+nurse, full of explanations and excuses, flew in in a flurry; "that
+and the antimacassar will keep him warm, and he can have his tea with
+me."
+
+This incident, however, made it quite impossible for her to continue
+the rôle she had been playing before. How could she? with Blasius
+huddled up on her lap, eating bread and jam between his attempts to
+count his bare toes; an arithmetical problem which he insisted on
+solving, despite her efforts with the antimacassar. Not that the
+necessity for change mattered, since she had a variety of other parts
+to fall back upon, and so, being slightly bored by the Reverend
+James's failure to respond, and evident disposition to remain
+the spiritual director, she assumed that of Great Lady and
+Helper-in-General to her world. In which character, she gave it as her
+opinion that all parish clergymen should be married--if only in order
+to make them understand children, and grasp the true bearings of the
+education question.
+
+Whereat he blushed violently, and five minutes afterwards had confided
+his hopes regarding Marjory to his hostess's sympathising ears.
+Nothing could be more suitable, she told him; in fact, the idea had
+occurred to her before, and she had no doubt that he would bring his
+suit to a successful issue. Only, as a woman of the world who had seen
+more of life than he had, she would advise a little boldness, a trifle
+more self-assertion. His position, she said, was really an excellent
+one on the whole, and she need hardly say that both she and her
+brother would welcome Mrs. Gillespie as one of themselves.
+
+So, with a complete reversal of their mutual positions, they parted,
+and the Reverend James as he walked home, full of blushes and budding
+hopes, told himself that since Lady George agreed with the Bishop it
+was time he bestirred himself. The picnic at the old burying-ground
+would afford him an excellent opportunity of proposing, and if he made
+up his mind definitely on that point, it would make him less nervous.
+
+So when he reached home he went to the calendar of the daily lesson,
+which hung by his bed, and ticked off the five days remaining to him,
+just as schoolboys tick off their holidays. Five days--and then--yes!
+then he would ask Marjory to marry him.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XX.
+
+
+A morning in late September on a Highland loch. How good it is to be
+there! The centre just rippled with crisp waves, while shorewards the
+rocks show mirrored clearly in the smooth water, each bunch of russet
+bracken or tuft of yellow bent almost more brilliant in the reflection
+than the reality. The hills free from haze, standing like sentinels,
+solid and firm; the wild cherry leaves aping the scarlet of the rowan
+berries, the birch trees beginning to drop their golden bribe into the
+still, emerald laps of the mossy hollows, as if seeking to buy the
+secret of perpetual summer.
+
+A scene where it is meet to put off the travel-stained shoes which
+have borne our feet along the trivial round, the common tasks of life,
+and go back to the bare feet of simple pleasure. The pleasure of
+children on the seashore, of young lambs in a blossoming meadow.
+
+Yet there was an air of conscious effort, a virtuous look of duty on
+many of the faces which assembled at the boat-house in order to be
+ferried over to the other side of the loch, whence the ascent to the
+old burying-ground was to be made.
+
+The shadow of coming separation lay upon most of the party; on none
+more than Tom Kennedy, who had filched a few extra hours of Marjory's
+companionship from the Great Enemy by scorning the mail cart in favour
+of a solitary walk over the crest of Ben Morven to the nearest coach,
+the place settled on for the picnic being so far on his way. And she,
+though all unconscious of the keen pain at his heart, felt vaguely
+that she would miss the touch of his kind hand, the sound of his kind
+voice more than ever now, now that it seemed the only thing remaining
+of the old calm confidence. Lady George was a prey to a thousand
+cares, beginning with the lunch and culminating in the certainty that
+some one of the three children--whom her husband had insisted on
+bringing--would be drowned; just at the last, too, when she had
+brought them safely through all the dangers of Gleneira, for they and
+their nurse were to start by the early boat next morning. But the day
+was indeed to be a fateful one, for was not this Paul's last chance of
+speaking to Alice? and did not Mrs. Woodward, for all her conspicuous
+calm, show to the watchful eye that she also was aware of the fact?
+Paul himself showed nothing; but, then, he was always exasperatingly
+cool when a little touch of excitement would, on the whole, be
+pleasing.
+
+But of all the faces that of the Reverend James Gillespie displayed
+the sense of duty most clearly, and what Paul lacked in animation he
+made up for in sheer restlessness, since the time had come when he
+must carry out his intention and ask Marjory Carmichael to marry him.
+If only because it would be advisable to set up house at the November
+term, when they would have a chance of furnishing cheaply and of
+getting a good servant. So he wandered about in a fuss, alternately
+trying to make an opportunity, and then flying from it, until Paul,
+always observant, began to wonder what was up, and then, chancing upon
+one of the bashful lover's bolder attempts, swore under his breath at
+the fellow's impudence. Tom Kennedy was a gentleman, and Marjory, with
+her iceberg of a heart would be happy enough in his keeping by and
+bye; but this rampant, red-faced fool! And then he laughed, thinking
+suddenly, causelessly, of a certain little face, looking very winsome
+despite its weariness, which would have laughed too; for Mrs. Vane had
+somehow failed to rally from the shock of old Peggy's death with her
+usual elasticity, and was still in her room visible only to a favoured
+few, Paul amongst the number. Only that morning she had looked at him
+with her pretty, quizzical eyes and met his offer to escort her so far
+on her southward journey with the remark that by that time he would no
+longer be his own master.
+
+And it was true. Before he rowed across the loch again his future
+would be settled, he would be Alice Woodward's Highland proprietor.
+
+"Your left, please, Miss Carmichael," he said, giving stroke with a
+longer swing; "there is a nice, comfortable landing-place just beyond
+the white stone, and I hate getting my feet wet, even in helping
+ladies to keep theirs dry."
+
+"But we shall miss----" began Marjory.
+
+"Do as you're bid, my dear," put in Will Cameron, resignedly, from the
+bow; "haven't you learnt by this time that the laird knows where he
+wants to steer and sticks to it? After all, it saves a lot of trouble
+to others."
+
+"Right you are!" assented Paul, gaily; "your left, please; not so much
+as that; thank you! I've no desire to find the sunken rocks."
+
+The words were light, and a boat-load of people were listening to
+them; yet Marjory, guiding the tiller ropes, felt that they were
+spoken for her ear alone; that she and Paul were face to face, as they
+so often were before his future, and the fact annoyed her. Yet, as
+they stepped out on the little causeway of rock jutting forward like a
+peer, the waves blab, blabbing upon its sides, reminded her of the
+evening when she had sate listening to them and Paul had come along
+the shore behind her, like another St. Christopher, bearing the burden
+of the world's immortality--its childhood.
+
+"Tom," she said, in a low voice, turning to him in swift appeal, why
+she knew not, "let us get away from all this; we might go along the
+point and look for clams, as we used to do. Remember, it is the last I
+shall see of you; so don't talk about manners and being wanted; don't
+think of what other people think."
+
+She spoke petulantly, but there were sudden tears in her eyes. Yet as
+they moved off together neither of then realised that a fateful moment
+had come and gone; that the trivial words covered an unconscious
+revolt of one side of her woman's nature against the other, and that
+if, instead of hunting clams like a couple of children, he had taken
+her hand and told her the truth of love and marriage, as he had seen
+it in life, she would have turned instinctively from the world's
+apotheosis of passion, and so have found a compass to guide her out of
+danger; but Tom Kennedy, being conscious that he himself was once more
+under the glamour which had come and gone many times already even in
+his sober life, could not find it in his heart to decry it utterly. So
+they stalked clams instead, advancing on tiptoe over the wet sand with
+eyes alert for every sign of an air-hole, and then pouncing like a cat
+on a mouse to seize the collapsing tube before it sank down, down,
+into the depths of gravel where even finger nails could not follow it.
+And to them, as they laughed and hunted, came the Reverend James,
+restless as ever, yet showing to advantage in a sport which he had
+practised from his barefoot childhood.
+
+It was good to see his fair, florid face come up red with smug triumph
+from each dive as he added another clam to the heap, until Marjory
+forgot everything else in emulation, and Tom Kennedy, smiling at her
+eagerness, sate down to a cigarette beside Lord George, who, engaged
+in the same business, was watching the children paddle in the
+shallows.
+
+A silent, yet sympathetic audience were these two men of middle age,
+smiling to themselves over the gay voices and childish sallies. Over
+Eve's eleventh ineffectual attempt to swallow an oyster which would
+have been successful if Adam hadn't made her laugh; over Marjory's
+indignant claim to a clam, which, during the dispute, disappeared for
+ever. Smiling, too, over Blasius' solemn face as he informed daddy
+that there was a "big crawly wild beast down there wif wobbly legs,
+and Blazeths wanted daddy's hand. Blazeths wathn't afwaid, but he
+wanted daddy's hand."
+
+The incoming tide was drowning the round brown heads of the boulders
+out on the far point, as those two red ones, so curiously alike, bent
+over the "wild beast wif wobbly legs," which Adam and Eve, with
+wide-eyed superiority, said was nothing but a crab, a tiny crab! A
+heron, driven from its last inch of seaweed, flapped slowly across the
+bay, its trailing feet almost touching the water, and the sea-pyots
+circled screaming round the invaders of their happy hunting-ground. In
+the bend of the bay beneath a clump of alders showed a cluster of gay
+dresses busy about a tablecloth, and above them, in wooded curves
+merging into sheer slopes of rock and bent, rose Ben Morven. Half-way
+up, right in the open, a single holly tree, like a black shadow,
+marking the turn to the old burying-ground. Lord George came back from
+the wild beast with a sober face, and eyes still watching that little
+red head, bent now over a stick with which the wobbly legs were being
+boldly prodded to a walk.
+
+"Queer start, children--aren't they?" he remarked confidentially, as
+he lit another cigarette. "I never thought of it before I married,
+give you my word. I suppose men don't--more's the pity." He gave a
+glance at his companion's face, and went on with more assurance: "You
+see no one ever talks of the paternal instinct; the women are supposed
+to have it all their own way, in the maternal business, and it's a
+shame, for a man needs that sort of thing more than they do. A woman
+can't be done out of her motherhood, but a man loses everything except
+a passing pleasure if he doesn't keep straight. Look at that boy,
+Kennedy! He is the very moral of me, and I had to whack him the other
+day. Well, I assure you, that I felt for the first time in my life
+that I was immortal--that I had a stake in time and eternity. Why
+don't they teach us this when we are young? Why don't they say
+something about it in the marriage service, instead of letting a
+couple of young fools undertake responsibilities for which they are
+not fit?"
+
+Tom Kennedy shook his head. "Because we are not brave enough to face
+our own instincts and call a spade a spade. I served a few years in
+India once, and Hindooism is, I think, the only religion which sets
+personal feelings aside utterly; and there the idea has been overlaid
+with a horrible sensuality. Though on the whole it is not more
+sickening than our artificial sentiment. But it's a weary subject.
+Everyone talks of it, and yet no one cares to go back to the
+beginning; to give up the romance----"
+
+His eyes wandered to Marjory, and he was silent. It was true. When all
+was said and done he craved for it.
+
+"Well," remarked Lord George, judgmatically, after a pause, "there is
+something wrong, somewhere. Take my own case. I married, as most
+fellows do, to please myself, without a thought of the consequences.
+And though, of course, some romance is necessary to make a man give up
+his club and undertake the responsibility of a boy like Blazes--Good
+Lord! and I promised his mother to keep him out of mischief!"
+
+The last words being evoked by the sight of his youngest born prone on
+his back kicking madly in six inches of water, with the crab attached
+to his big toe.
+
+"I wanted it to come a walk wif Blazeths," he wailed pathetically;
+"and it bited Blazeths instead, with a wobbly leg."
+
+"I knew how it would be, George," said his wife, with patient dignity,
+when the culprits appeared before her. "But you are so self-confident.
+You are always undertaking responsibilities for which Nature has not
+fitted you. Give him to nurse, and cut the cucumber, do--there's a
+good boy."
+
+Lord George shot a queer glance at Dr. Kennedy, and did as he was bid;
+as most people did when Blanche put on her superior manner.
+
+"And, Dr. Kennedy," she continued, "I want you to do something for me.
+The Hookers have brought--no! I don't mean the piper, George, though
+they have brought him--not that it matters so much, for I have told
+John Macpherson to keep him in the 'Tubhaneer,' which is anchored in
+the stream, so he can do no harm, and the pipes will sound nice over
+the water--No, Dr. Kennedy, it is a German professor, very
+distinguished, but none of the Hooker party speak German. George will,
+of course, take him in tow by and bye, being in the Foreign Office;
+but just now, I thought--if you would not mind. Thanks, so much! it
+always looks well to have more than one linguist. At present, I have
+sent him to admire the view with Major Bertie, who says 'wunderschön'
+at intervals; but that can't last long, you know."
+
+"My dear Blanche, you are as good as a play!" protested her husband,
+convulsed with laughter, at her unconscious mimicry, and even Dr.
+Kennedy found it hard to keep his countenance over her innocent
+surprise. Yet he was in no mood for amusement, and his face showed it
+when, lunch being over, he drew out his watch, and looked meaningly to
+Marjory.
+
+"Is it time?" she asked, with a sudden sinking of the heart.
+
+"Quite time," echoed Paul, coolly, from his place by Alice Woodward;
+"that is to say, if we are to be back to tea. It is a longer pull than
+it looks. Now, good people! who is for the burying-ground? You are
+coming, of course, Miss Woodward; I want you to see all the beauties
+of Gleneira, and the view is splendid."
+
+The Reverend James, who had made up his mind that the descent, when
+Marjory should have lost her natural escort, would be the very time
+for his purpose, stood up manfully, and Major Bertie, under orders for
+the time being to the athletic daughter of a neighbouring laird,
+followed suit; but the rest, for the most part, declined what they
+stigmatised as a gruesome invitation. The pull was not only long but
+stiff, especially after lunch, and the view from below, enhanced by
+idleness and a quiet cigar, good enough for them.
+
+So it was a small single file which, led by Paul, and brought up by
+John Macpherson with the whiskey flask in case of accidents, toiled up
+through the fern brakes, till half-way up the hill they struck the
+path, and paused for breath beside a spring roughly set in masonry.
+Beside it lay a pile of broken broomsticks, one of which Alice
+Woodward took up, intending to use it as a staff.
+
+"It will be the staves they are using to carry the coffins," remarked
+old John, cheerfully, as he wiped his forehead with his coat sleeve;
+"it is breaking them they are when they come down, at the wishing
+well; and the lassies will come with them to wish for a jo---- Ay! ay!
+it will be what they were using for old Peggy that the leddy will be
+choosing, for it's new whatever."
+
+Alice dropped the stick with a little shiver of disgust, and Paul
+moved on impatiently, while John, in reply to a query from the Major,
+went on from behind in garrulous tones, "Ou, ay! it is a job,
+whatever, but it's most the auld bodies like Peggy that's wantin' to
+come to the auld place, and they're fine and light; all but the old
+_bodach_, Angus MacKinnon, and by 'sunder he will be a job when his
+turn comes, for he's as big as a stirk. Ay! ay! as big as a stirk,
+whatever."
+
+"There! is not that worth the climb?" cried Paul, with a ring of real
+pleasure in his voice which Marjory remembered so well on many a
+similar occasion, as they reached the twin holly trees--sacred to an
+older cult than that which had prompted the selection of a burial site
+whence Iona might sometimes be seen--and sank down upon the short
+thyme-set turf to admire the view.
+
+"We are in luck!" cried Marjory, breathlessly. "Look! yonder is Iona."
+
+Out on the verge, between the golden sea and the golden sky, lay a
+faint purple cloud no bigger than a man's hand.
+
+"But why Iona?" asked Alice Woodward. "I mean why did they want to be
+buried in sight of it?"
+
+"As a perpetual witness to their faith when they could no longer
+profess it, I suppose," said Tom Kennedy. "I like the idea."
+
+"Would be rather difficult to carry out in Kensal Green, I should
+say," put in Paul, lightly. "It wouldn't do to bury by belief
+nowadays."
+
+"But, surely," protested the Reverend James, "the Church custom of
+burying towards the east is strictly enforced in all English
+cemeteries." He might as well have kept silence as far as those
+three--who by chance were sitting together--were concerned, for their
+thoughts were far ahead of him.
+
+"I don't know," replied Dr. Kennedy, absently, "I think a broad
+division would suffice. Those who hope--not necessarily for themselves
+personally--and those who don't. And most of us, who care to think at
+all, look 'sunward,' as Myers says, 'through the mist, and speak to
+each other softly of a hope.'"
+
+"A mistake," broke in Paul's clearer voice. "It is better to thank
+with brief thanksgiving 'Whatever gods there be, that no life lives
+for ever----'"
+
+"Finish the quotation, please," put in Marjory, quickly. "'That e'en
+the weariest river winds somewhere safe to sea.' What more can anyone
+want?" She stretched her hand, as she spoke, to the glitter and gleam
+on the far horizon, and then turned with a smile to her companions.
+"And this is the sunniest spot in the whole glen--the first to
+get the light, and the last to lose it. I couldn't wish for a better
+resting-place."
+
+"I should prefer the society of a cemetery," remarked Paul; "one's
+tombstone would not be so detestably conspicuous as it would be up
+here. Imagine it--Macleod of Gleneira, etc., etc.!"
+
+"Why should you have a tombstone at all?" asked the girl, lightly. "I
+hate them; horrid, unsatisfactory things, full of texts that have
+nothing to do with you, yourself."
+
+"Well," put in Major Bertie, who had just returned from a tour of
+inspection, "there's an epitaph up there, which, as the Americans say,
+wraps round everything, and makes discontent impossible--'To John
+Stewart, his ancestors and descendants.' That ought to satisfy you,
+Miss Carmichael; or you might compose your own curious derangement,
+like a fellow I knew in the regiment--classical sort of chap. He used
+to write the most touching things, and weep over them profusely. Got
+blown up in the Arsenal one day, and didn't need any of them. It's a
+fact, Macleod. Before your time. So, if you have a fancy that way,
+Miss Carmichael----"
+
+"I'll note it in my will," she replied evasively; then, hearing a low
+voice beside her quoting the lines beginning, "He is beyond the shadow
+of night," she turned to Paul in quick surprise.
+
+"I have the knack of reading your thoughts, you see, though I don't
+share them," he said quietly, adding in a lower tone: "And now,
+Kennedy, I hurry no man's cattle, but if you are to catch that coach
+you should be going, especially if Miss Carmichael is to see you to
+the top of the ridge."
+
+The inexpressible charm, which was his by nature, born of a gracious
+remembrance of other folk's interest, was on him as he spoke, and
+contrasted sharply with the lack of it in the Reverend James
+Gillespie, who jumped to his feet in a moment in a desperate resolve.
+
+"If you like, Miss Marjory, I will go so far, and escort you back."
+
+Paul looked at him distastefully from head to foot, and Dr. Kennedy
+frowned, and set the suggestion aside decisively. "Thanks, Gillespie,
+but I have some business to talk over with my ward. Good-bye, Macleod,
+and thanks--for many kindnesses."
+
+"Good-bye, and--and good luck! Miss Woodward, if you don't mind, I
+think we ought to be starting tea-wards. The downward path is easy,
+but there are plenty of beauties to admire on the way. I am always too
+much out of breath to do so on the upward path. Excelsior is not my
+motto."
+
+Yet as they paused at the first turn he looked back towards the two
+figures cresting the rise, and remarked easily to his companion that
+Miss Carmichael was quite a picture on the hillside, and walked like a
+shepherd. And then, as easily, he proposed taking a _détour_ through a
+nut wood, and so by a path he knew back to the beach.
+
+"Alice would like a cup of tea, please; she is rather tired," he said
+to his sister, when they arrived there, and Lady George gave a little
+gasp of relief. "Oh, Paul! I'm so glad! What a dear boy you are!"
+
+And about the same time Tom Kennedy and Marjory Carmichael stood side
+by side on a neck of land connecting one range of hills with another.
+The bog myrtle, crushed under their feet, sent an aromatic,
+invigorating scent into the air. The fresh cool sea breeze, which had
+gathered a heather perfume in its passage over the windswept moor,
+blew in their faces, and a golden mist cloud, growing above the rising
+shadow of the little valley on either side of them, shut out the world
+below. The only sign of life, save those two standing hand in hand,
+being a stone-chat twittering on a boulder, and a group of scared
+sheep, waiting with backward turned heads for the next movement to
+send them with a headlong rush and a clatter of stones into the mists
+below.
+
+But none came. For those two stood silent for a time.
+
+"Oh, Tom!" she said at last; "was there ever anyone so good, so kind
+as you are?"
+
+He paused a moment, looking into her tearful eyes, and something of
+the earth earthy, seemed to slip from him, leaving him a clearer
+vision.
+
+"You shall answer that question for yourself, some day, my friend," he
+said. "A year hence--two years--three years. What does it matter?
+_Auf-wieder-sehn!_"
+
+"_Auf-wieder-sehn!_"
+
+The echo of her own reply came back to her from the mist as she stood,
+after he had gone, looking into the valley.
+
+_Auf-wieder-sehn!_ Yes!--to such a tie as that there could be no other
+parting.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXI.
+
+
+The Reverend James Gillespie had a certain coarse fibre in him, which
+made it only natural that the snub direct he had received from Dr.
+Kennedy should make him more determined than he had been before
+on a _tête-a-tête_ with Marjory. Consequently, much to her disgust,
+she found him solemnly waiting for her on a tombstone in the old
+burying-ground. The spectacle was an irritating one.
+
+"Why didn't you go down with the others?" she asked crossly. "You know
+quite well I didn't need--anyone." A certain politeness prevented her
+employing the personal pronoun. Not that her lover would have cared,
+since he came of a class in which a certain amount of shrewishness in
+the wooed is not only considered correct, but, to a certain extent,
+propitious. And, although he had a veneer of polish on those points
+which had come into friction with his new world, love-making was not
+one of them. There he was, simply the cottier's son, full of inherited
+tradition in regard to rural coquetry. A fact which, at the outset,
+put Marjory at a disadvantage, since he refused to take the
+uncompromising hint, which she gave as soon as it dawned upon her what
+his purpose really was. And yet she could hardly refuse the man before
+he had asked her the momentous question. So it was with concentrated
+mixture of sheer wrath and intense amusement that she suddenly found
+him, as they paused by the wishing-well, on his knees before her
+declaiming his passion in set terms. The disposition to box his ears
+vanished in almost hysterical laughter, until the blank surprise on
+his face recalled her to the fact that the man was, at any rate,
+paying her the highest tribute in his power, and had a right to be
+heard. But not in that ridiculous position!
+
+"You had better get up, Mr. Gillespie," she said peremptorily; "the
+ground is quite damp, and I can hear what you have to say much better
+when you are standing."
+
+The facts were undeniable but the prosaic interruption had checked the
+flow of Mr. Gillespie's eloquence, and he stood red and stuttering
+until Marjory's slender stock of patience was exhausted, and she
+interrupted him, loftily:
+
+"I suppose you meant just now to ask me to be your wife? If that was
+so----"
+
+Her tone roused his temper. "Such was my intention," he interrupted
+sulkily. "I thought I spoke pretty plainly, and I fancy you must have
+been prepared for it."
+
+Prepared! prepared for this!--this outrage on her girlish dreams. For
+it was her first proposal. What right had this man to thrust himself
+into her holy of holies and smirch the romance--the beauty of it all?
+It is the feeling with which many a girl listens for the first time to
+a lover.
+
+"Prepared!" she echoed. "Are you mad? The very idea is preposterous!"
+
+His face was a study. "The Bishop," he began, "and Lady George didn't
+seem to--to think----"
+
+"Then I am to understand that you have consulted them?" she asked, in
+supreme anger; but his sense of duty came to his aid and made him
+bold.
+
+"The Bishop, of course. Apart from his spiritual authority, he has
+claims upon me which I should be indeed ungrateful to ignore, and--and
+it meant much to be sure of your welcome."
+
+The real good feeling underlying the stilted words went straight to
+Marjory's sense of justice, and made her, metaphorically, pass the
+Bishop. Besides, this little discussion had, as it were, taken the
+personal flavour from the point at issue and left her contemptuously
+tolerant, as she had been many and many a time over the Reverend
+James's views of life.
+
+"And Lady George," she asked, categorically, magisterially; "has she
+also claims to be consulted?"
+
+He coughed. "I rather think she broached the subject. She--she saw I
+loved you." And here the man himself broke through the clerical
+coating. "For I do love you. It isn't preposterous. I would do my best
+to make you a good husband, and--and you could teach the school
+children anything you liked."
+
+"The Bishop wouldn't approve of that," she replied impatiently, yet in
+kinder tones. "Oh! Mr. Gillespie, it only shows how little you
+understand--how little you know. You would never have dreamed of such
+a thing, you and the Bishop, if you had had the least conception of
+what I really am. Perhaps I had no right to call it preposterous, but
+it is impossible, utterly impossible, and he ought to have seen it."
+
+This slur on his patron's acumen roused the young man's doggedness. "I
+do not see why it should be either preposterous or impossible, unless
+you love someone else."
+
+Then she turned and rent him, a whole torrent of indignant regret and
+dislike seeming to loosen her tongue. "Love! Oh! don't dare to mention
+the word. You don't understand it--it is profanation--I don't know
+anything about it myself, but _this_ must be wrong. Ah! Mr. Gillespie,
+for goodness sake let us talk about something else!"
+
+"Then I am to understand that you refuse," he began.
+
+"Refuse! of course I refuse." She felt she would have liked to go down
+among the whole posse of people--Paul Macleod among the number, for
+all she knew--who had deemed such a thing possible, and cry: "Listen!
+I have refused him, do you hear? I hate him, and you, too." But the
+next moment the very thought of coming amongst them, with him, as if
+of her own free will, seemed to her unbearable, and she stopped short
+in the headlong course downwards, which she had begun.
+
+"I suppose you couldn't help it," she said, with a catch in her
+breath, "and it is very kind of you, of course, and I am obliged and
+all that; but if you wouldn't mind leaving me I should prefer it. I
+don't want any tea, thanks; all I want is to get home."
+
+"I--I am sorry," he stammered, utterly taken aback.
+
+"Oh, don't be sorry!" she interrupted; "it has nothing to do with you,
+I assure you. Only it is so strange at first. Good-bye."
+
+She was off at a dignified walk, with her head in the air, in an
+opposite direction before he had recovered from his mingled surprise
+and consternation at the effect his proposal had had on her. At any
+rate, she had not been indifferent, and this thought bringing a
+certain consolation with it, he made his way down to the picnic party,
+and was soon recovering his equanimity over scones and jam.
+
+Marjory, on the other hand, felt her indignation grow as she hurried
+along, regardless of briars and brakes, to the shore beyond the
+Narrowest, where, out of sight of the others, she might hope to find a
+boat which would ferry her across the loch.
+
+She found one, but hardly what she desired, since, as she made her way
+through the alder brakes to a projecting rock, she saw the "Tubhaneer"
+lying close in, with Paul Macleod and Alice Woodward in the stern,
+while her brother and two of the children were lolling about in the
+bows. They had been amusing themselves by tacking lazily about in the
+slack water.
+
+She would have beaten a quick retreat had not Paul's eye been quicker
+and a swift turn of the rudder shown her that she was observed.
+
+"Oh, don't trouble," she called, "I only want to get across, and I'll
+find one of the rowing boats about, I expect."
+
+"They are above," he called back; "the tide is running out fast now,
+so I sent them to the upper bay. Just step on the further rock, if you
+can, and I'll run her up to it for a second."
+
+There was something in the easy familiarity and decision of his manner
+which always soothed her into reasonable compliance, and the next
+minute she found herself apologising to Alice Woodward as the bellying
+sail slanted them across the loch.
+
+"Oh, Alice won't mind," said Paul, cheerfully; "she likes sailing,
+don't you, Alice?"
+
+Marjory looked at them, as they looked at each other, and was silent.
+
+So that was settled. And that again was Love. Love and Marriage! What
+a ghastly farce it was when you came close to it!
+
+"I'm sorry Kennedy has gone," remarked Paul, with his eyes on her
+face; "he is one of the best fellows I ever met. We shall have to
+tack, Sam; the tide is too strong."
+
+Even so; the uncertain breeze failing ere they reached the slack
+water, they missed the landing-stage by a few yards and drifted into
+the shallow, seaweedy bay below. But Paul was over the side, knee-deep
+among the boulders, ere Marjory could expostulate. "Steady her a bit,
+Sam, you can get a grip on that oarweed. Now then, Miss Carmichael, if
+you please; I'm a duffer at steering, but I can lift you across
+easily, if you'll allow me--thanks."
+
+She would have preferred to wade but for the opposition it would have
+provoked, and when, after a few slippery strides, he set her down on
+the shingle, turned to go with the briefest of acknowledgments.
+
+"Wait a bit, please," he said, quietly. "Alice, I must see Miss
+Carmichael past the gate. MacInnes' bull is loose, and he isn't always
+quite canny. I'll be back in a minute. Keep the helm in, Sam, and
+don't let her drift; the current runs like a mill race round the
+point."
+
+They were already well over the soft, sea-pink set turf; Marjory
+walking fast, with heightened colour.
+
+"There is really no need for you to keep Miss Woodward waiting," she
+said impatiently. "I am quite accustomed to take care of myself."
+
+"Alice will not mind."
+
+Alice! Was he so eager for her to realise the new position that he
+must needs enforce the knowledge of it upon her in this fashion?
+
+"I am glad Miss Woodward does not mind. I should."
+
+"I am perfectly aware of that--you have not her philosophic
+acquiescence in the inevitable. It is a pity, for you fret yourself
+needlessly over people--who are not worth it."
+
+Was he not worth it? The thought made her walk faster, until a sudden
+cry from behind made her companion pause and look back hastily.
+
+"Good God! they'll be on the rocks," he cried, as, without an
+instant's delay, he dashed across the sward down to the shore,
+followed closely by Marjory, whose heart throbbed with sudden fear as
+she realised what had occurred. The boat which they had left safely in
+the backwater a minute before, was now racing down the stream with
+sails full set. How this had occurred was another question, which
+could not then be answered. Possibly Sam, proud of his new seamanship,
+had proposed a sail. Anyhow, there they were in the stream, and even
+without knowledge of that sunken shelf of rock half a mile further
+down the curve, over which the water rushed in a fall at this time of
+the tide, the young man sufficiently grasped the danger of the
+situation to be doing his best to lower the sail again. But the rope
+had kinked in the pulley, and the sudden discovery that he had
+forgotten to re-ship the rudder--which Paul had removed in order to
+bring the boat closer into shore--completed his consternation,
+rendering him absolutely helpless. All this Captain Macleod took in as
+he ran, and ere Marjory had reached him he had kicked off his boots
+and flung coat and waistcoat aside to free himself for the sharp,
+short struggle with the racing tide, in which lay his only chance of
+reaching the boat. Then he waded breast high in the slack water, and
+bided his time. It needed quick thought and quicker decision to seize
+the exact moment when, by one supreme effort, he could hope to
+succeed; and yet Marjory, watching with held breath, felt a wild rush
+of exultation, not of fear, as with one splendid stroke he shot far
+into the current. Swimming has always an effortless look, and the
+sweeping stream, carrying him down, remorselessly aided the illusion,
+so that not even Marjory, with her knowledge of the tide, guessed how
+nearly Paul Macleod's strength was spent as his hand touched the
+gunwale. But touch it he did, and the next moment, with Sam's help, he
+was aboard and busy at the sail, while Alice Woodward, deeming the
+danger over, began to cry helplessly, and even Marjory breathed again.
+Only for a moment, however; the next, though the sail was down, she
+realised that the boat was still in the current, and that Paul was
+vainly trying to tear up a thwart. The rudder! the rudder must have
+gone adrift in Sam's clumsy efforts to ship it!
+
+Then they were no better off than before--nay, worse! since they were
+nearer those unseen rocks, and he--_he_ was in danger now.
+
+What was to be done? The thought was agonising as, scarcely knowing
+why, she kept abreast of the drifting boat, stumbling over the
+boulders, slipping on the seaweed, unable to see, to think, to do
+anything save listen to the ominously rising roar of the water which
+just beyond the turn fell in a regular cascade over that black jagged
+shelf of rock.
+
+Ah, those helpless children! and Paul! She must do something--try to
+do something. And then on a sudden it came to her, as such things do
+come, as if they had all been settled beforehand clear and connected.
+At the last spit of land, not fifty yards above the fall, a streak of
+sand bank, capped by a pile of boulders, jutted out. If she could
+cross the dip and reach them! The herons used to sit there till well
+on to half-tide, and once she and Will had found oysters. The trivial
+thoughts came, as they will come in times of stress, flashing through
+the brain without obscuring it. Even as she thought them, her mind was
+busy over the one certainty, that somehow she must give help! By
+cutting across the next grassy curve she would be there in time. They
+might think she was deserting them. What then? If she could succeed
+even so far, _he_ would know that it was not so--_he_ would understand
+that she meant to be nearer--nearer.
+
+He did; and a great glow of pride in her pluck came to him, when, as
+the boat swept round the curve, he saw her floundering, half swimming
+towards the boulders, and at the sight bent quickly for a coil of
+rope. But she had not thought of that--her one impulse having been to
+get nearer.
+
+And now she is as far as she can go. Sheer at her feet, sliding among
+the stones, is the stream--below her is the roar and rush of the fall,
+save to her left, where it shelves to an eddy--above her is the boat
+drifting, drifting, more slowly now, for the shelf of rock backs the
+water a little. Then for the first time she realises what is to be
+done, for there is Paul at the bows with the coil poised in his hand.
+
+Of course! that was it! that was it!
+
+She dug her heels into the crevices of the boulders as she stood
+knee-deep among them, and kept her eyes upon his face.
+
+"Now!"
+
+As the cry left her lips, something like a black snake shot out
+through the air and flung itself across her breast, stinging and
+almost blinding her with pain; but there was no time for pain--no
+time! To seize it, bend it round the nearest boulder, and so twice
+round her waist with a loop through across her arm, took all her
+thoughts, all her strength, till, with a slow rasping noise of the wet
+rope slipping on stone, the strain began and the knot grew tight.
+Tight.--tighter--then a slip--then tighter again.
+
+Pain--yes, it was pain. My God! what pain. Ah! another slip. But
+Paul--was that a knife he had in his hand? No! No! that should never
+be; there should be no more slipping even if she drowned for it. With
+more of sheer obstinacy than courage she flung herself sideways in the
+water among the rocks. So, with her whole body wedged in behind the
+two boulders, there could be no more slipping. There could be nothing
+more but life or death for both of them.
+
+And it was life. Paul Macleod, standing knife in hand, ready to cut
+the rope, felt the claim of her pluck to fair play, and paused. She
+should do this thing if she could! And even as the decision came to
+him, came also the knowledge that she had done it, as, with a sidelong
+sway the boat brought up and drifted into slacker water.
+
+Five minutes after he was untying the knot and binding his wet
+handkerchief round her bruised arm.
+
+"Salt water," he said, a trifle unsteadily, "is the best thing in the
+world for bruises, and you are more bruised than hurt, I fancy. No!
+Blanche," for Alice Woodward's shrieks had by that time attracted
+plenty of help, and the boats had come over in hot haste from the
+other side; "don't fuss over Miss Carmichael with sal volatile and
+salts. She doesn't need it. But we are both wet through, and if she is
+wise she will walk home with me at once. It is better than waiting for
+the carriage."
+
+"Yes, please," she replied, catching eagerly at the chance of escape
+from the general excitement and gratitude. "Indeed, I would rather,
+Lady George; I am not a bit hurt, only, as your brother says, wet
+through, so I had better get home at once."
+
+They started off together at a brisk pace, but silently, until as they
+topped the nearest rise, the chill evening wind striking through her
+wet garments, made her shiver. Then he held out his hand to her
+suddenly, with a smile.
+
+"Come! let us run. It will take off the stiffness and keep us both
+warm." So hand in hand, like a couple of children, they ran through
+the autumn woods, startling the roe deer from the oak coverts, and the
+sea-gulls from the little sheltered bays. Hand in hand, while the
+shadows darkened and the gold in the west faded to grey. Warm, human
+hand in hand, confident, content in their companionship, and seeking
+nothing more than that confidence, that content.
+
+"I don't think you'll take cold," said Paul, with the blood tingling
+in his veins, and his breath coming fast.
+
+"I don't think I shall," she laughed.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXII.
+
+
+But the remembrance of that thoughtless run through the darkening
+woods seemed incredible--to the girl, at least--when next morning her
+companion in it came down, as in duty bound, to inquire after the
+result of her wetting, for he was palpably conventional and
+commonplace. Partly because Lady George accompanied him, eager to
+renew her protestations of gratitude, and partly because it was his
+way whenever he had made any special departure from the ordinary line
+of conduct, which he laid down for himself. This evident artificiality
+had the effect of producing the same sort of unreality in Marjory, so
+that the only straightforward part of the interview came from Lord
+George, who, with an odd little quake in his voice, thanked her for
+the fact that Blazes was at the present moment rehearsing the scene in
+the nursery.
+
+"You should see the little beggar," he said. "'Pon my word he doesn't
+seem to have missed a single detail. Has Sam to the life, and we have
+been obliged to forbid Alice's screams; they were heard all over the
+house."
+
+"And what does he say was his own part in the business?" asked
+Marjory. "All I remember is a face--very like yours, Lord George--with
+great wide eyes, while Eve and Adam were hiding theirs."
+
+Lord George gave another odd little sound between a laugh and a sob.
+"He says he sate still and swore, like Uncle Paul!"
+
+"I'm afraid I did, Miss Carmichael," confessed the culprit, with a
+flash of the old manner; "but really, the tangle that young idiot had
+got things into, and stramash----" He turned to the window with a
+frown, and looked out. "You are the heroine of the hour, I see," he
+added cynically. "There is the Manse machine, with your two devoted
+admirers in it, come to congratulate you. Blanche, if you have induced
+Miss Carmichael to dine with us to-night--our last night--we had
+better quit the court. By the way, Mrs. Vane desired me to say, Miss
+Carmichael, that she did not intend to leave Gleneira without seeing
+you again; so, as she is not well enough to come to the Lodge, you may
+be induced to take pity on her."
+
+The covert implication that some such inducement was necessary to
+overcome her reluctance, stung the girl's pride, without her
+recognising the cause of it, and she accepted the invitation
+hurriedly, telling herself she was glad it was the last, and that
+after to-morrow she could return to the old peaceful days. The thought
+made her turn with a quick expansion of face and manner to the two old
+men who advanced to meet them, as she accompanied Lady George to the
+garden-gate. Two old men almost tremulous with pride and delight.
+
+"_Tanto fortior tanto felicior!_" cried the little Father, his fresh,
+round face beaming with sheer content.
+
+"So, so, young lady! we have heard the story," put in the minister,
+full of courtly bows, in which those suggestions of a shapely calf had
+a fair field. "True is it that _Fortis cadere, cedere non potest_. Ah,
+Lady George! I have to express my great thankfulness that a dreadful
+bereavement has been spared you, under Providence, by our dear young
+friend's courage; or, rather, by her wisdom, since, without the quick
+thought, the former would have been useless. In this case, to
+paraphrase the saying, _tam Minerva quam Marte_, as even a soldier
+must allow."
+
+"You will not find me backward, sir, in acknowledging either Miss
+Carmichael's wisdom or her courage," replied Paul, thus challenged;
+but his tone had that suggestion of a hidden meaning in it, to which
+Lady George objected, and rightly, as bad form; so she covered it by a
+remark upon the beauty of a boy, who stood holding open the gate.
+
+"He is a little like that crayon portrait of you when you were a boy,
+Paul," she added cheerfully.
+
+"He is old Peggy's grandson," replied Marjory, "and as he has been
+left to Dr. Kennedy's care, I am to look after him. He will be my
+first pupil."
+
+"Then the likeness will soon disappear," said Paul, in a low voice, as
+he passed out.
+
+"Perhaps he will be not the worse of that," retorted Marjory, in the
+same tone.
+
+"I don't know. Men who are brought up by women are generally prigs."
+
+"And women who have been brought up by men?" she asked sharply, not
+thinking of herself or her past.
+
+"Are brave," he said quietly.
+
+Brave! So he thought that of her. The one word was worth all the rest.
+And as she went up the path again with Father Macdonald on her right
+hand and Mr. Wilson on her left, all their fine phrases seemed
+forgotten in that simple acknowledgment. She would remember that
+always, even when the old peaceful days came back, as they would on
+the morrow. There was only the dinner at the Big House between her and
+that desirable consummation; but that was an ordeal without Tom, who
+was at home anywhere.
+
+To tell truth, it would have been an ordeal to one less reluctant than
+Marjory; for a general air of uncertainty, like that of amateur
+theatricals when the prompter is best man, pervaded the party. Mrs.
+Woodward called her host by his Christian name with a manifest effort
+of memory, and when Sam ventured on a like familiarity with Blanche,
+her face betrayed her real feelings. Indeed, she took a private
+opportunity of confiding to Lord George her relief that it was only a
+one-night part, as she could not stand it much longer.
+
+"Yet you condemn poor Paul to a life-long connection with that young
+bounder. Upon my soul! you women are queer creatures;" and the
+perversity of the feminine nature appeared to absorb him for the rest
+of the evening. Even Mrs. Vane, who ventured down to dinner for the
+first time, could make nothing of the ghastly function, so she retired
+immediately afterwards on plea of being tired, chiefly because she
+wished to have an opportunity of seeing Marjory alone, which she
+secured by bidding her in a whisper be sure and come to her room after
+she had said good-bye to everyone else.
+
+Her departure reduced the drawing-room to flat despair.
+
+"It is the sadness of farewell," remarked Miss Smith, part of whose
+contract was that she was to remain to the last and see nothing was
+forgotten; not even a decent show of sentiment.
+
+"Parting is such sweet sorrow," murmured the Major under his
+moustache. He was the most cheerful of the party, since his flirtation
+had resulted in another week's grouse shooting with his charmer's
+father.
+
+"Mr. St. Clare has written such a sweet thing called 'Good-bye,'"
+continued the Moth, appealing to the Poet. "He might recite it to
+cheer us up."
+
+"I wonder how many poets there are who haven't written a piece on that
+subject," put in Paul, hastily, as Mr. St. Clare gave a preliminary
+cough, "and yet it will supply tons of agony to generations still
+unborn."
+
+"There are forty songs of that name," remarked Alice, practically. "I
+wanted one for a friend, and the music man told me so."
+
+Then the remembrance of that friend, a certain young fellow with a
+pleasant baritone voice, busy over tallow at Riga, gave her quite a
+pang of regret.
+
+"Mostly trash, too," assented the Major; "Tosti's is the best, but
+even there one is all battered to pieces before the end."
+
+"That is true," put in Marjory, eagerly. "You see, the poet begins by
+fine-drawing the agony, the composer follows suit, and the singer
+carries out the distortion. So in the third verse there is nothing for
+it but to 'kill the coo.'"
+
+"I haven't heard 'Auld Robin Gray' for twenty years," murmured Lord
+George. "No one sings anything but German nowadays. German or comic
+operas."
+
+"Miss Carmichael sings Scotch songs; I've heard her," said Paul from
+the skein of silk he was holding for Alice Woodward.
+
+"Oh, do!" cried the Moth. "Something touching."
+
+"Somethin' to cheer us up, you mean," put in Sam; "somethin' with a
+chorus, you know."
+
+"Something old-fashioned," protested Lord George.
+
+"Something appropriate to the occasion," suggested his wife.
+
+"Something Miss Carmichael approves of," came from the skein of silk.
+
+The girl stood by the piano for an instant, looking at them all with a
+touch of fine scorn in her face.
+
+"I will do my best," she said at last, with a laugh. The next instant,
+with a crash of chords, her clear, fresh, young voice rang through the
+room in that gayest and saddest of songs:--
+
+
+             "A weary lot is thine, fair maid,
+                A weary lot is thine;
+              To pull the thorn thy brow to braid,
+                And press the rue for wine.
+              A lightsome eye, a soldier's mien,
+                A feather of the blue,
+              A doublet of the Lincoln green,
+                No more of me you knew,
+                        My love,
+              No more of me you knew."
+
+
+Paul's hands turning the skeins paused, his eyes were on the girl's
+face as, with a mixture of recklessness and regret, she went on--
+
+
+             "The morn is merry June, I trow,
+                The rose is budding fain,
+              But she shall bloom in winter snow
+                Ere we two meet again!
+              He turned his charger as he spake
+                Upon the river shore,
+              Said 'Adieu for evermore,
+                        My love,
+              And adieu for evermore.'"
+
+
+"What a heartless, unromantic, roving wretch!" remarked Lady George,
+in the pause which followed the refrain. "I hope he was jilted after
+all by the heiress; there generally is an heiress in these cases."
+Then, becoming aware of the possible indiscretion of her words, she
+looked at her brother hurriedly.
+
+"In that case he married and lived happily ever afterwards; at least,
+that is what I should have done in his case. And I don't think he was
+so heartless, after all. He told the truth. It isn't as if he had
+sneaked away without saying good-bye."
+
+Marjory rose from the piano with a little shrug of her shoulders.
+
+"I must say good-night, at any rate, Lady George, and sneak up to see
+Mrs. Vane; for it is getting late, and you have all to be up so
+early."
+
+Paul, standing at the door holding it open for her to pass through,
+was the last of the group to whom she had to give the conventional
+farewell.
+
+"Good-bye," she said, feeling above her real regret a relief that this
+was the end.
+
+"_Auf-wieder-sehn_," he replied. That was what Tom had said. As she
+ran upstairs to Mrs. Vane's room she was telling herself passionately
+that she did not want to see Captain Macleod again--that she would
+rather he went out of her life altogether, and cease to make her
+wonder at his changeful moods.
+
+"_Entrez_," said the soft voice to her knock, and the next moment she
+felt herself in an atmosphere in which she had never been before. The
+semi-darkness of the pink-shaded light, the littered dressing-table,
+the soft perfume, the thousand and one evidences of an almost sensuous
+ease were to her absolutely novel. And the small figure, nestling in
+the armchair, so dainty in its laces and little velvet-shod feet. All
+that meant something she had never grasped before, something which
+attracted and yet repelled her.
+
+"How pretty it is," she said, in sudden impulse, as her fingers
+stroked one of the soft folds almost caressingly. Mrs. Vane's hand
+went out swiftly, and drew hers closer.
+
+"Don't, child! That does for me, not for you. So this is good-bye. You
+are not sorry?" Her eyes scanned the girl's closely, and then she
+smiled. "If you are, you will get over it soon. That is the best of
+work. I often wish I had some--to make me forget myself."
+
+"But you do work--you work harder than anyone I know, in a way. Why,
+to-night we were quite dull; so dull without you! Everyone missed you;
+and yet----"
+
+"And yet? out with it, little one!"
+
+"I was wondering if it was worth it?"
+
+"Yes! if you have a craze to be admired, as I have. But I didn't ask
+you to come here in order to talk about myself. You would not
+understand me if I did. Pray Heaven you never may. So you have said
+good-bye to them all, and you are not sorry! That is well. Now, let me
+wish you good luck, and give you a word of advice."
+
+"Twenty, if you like."
+
+"Make the most of that luck--and _Alphonse_."
+
+"You mean Dr. Kennedy?" asked the girl, stiffly.
+
+"Dr. Kennedy. There are not many like him in this world."
+
+"I doubt if there are any. At least, I have not met them," she
+replied, with a quick flush of impatience.
+
+"I am glad to hear you say that. Good-bye, my dear, and forget us all
+as soon as you can."
+
+"I shall remember your kindness--for you have been kind--all of you.
+Good-bye."
+
+When the door had closed, Mrs. Vane leant back in her chair with a
+sigh of relief. That was over then, and, so far as she could judge,
+without harm to the girl. And now--now she could face the other
+problem. Perhaps there need be no harm there, either, but she must
+think--she must think. So in the softness, and the dimness, and the
+luxury, her face grew more anxious, more weary, until the memory of
+Marjory's words came back to her.
+
+Was it worth it all? Whether it was worth it or not did not matter;
+the plotting and planning had become a second nature to her--she must
+think--she must think!
+
+And Marjory, passing out into the calm cool of the night, gave a sigh
+of relief also. It was over; that strange life, so different from the
+future one which lay before her. Was she sorry? Yes! a little. No one
+could know Paul Macleod and not feel a regret at the thought of his
+future. Yet she was glad it was over despite that queer sort of numb
+pain at her heart at the thought of his unfailing kindness to her. And
+now she would never see him again, never---- A red star showed low
+down behind a turn in the rhododendrons, and a moment after Paul's
+voice said easily, as he threw away his cigar:
+
+"You have not been long."
+
+So it was not over! That was her first thought, and then came a quick
+flutter at her heart. Over! was not it rather just beginning for
+this--_this_ was new. Her pride rose in arms against it instantly.
+
+"I did not expect--" she began almost haughtily.
+
+"Did you not? That was rather foolish of you. You expected me to let
+you walk home alone; but I think I know my duties; as a host, at any
+rate."
+
+It was true. He did know them. There could not be two opinions as to
+his considerate courtesy to all. She admitted the fact to herself
+gladly, telling herself that it was quite natural he should see her
+home, though the possibility of his doing so had not occurred to her.
+Hitherto, of course, Tom had been with her; to-night she was alone. It
+was the usual thing; yet not usual, surely, that they should be
+walking fast through the darkness without a word, just as if they had
+quarrelled. What was there to quarrel about? Nothing. Not his
+engagement certainly, though he might think so if she kept silent on a
+fact which no one had attempted to conceal. Hitherto she had had no
+opportunity of alluding to it, but now there was no excuse. The merest
+acquaintance would be expected to take such an opportunity of wishing
+him good luck, unless--unless some personal motive prevented it. And
+there was none. How could there be? since Paul was surely welcome to
+do as he liked.
+
+Yet, for a time, the crunch of the gravel beneath their feet as they
+walked on in silence was the only sound upon the cool night air. But
+the glimmering white of the Lodge gate nerved her to the effort.
+
+"I want to congratulate you, Captain Macleod," she began, when he
+interrupted her quickly.
+
+"Hush! If there cannot be truth, don't let there be falsehood between
+us."
+
+It was as if a thunderbolt had fallen, piercing her ignorance. She
+stopped short, her pulses bounding to that strange new thrill in his
+voice which seemed to make her forget her surprise, her indignation.
+She had to steady her own tones ere she could reply.
+
+"There has been no falsehood on my part."
+
+"Has there not? Then there shall be none on mine. Marjory! I love you!
+Nay! you shall listen----" His outstretched arm barred her quick
+movement of disdain. "I shall not keep you long, but you must hear the
+truth. I've loved you from the beginning--I love you now--I feel as if
+I should love you always----"
+
+She stood there as if she had been turned to stone, listening,
+listening, like a child to some fairy tale; and in the darkness a look
+that had never been there before crept to her clear eyes, and a quiver
+to her mouth.
+
+"Yes! I love you; not only as most men count love, so that the
+touch of your hand thrills me, and the thought of your kisses is as
+heaven---- Don't shrink from the truth--you must face it sometime--why
+not now? It is so, and God knows it is no new thing to me. But this is
+new--that you are my soul--if I have one--Marjory! Marjory! Why have
+you made me feel like this?--why would you never see me as I really
+am?--why would you always believe me better than I was?"
+
+His passionate questioning seemed to pass her by. She stood silent
+till, in the darkness, he seized her hands and drew her closer to him,
+peering into her face as if to read the answer there.
+
+"For pity's sake don't look so kind, so sweet," he burst out
+vehemently, for even in the faint starlight he could see something of
+her eyes. "Tell me how vile I am--then I could go--then I could leave
+you! Listen to me, Marjory--" his voice grew calmer, and a sort of
+bitter entreaty came to its passionate anger--"I know quite well--I am
+certain that my only chance of living what you hold to be a worthy
+life lies with you, and yet I have renounced it--I do renounce it
+without a shadow of remorse. Is not that enough? You are my better
+self, my one hope of redemption, yet still I say, Adieu, my love,
+adieu, for evermore!"
+
+And then the half-seen softness of her face seemed to madden him.
+"Before God you _shall_ see me as I am. You _shall_ understand."
+
+His arms clasped her close, his reckless, passionate kiss was on her
+lips, and then----
+
+Then he stood as it were before the tribunal which he had
+invoked--that tribunal of perfect knowledge, of blinding truth, in
+which alone lies the terror of judgment.
+
+"Marjory!" The whisper could scarcely be heard. "Marjory! is it true?
+My God! is it true that you love me?" He still held her, but with a
+touch which had changed utterly, and his tone was almost pitiful in
+its appeal. "Marjory! why--why did I not know? Why did you hide
+yourself from me?"
+
+"I did not know myself," she answered, and her voice had a
+ring of pain in it; "how could I know? But it would have made no
+difference--no difference to you."
+
+The keenest reproach could not have hit him so hard as this
+instinctive defence of her own ignorance, her own innocence; it
+pierced the armour of his worldliness and went straight to that part
+of his nature which, even at his worst, held fast to life in a sort of
+veiled self-contempt.
+
+"You are right; it would have made no difference, no difference to
+such as I am." Then in the darkness he was at her feet kissing the hem
+of her garment.
+
+"Adieu, my love; adieu for evermore!"
+
+The next instant the sound of his retreating footsteps broke the
+stillness, and she was alone.
+
+Alone, with a smile upon her face--a smile of infinite tenderness for
+his manhood and for her own new-found womanhood, which tingled in each
+vein and seemed to fill the whole world with the cry, "He loves me! he
+loves me!"
+
+So this was Love. This unreasoning joy, this absorbing desire to hap
+and to hold, to let all else slip by and be forgotten as nothing
+worth; to live for oneself alone--oneself, since he and she were
+one--one only!
+
+Yes; she loved him like that. And he? The memory of his voice, the
+clasp of his hand, the touch of his lips came back to her in a rush,
+dazing and bewildering her utterly, so that she stretched her arms
+into the night and whispered into the darkness: "Paul, come back! you
+must come back and tell me what it means. Paul! Paul!"
+
+But he was gone; and then the pity of it, the shame that he had left
+her came home to her, not for herself, but for him, and with a little
+short, sharp cry, such as will come with sudden physical pain, she
+turned on her way tearless, composed, half stunned by her own emotion.
+
+When she had undressed she blew out the candle, and, kneeling by the
+window, pressed her forehead against the cool glass while she gazed
+unseeingly into the night.
+
+So this was Love!--the Love which the poets called divine--the Love to
+which she had looked forward all her life. What did it mean? What was
+it, this feeling which had come to her unbidden, unrecognised? For now
+with opened eyes she understood that it had been there almost from the
+beginning; that it had been the cause of all her moods and his. The
+curious attraction and repulsion, the unrest, the desire to influence
+him. Ought she to have known this sooner? Perhaps; and yet, how could
+she when neither her own nature or her education had given her a hint
+of this thing? The Love she had dreamed of had been a thing of the
+mind, of conscious choice, and this was not. No! best to tell the
+truth--it was not!
+
+As she knelt there, alone in her ignorance, not so much of evil as of
+the realities of life, she could yet see that this unreasoning
+attraction--though with her it could not but be indissolubly mixed up
+with something higher, something nobler than itself; something which
+craved a like nobility in its object--was yet in its very essence of
+the earth earthy.
+
+Without that something what was it?
+
+She was clear sighted was this girl, whose reasoning powers had been
+trained to be truthful; so she did not attempt to deny that Paul
+Macleod was not her ideal of what a man should be. That her whole soul
+went out in one desire that he should be so, and in a tender longing
+to help him, to comfort and console him, did not alter the fact. That
+desire, that longing, was apart from this bewildering emotion which
+filled the world with the cry, "He loves me! He loves me!" She loved
+him as he was; not as he ought to be.
+
+As he was! And then her eyes seemed to come back from the darkness and
+find a light as she remembered those words of his: "It is not only as
+if I loved you as men count love."
+
+Then he, too, understood--he, too, was torn in twain. A sense of
+companionship seemed to come to her; she rose from her knees and crept
+to bed. And as she lay awake the slow tears fell on her pillow. So
+this was Love! this bitter pain, this keener joy; but underneath his
+stress of passion, and her fainter reflection of it, lay something
+which might bring peace if he would let it, and the thought of this
+made her whisper softly:--
+
+"Paul, I love you. Come back to me, Paul, and we will forget our
+love."
+
+But up at the Big House he was cursing his own folly in yielding to
+the temptation of seeing Marjory home. Yet what had come over him? He,
+who for the most part behaved with some regard to gentlemanly
+instincts. What had he done? The memory of it, seen by the light of
+his knowledge of evil, filled him with shame. Well! that finished it.
+When she had time to think she would never forgive him. She would
+understand, and that look would fade from her face--that look
+which---- But she was right! Even if he had seen it before, it would
+have made no difference; he would have gone on his way all the same.
+Why had he ever seen it to give him needless pain, and be a miserable
+memory? The only thing was to forget it--to forget, not the love which
+thrilled him--that, Heaven knows, could be easily forgotten--but that
+other! Yes! he must forget it. That was the only thing to be done now.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+
+Luckily, perhaps, for his determination to forget, a variety of causes
+combined to give Paul Macleod breathing space before he had, as it
+were, to take up the burden of his engagement with Alice Woodward. To
+begin with, he had to pay a visit on the way south, and the delights
+of really good partridge shooting are of a distinctly soothing nature.
+There is something fat and calm and comfortable about the stubbles
+and turnip fields which makes one think kindly of county magistrates
+and quarter sessions, of growing stout, and laying down bins of port
+wine. A very different affair this from cresting the brow of a
+heather-covered hill, with a wild wind from the west scattering the
+coveys like bunches of brown feathers, while the next brae rises
+purple before you, and another--and another--and another! Up and up,
+with a strain and an effort, yet with the pulse of life beating its
+strongest.
+
+Then, when the North mail finally set him down at Euston, the
+Woodwards had gone to Brighton; and there was that going on in the
+artistic little house in Brutonstreet, which would have made it unkind
+for him to leave town and follow them, even if his own inclination had
+not been to stay and see what the days brought forth. For Blasius was
+ill, dangerously ill, and Lord George was a piteous sight as he
+wandered aimlessly down to the Foreign Office, and, after a vain
+effort to remain at work, wandered home again with the eager question
+on his lips, "Is there any change?"
+
+But there was none. The child, after the manner of his sturdy kind,
+took the disease as hardly as it could be taken, and then fought
+against it as gamely. So the little life hung in the balance, till
+there came a day when the pretence of the Foreign Office was set
+aside, and Lord George sate in the nursery with his little son in his
+arms, an unconscious burden in the red flannel dressing-gown, which
+somehow seemed connected with so much of Blazes' short life. Blanche,
+almost worn out, stood by the open window holding Paul's hand--Paul,
+who was always so sympathetic, so kindly when one was in trouble. So
+they waited to see whether the child would choose life or death; while
+outside the people were picking their way gingerly through the mingled
+sunshine and shade of a thunder shower. It was so silent that you
+could hear the clock on the stairs ticking above the faint patter on
+the window-pane, almost hear the splash of the slow tear-drop which
+trickled down Lord George's cheek, and fell on Blazes' closed hand.
+And then, suddenly, a pair of languid eyes opened, and the little
+voice, mellow still, despite its weakness, said quietly:
+
+"Ith's waining. Blazeth wants a wumberwella."
+
+In the days following, if Blazes had wanted the moon, Lord George
+would have entered into diplomatic relations with the man in it,
+regarding a cession of territory; but the child, according to the
+doctors, wanted sea air more than anything else. So, naturally enough,
+they all migrated to Brighton, and, though he did not realise it, the
+general sense of relief and contentment pervading the whole party did
+much to make Paul Macleod feel the shackles bearable. Then Mrs.
+Woodward and Alice were at one of the big hotels, the Temples were in
+lodgings, while he, himself, had rooms at a golfing club, to which he
+belonged; an arrangement which gave everyone a certain freedom.
+Finally, as Paul discovered on the very first day, Alice showed much
+more to advantage on the parade, or riding over the downs, or putting
+on the green, than she had ever done at Gleneira.
+
+"Oh, yes!" she said gaily, "I am a regular cockney at heart. I love
+the pavements, and I hate uncivilised ways. I know when Blanche told
+me she had to see the sheep cut up at Gleneira, I made a mental note
+that I wouldn't. I couldn't, for I hate the sight of raw meat."
+
+"You bear the butchers' shops with tolerable equanimity," returned her
+lover, who hardly liked her constant allusions to Highland barbarism;
+"as a matter of fact, raw meat intrudes itself more on your notice in
+town than it ever does in the country."
+
+"Perhaps; but then the sheep with the flowery pattern down their backs
+don't look like sheep, and as for the beef, why, you can't connect the
+joints with any part of the animal. At least, I can't, and I don't
+believe you can, either. Now what part of the beast is an aitchbone?"
+
+Paul set the question aside by proposing a canter, and by the time
+that was over he was quite ready to be sentimental; for Alice looked
+well on horseback in a sort of willowy, graceful fashion, which made
+the pastime seem superabundantly feminine.
+
+Still, the subject had a knack of cropping up again and again; and
+once, when she had excused herself for some aspersion by saying,
+good-naturedly, that it was a mere matter of association, and that she
+was of the cat kind, liking those things to which she was accustomed,
+he had taken her up short by saying she would have to get accustomed
+to Gleneira.
+
+"Shall I?" she asked. "Somehow, I don't think we shall live there very
+much. It is nice enough for six weeks' shooting; but, even then, the
+damp spotted some of my dresses."
+
+"You are getting plenty of new ones at any rate," retorted Paul, for
+the room was littered with _chiffons_.
+
+She raised her pretty eyebrows. "Oh, these are only patterns. I always
+send for them when I'm away from town. It is almost as good as
+shopping. But I don't mean to buy much now. I shall wait for the
+winter sales. They are such fun, and I like getting my money's
+worth--though, of course, father gives me as much as I want. Still, a
+bargain is a bargain, isn't it?"
+
+Paul acquiesced, but the conversation rankled in his mind. To begin
+with, it gave him an insight into a certain _bourgeoise_ strain in the
+young lady's nature, and though he told himself that nothing else was
+to be expected from Mr. Woodward's daughter--who derived her chief
+charm from the fact that her father _had_ made bargains and got his
+money's worth--that did not make its presence any more desirable. And
+then he could not escape the reflection that _he_ was a bargain, and
+that the whole family into which he was marrying would make a point of
+having their money's worth.
+
+He would have realised this still more clearly if he could have seen
+one of the daily letters which Mrs. Woodward, with praiseworthy
+regularity, wrote to her lord and master in London, for it is a sort
+of shibboleth of the married state that those in it should write to
+each other every day whether they have anything to say or not.
+
+"Alice," she wrote, "is so sensible and seems quite content. At one
+time I feared a slight entanglement with Jack, but Lady George has
+been most kind and taken her to all the best places, which is, of
+course, what we have a right to expect. By the way, there is an Irish
+member here--O'Flanagin, or something like that--and he declares the
+Land League will spread to the West Highlands. So you must be sure and
+tie up the money securely, as it does not seem quite a safe
+investment."
+
+Mr. Woodward, on receiving this missive, swore audibly, asserting that
+the devil might take him if he knew of any investment which could be
+called safe in the present unsettled state of the markets! For his
+visit to Gleneira, where, as he angrily put it, telegrams came
+occasionally and the post never--had somehow been the beginning of one
+of those streaks of real ill-luck which defy the speculator. The
+result being that Mr. Woodward generally left his office in the city
+poorer by some thousands than he had entered it in the morning, and
+though he knew his own fortune to be beyond the risk of actual
+poverty, it altered his outlook upon life, and threatened his credit
+as a successful financier.
+
+Nor did it threaten his alone; there were uncomfortable rumours of
+disaster in the air, which, in course of time, came to Lady George's
+ears.
+
+"I do hope Mr. Woodward is not mixed up in it," she said to Paul, as
+she sate working bilious-looking sunflowers on a faded bit of stuff
+for the Highland bazaar; "but he was a little _distrait_ when he came
+down last Sunday, and he didn't eat any dinner to speak of--we dined
+with them, you remember."
+
+"Perhaps I gave him too good a lunch at the club," replied her
+brother, jocosely; "besides, he wouldn't let a few losses spoil his
+appetite. He is well secured, and then he could always fall back on
+his share in the soap-boiling business."
+
+"I was not thinking of him, Paul, I was thinking of you. You could not
+boil soap."
+
+The fact was indubitable, and though her brother laughed, he felt
+vaguely that there were two sides to a bargain, and when his sister
+began on the subject again, he met her hints with a frown.
+
+"I am perfectly aware," he said, "that Patagonians are dangerous, and
+Mr. Woodward knows it as well as I do."
+
+"But he was nicked--that is how that city man I met at dinner last
+night put it--he was nicked in Atalantas also."
+
+"If you had asked me, Blanche, instead of inquiring from strangers, as
+you seem to have done," interrupted her brother, with great heat, "I
+could have told you he was nicked, as you choose to call it,
+heavily--very heavily. He has been unlucky of late. He admits it."
+
+"Good heavens, Paul! what are you going to do?"
+
+"Nothing. He is quite capable of managing his own affairs."
+
+"Don't pretend to be stupid, Paul! I mean your engagement."
+
+"What has business to do with that?" he asked, quickly taking the high
+hand; but Lady George was his match there.
+
+"Everything, unless you have fallen in love with her."
+
+Home thrusts of this sort are, however, unwise, since they rouse the
+meanest antagonist to resistance.
+
+"Have it so if you will. I am quite ready to admit that love has
+nothing to do with business. Honour has. I am engaged to Miss
+Woodward, and that is enough for me."
+
+Lady George shrugged her shoulders. There was a manly dogmatism about
+his manner which was simply unbearable.
+
+"My dear boy," she said, "if a man begins to talk about honour it is
+time for a woman to beat a retreat. Since you have such strict notions
+on the subject, I presume you have explained to Mr. Woodward the exact
+state of affairs at Gleneira? The estate overburdened, and not a penny
+of ready money to be had except by sale."
+
+"I really can't discuss the subject with you, Blanche. Women never
+understand a man's code of honour on these points; and they never
+understand business."
+
+She crushed down an obvious retort in favour of peace, for she was
+genuinely alarmed. So much so, that the moment she returned to town
+she went to see Mrs. Vane, thinking it more than likely that Paul
+might have confided something to her. She was just the sort of little
+woman in whom men did confide, and Paul was perfectly silly about her,
+though, of course, she was a very charming little woman.
+
+Now, Mrs. Vane had heard the rumours of Mr. Woodward's losses before,
+and heard them with a glad heart, since the possibility of having to
+use those letters which were locked up in her dressing-case weighed
+upon her. But she had not heard them from Paul; had not seen him, in
+fact, as she had only returned from the country two days before, and
+had since been ill with fever.
+
+Nevertheless, the very next afternoon, in obedience to a little note
+left at his club, Paul walked into her flower-decked drawing-room and
+gave an exclamation of surprise and concern at the white face and
+figure on the sofa.
+
+"You have been ill," he said quickly; "why didn't you let me know
+before?"
+
+"Only a go of fever; and I've danced all night long--some of the
+dances with you, Paul--when I had a worse bout, and no one found me
+out. Let me make you a cup of tea."
+
+"Please not. I'll take one. Yes! I remember; that was our regimental
+ball, and there were so few ladies; you never spared yourself, Violet,
+never knew how to take care of yourself."
+
+"Perhaps not. I must pay someone to do it, I suppose, like other old
+women; for all my friends are deserting me. Two married last month,
+and I hear from Mrs. Woodward that your wedding-day is fixed."
+
+"I was not aware of it," he replied, with a frown; "but if it were, I
+fail to see why I should desert--my friends."
+
+Mrs. Vane laughed. "My dear Paul! you are something of a man of the
+world; did you ever know of anyone like you keeping up a friendship
+with anybody like me after his marriage? I mean out of the pages of a
+French novel. Certainly not; and I am quite resigned to the prospect.
+I suffered the blow in a minor degree when you left India. Besides, I
+should not anyhow see much of you if you lived at Gleneira; and you
+will have to do so, won't you, till Mr. Woodward recovers himself?"
+
+Paul stirred his tea moodily. "So you have heard, too," he said
+distastefully.
+
+"Everybody has heard, of course. Such things are a godsend at this
+time of the year. Lady Dorset was quite pathetic over your bad luck
+yesterday, but I told her no one would think the _worse_ of you or
+Miss Woodward if you were to think _better_ of it, since poverty--even
+comparative poverty--would suit neither of you."
+
+The spirited pose of her head, as she spoke, the bold challenge of her
+tone, were admirable.
+
+"You said that! Would you have me break my word because my promised
+wife had a few pounds less than I expected?"
+
+She laughed again. "How lofty you are, Paul! You caught that trick
+from Marjory Carmichael. By the way, I heard from her to-day--she
+comes up to town soon."
+
+"So I believe." His heart gave a throb at the sound of her name, but
+he would not confess it, even to himself. "Excuse me if I hark back to
+the other subject. I should like to hear what you have to say on it.
+Women have such curious notions of honour, at least, Blanche----"
+
+"So Lady George has been taking you to task, has she? That was very
+unwise of her. For my part I have no opinion. I never liked the
+engagement, as you know; I like it still less now, when, if tales be
+true, Mr. Woodward will not be able to make his daughter so handsome
+an allowance as--as you expected. But they may not be true."
+
+"There is no reason why I should not tell you that they are true. The
+allowance will be about a quarter of what was intended. Mr. Woodward
+spoke to me to-day about it, hinting that it might make a difference;
+but, of course, I cut him short."
+
+"Of course." There was a fine smile for an instant on her face ere she
+went on. "Still, he was right, it does make a difference."
+
+"Undoubtedly it makes a difference," echoed Paul, testily. "No one
+knows that better than I do. But that is no reason why I should back
+out of my word. We shall have to vegetate at Gleneira, I suppose, or
+live in a villa somewhere----"
+
+"My poor Paul, how funny you are!" she interrupted, taking up a letter
+which had been lying beside her, and giving it a little flourish.
+"That is just what you could have done--with someone else! So you will
+do for a girl you do not love, what you would not do for one--but it
+is really too funny! One half of you being unable to exist without
+love, the other without money, you cut the Gordian knot by
+experimenting on life without either! Now, I should have tried to
+secure both--you might have managed that, I think." She paused a
+moment, and then went on. "As it is, my friend is not unwilling to
+play the hero, to a limited extent, because it soothes him and makes
+him feel less mercenary. Ah! my dear Paul, I understand. Only, might
+it not be more heroic and less mercenary to give Miss Woodward a
+chance of something more to her taste than a villa somewhere?--plus,
+of course, the heroic husband! She may not like heroics; some of us
+don't. You must be prepared for that."
+
+The gentle raillery of her tone had a touch of seriousness in it which
+seemed to throw a new light on his view of the subject.
+
+"You mean that it is likely----"
+
+"Yes. I think it extremely likely that the Woodwards would rather
+break it off."
+
+"But why?" he asked, angrily rising to pace the room; "my prospects
+have not changed."
+
+"'They twain shall be one flesh,'" quoted Mrs. Vane, lightly. "And do
+you really think so much of your heroism, that--unaided by love,
+remember--you will fancy it will compensate Alice Woodward, who
+loves the pavement, for the damp and dulness of Gleneira? I remember,
+Paul"--her voice grew a trifle unsteady--"having to decide a similar
+question, once. To decide whether I could compensate the man I loved
+for something--well, for something which was not more dear to him than
+civilisation is to this young lady, and, though I loved him, I knew I
+could not."
+
+"And--and were you right?" he asked with a sudden interest.
+
+"Of course I was right. He recovered the loss of me rapidly, and yet I
+am not unattractive--what is more, I am generally considered good
+company, which I defy anyone to be if he careers up and down the room
+like a Polar bear. Please sit down and let me make you a nice cup of
+tea. The last, I am sure, must have been horrid. You don't know how to
+take care of yourself a bit, Paul, but _you_ are lucky. _You_ will get
+plenty of people to pay for the privilege of doing so."
+
+He told himself that she talked a great deal of nonsense at times, but
+that she did it, as she did everything else, with infinite verve and
+grace. Blanche, who had not said half as much, had made him angry; and
+here he was seated beside Violet's sofa, enjoying his tea, and feeling
+that sense of _bien être_ which he always felt in her company.
+
+Yet even she might have failed in producing this for once, if he could
+have overheard a conversation which was going on over another cup of
+tea in Queen's Gardens, where Mrs. Woodward, with a real frown on her
+usually placid face, was listening to her husband's account of his
+interview with Paul that morning.
+
+"Very honourable, no doubt, but exceedingly unsatisfactory," she
+remarked, with asperity. "I must say that I think you failed."
+
+"Did you wish me to give the man his _congé_, my dear?" interrupted
+her spouse, irritably. "If so, you should have told me so distinctly,
+but if it comes to that I can write and dismiss him."
+
+"You have such a crude way of putting things, James, and though I
+don't presume to understand business affairs I must own it seems
+inexplicable how these difficulties have come about. And Alice is so
+accustomed to civilisation, and Jack is coming back from Riga next
+week, so it does seem to me a flying in the face of Providence."
+
+Mr. Woodward looked at her in impatient amaze. "Good heavens! Maria,
+what do you mean? Who or what is flying in the face of Providence?"
+
+"Everyone! Everything! It seems as if he had been away on purpose, so
+that there should be no fuss. And they have always been so fond of
+each other. Alice would be miserable if she had to think about money;
+so why should she be sacrificed to Captain Macleod's notions of
+honour----"
+
+"My dear!----"
+
+"Yes, James! Sacrificed! You say you told him plainly the state of the
+case, and he----"
+
+"Behaved as a gentleman would. Expressed sorrow at my losses, but gave
+me to understand that it would make no difference to him."
+
+"And to Alice? He never gave a thought to her, I suppose; but you men
+are all alike--selfish to the core."
+
+"Really, my dear," protested Mr. Woodward, roused by this general
+attack.
+
+"Well, _you_ are selfish. Are you not sitting there calmly proposing
+to sacrifice Alice to an adventurer--a principled adventurer if you
+like, though that is a miserable attempt to--what was it you used to
+call guaranteed stock?"
+
+"A disastrous attempt to combine safety and speculation," suggested
+her husband, meekly.
+
+"Just so! and this is a disastrous attempt to combine common sense and
+romance. But I will not have Alice sacrificed. I will speak to the man
+myself."
+
+"You shall do nothing of the sort, my dear. If necessary, I can do it;
+but there is no hurry."
+
+"It must be settled before next week, unless you want a fuss; I tell
+you that."
+
+"It shall be settled; but I must talk to Alice first. It is surely
+possible she may be in love with the man?"
+
+Mrs. Woodward shook her head wisely.
+
+"But why, in heaven's name, Maria? He is handsome--gentlemanly--well
+born. Why should she not love him?"
+
+"Because she is in love with Jack."
+
+"God bless my soul!"
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+
+When Paul Macleod left Mrs. Vane's drawing-room that afternoon she
+told herself that she could, for once, afford to sit with folded hands
+and let the world go its own way for a time. Everything seemed working
+for her, so there was no need for her to work for herself. The
+question of those letters could very well wait for a time. For all she
+knew to the contrary, the lawyers might have similar proof of little
+Paul's legitimacy; if they had not, why they ought to have. Unless,
+indeed, that marriage certificate had nothing to do with the boy at
+all. That in itself was conceivable with such a woman as Jeanie Duncan
+must have been. Anyhow, for the present, the child was in comfortable
+circumstances, since Dr. Kennedy had taken him in charge, and, as
+Marjory mentioned in her letter, he was to come to London and become a
+scholar at her school. The first thing was to see this foolish,
+ridiculous engagement broken off, and then if the big Paul were wise,
+and realised that both love and money were at his command, it might be
+possible to tell him the truth. But under no other circumstances,
+since none could console him as she could for the loss of Gleneira.
+Therefore, for the sake of everybody concerned, the best thing that
+could happen was that she should be Paul's wife. A great tenderness
+showed in her face at the very thought. "Poor Paul," she said half
+aloud; "he would be quite happy with me, quite content, and I, oh!
+surely I deserve something after all these years? I am getting tired
+of doing everything for people I do not care about, as I have done all
+my life long."
+
+And it was true. In all the trivial details of life she was as
+thoroughly unselfish a woman as ever stepped, ready at a moment's
+notice to weary herself out for the sake of making the world more
+pleasant to others.
+
+So those letters should remain locked up, perhaps for ever. In sober
+truth she could scarcely imagine herself using them. Their
+melodramatic force was so unlike the gentle spiriting by which she
+usually effected her object; and though she could never recall the
+night of poor old Peggy's death without a shudder, her sound common
+sense told her that after all in advising the old woman not to open
+the lawyer's letter, she had done so in ignorance. She had acted, as
+she thought, for the best, and everybody was liable to make mistakes.
+
+So much for the one party to the interview; the other, once the spell
+of Mrs. Vane's personality was removed, felt vaguely that matters were
+becoming uncomfortable. It had never occurred to him before that _he_
+ran the chance of being jilted, and the bare idea filled him with
+indignation; and yet he saw the justice of Mrs. Vane's remarks. He was
+not a good match for a girl who wished for nothing better than to
+remain in that state of social comfort to which it had pleased
+Providence to call her. But, if this were so, it would be better to
+save his dignity by broaching the possibility himself. Anything was
+better than being dismissed like a footman. He was never long in
+deciding a question of this sort, yet, quick as he was, he found
+himself not a moment too soon, for when he walked round to see Mr.
+Woodward next morning, before that gentleman went down to office, he
+found him in the act of writing a note asking him to call.
+
+"The fact is, Macleod," said the elder man, a little nervously, "I
+wanted to continue our talk about your engagement to my daughter."
+
+Paul flushed up, but took the bull by the horns without a moment's
+hesitation.
+
+"I came for that purpose, sir. It has occurred to me that I have
+somewhat overlooked Miss Woodward's side of the question, and I shall
+be infinitely obliged if you would treat me with perfect frankness in
+regard to what you, no doubt, know better than I."
+
+The dignity of this speech soothed him, and he awaited the reply with
+tolerable equanimity.
+
+"Very straightforward--very straightforward on your part, Macleod,"
+said the man of business, approvingly. "One can scarcely be too
+careful in regard--er--in regard to such contracts; and your remark
+makes me regret more than ever--my--my duty. For you really have been
+all that is--all our fancy painted you, I may say. But that does not
+alter the fact that I am now a comparatively poor man. Of course, I
+may, I very probably shall, recoup. At the same time it is not the
+sort of security for--for--marriage settlements and trustees; you
+understand me, of course. Now, what we have to face is this: Do you
+think my daughter is suited to be the wife of a poor man--even a
+possibly poor man? I don't. And, then, would she be content if she had
+to live most of the year at Gleneira, away from society and--and
+telegraph posts--I mean posts and telegraphs? It's a pretty
+place, Macleod, and an interesting place--with--with a sort
+of--er--_respectability_ about it, but it is a devilish bit out of the
+way."
+
+"Perhaps; but I would do my best to make your daughter forget that,"
+said Paul, gloomily; the sense of being weighed in the balance and
+found wanting--he, Paul Macleod, whom so many women had fancied--was
+exquisitely painful.
+
+Mr. Woodward blew his nose elaborately. "Just so; of course, of
+course! Very right and proper; very much so, indeed; only, my dear
+Macleod, marriage, after all, is a speculation, and I don't like to
+see my girl putting her capital into a concern which hasn't even a
+good prospectus. How many shareholders would even my name produce, if
+all we could say of a new railway was that, though the chances
+were dead against traffic, we would do our best to ensure it? Of
+course--er--if you were violently attached to each other one might
+allow something for the--er--the good-will of the business. Under
+those circumstances, I am led to believe--though I know nothing about
+it myself--that young people are content to live--er--on a
+ridiculously small income. My own impression is, however, that Alice
+is not that sort of girl; but, of course, I may be mistaken."
+
+"In that case," put in Paul, loftily, "it would be best to refer to
+Alice herself."
+
+"Exactly what we--I mean--er--decidedly. You two can settle it for
+yourselves. Her mother and I have no wish to interfere unnecessarily.
+That, I think you will own, is fair dealing, though, of course, as a
+business man I have felt it my duty to warn her against risking what
+is virtually her all in a concern which, to put it briefly, has an
+unpromising prospectus. And, if you will allow me, I will give you the
+same advice."
+
+There was a pompous warmth in his shake of the hand, but as he
+accompanied his visitor to the door his tone changed to a confidential
+whisper:
+
+"You see it isn't as if it were a limited liability, but the Lord only
+knows how many children you might have."
+
+Paul, as he made his way to the little boudoir where Alice frittered
+away so much of her time over _chiffons_ and picture papers, felt that
+he was being pursued by a Nemesis of his own creating. He had entered
+into this engagement by the light of reason, in obedience to the
+dictates of sound common sense, and it seemed likely that he would be
+driven from it by the same means. He found her, for a wonder, busy
+with needle and thread, and though the subject of it was only the
+stitching of tinsel round some remarkably large velvet leaves pasted
+on satin, it gave her a more solid air than she usually had. That, and
+a brighter flush upon her cheek, told him that he was expected, and
+forewarned him of her decision. Indeed, he felt that words were really
+unnecessary, and that he might just as well have turned round and gone
+downstairs again, leaving her white fingers busy with the gold thread.
+But there was a certain strain of savagery in Paul Macleod, as there
+is in most men when their dignity is touched, and he resolved to go
+through with it.
+
+"I have just seen your father," he began, "and now I have come to
+you."
+
+She might have been excused for turning a little pale and letting her
+work drop, for his tone was not reassuring. He saw her dread of a
+scene, and gave a faint laugh.
+
+"There is no need to be afraid, Alice. I have never made myself
+disagreeable to you yet, and I am not likely to begin now, when I have
+come to ask you plainly whether you could be happy with me? Could
+you?"
+
+She clasped and unclasped her hands quite nervously. "I am ready to
+try--if you like--if you think I ought to."
+
+"That has nothing to do with it. Put me out of the question, please.
+Of course, it is always painful for a man to know that a woman does
+not care for him sufficiently----"
+
+"It is not that," she broke in hurriedly. "I would not have promised
+if I had not liked you--it is the dulness, and the poverty. I have
+never been accustomed to it, and I might not be contented, and then
+how could I be a good wife if I were not happy? It is not as if there
+would be distractions, but there would be none, and I don't like the
+country as some girls do--Marjory Carmichael, for instance."
+
+He looked at her sharply, but her eyes met his without any hidden
+meaning in them.
+
+"She would not be dull, but I should, and then how could I cheer you
+up? For you need cheering at Gleneira--you know you do."
+
+The truth irritated him. "From which I infer that you would rather be
+free. Well! you have only to take me or leave me," he said curtly.
+
+She caught in her breath, and, as usual, the display of temper made
+her piteous. "Don't be angry, Paul! There is nothing to be angry
+about. If you wish it, I will try; but we can always be friends, and
+if it is wiser to part, then it is wiser."
+
+"That is for you to decide. I am at your orders." He stood there
+looking very handsome, and she gave a sigh of indecision, though a
+certain resentment at being, as it were, thrust into the breach, came
+to her aid.
+
+"Do you think it wiser?" he repeated.
+
+"How can I tell? All I want to do is my duty, and I am afraid----"
+
+"If you are afraid, that is enough," he said, losing patience.
+"Good-bye, Alice; if you had decided otherwise I would have tried to
+be a good husband to you."
+
+A faint flush came to her cheek. "And I would have tried to be a good
+wife; but----"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Don't you think that with you trying to be a good husband
+and I trying to be a good wife, life would have been a little
+dreary--sometimes?"
+
+The curse of home truths seemed in the air, and Paul felt he had no
+answer ready, and yet he liked her the better for the first touch of
+sarcasm he had ever heard from her lips. It reminded him of Mrs. Vane.
+
+As he shook hands with her, the servant entering announced Mr. John
+Woodward, and Paul, going downstairs, met a big, florid young man
+coming up with a gardenia in his buttonhole, and a parcel tied with
+gold thread in his hands. It was a box of Paris chocolates which Jack
+had purchased on his way from Riga. The two scowled at each other as
+they passed, after the manner of Englishmen who have never been
+introduced, and Paul, as he put on his hat, felt a sudden insane
+desire to go up again, and tell Alice that he had changed his mind.
+And yet, as he walked aimlessly through the Park, and so northward
+into the streets beyond, the certainty that life had been changed in
+the twinkling of an eye came slowly to him, and as it did he scarcely
+knew whither to turn for a little solid self-esteem. Of late he had
+been nurturing his own magnanimity, and, as Mrs. Vane had told him to
+his face, the fact that Alice Woodward's fortune was for the time
+diminished, and in the future uncertain, had not been without its
+consolation. It prevented him from feeling that people knew, to a
+fraction, what price he had put upon himself. And now, though he was,
+as it were, a "genuine reduction," he had been rejected! Rejected! the
+thought was intolerable. Even the memory of Marjory, and the look in
+her eyes which he had seen that last night, brought him cold comfort,
+for he told himself that, even if he had wished to do so, he could
+never go to her and say he had been jilted; yet he would not tell her
+a lie.
+
+But he did not want to seek consolation from Marjory; after all, it
+had only been the old story of a passing fancy fostered by romantic
+surroundings. Since he had left Gleneira he had scarcely thought of
+her, and for himself would have been quite content to fulfil his
+engagement. Therein, to tell truth, lay the whole sting of the
+position.
+
+So he wandered on until he found himself in Regent's Park, and then,
+with that idle distaste to some decisive action which a return
+clubwards would necessitate, in the Zoölogical Gardens. It was years
+since he had been there of a morning without a band and a crowd. Years
+since he had brought papers of nuts and biscuits, and given them to
+the bears. But now he was free--yes! that was one comfort! he was free
+to do as he liked, so he watched the Polar bear--which made him smile
+at the recollection of Mrs. Vane's sally--and found a certain dreamy
+pleasure in strolling round by the antelopes and recognising beasts
+the like of which he had shot in strange climes. There is always some
+satisfaction to be got from bygone prowess in sport, and, as he
+finally found himself leaning over the railings of a tank where a pair
+of dippers were bobbing about, he had in a measure forgotten the
+present in the past.
+
+So, as he watched the birds indifferently, a sleek round head slid
+suddenly, oilily from the water, and a pair of wistful brown eyes
+looked into his.
+
+The card affixed to the railings only bore the legend:
+
+
+                          "_Phoca vitulina_;
+                          or, Common Seal."
+
+
+Yet no magician's wand could have been more powerful in
+transformation--say, rather translation--than the sight of the
+creature so designated was to Paul Macleod. In the twinkling of an eye
+the London haze--that condensed essence of millions of men, women, and
+children, struggling confusedly for breath--had passed from him, and
+he was in a new heaven and a new earth. A boat was rocking idly on the
+summer sea, the blue clouds were sailing overhead, the world, its ways
+and works, were beyond the rampart of encircling hills, while a girl,
+with clear bright eyes, leant against the rudder.
+
+"Why didn't you shoot, Captain Macleod?" He could hear the odd little
+tremor in her voice, as she gave the challenge, and feel the dim
+surprise of his own answer: "I never thought of it!"
+
+Then, with a rush, the one side of his nature challenged the other.
+Why--why had he done these things? Why had he given up paradise? Had
+he not been happy? In very truth, had he even thought of the world and
+its ways, of himself and his instincts, when he was beside her? Yet,
+what a return had he not made to this girl who had taught him to
+forget these things. Had he not in a way taught her to know them? Had
+he not roused in her something, blameless enough, God knows! in its
+way, beautiful enough, though of the earth earthy, compared to that
+other strange comradeship, in which there seemed no possibility of
+passion, no sense of sex. In truth, he had taught her to love him as
+women and men will love to the end of all things. Taught her, and left
+her to face it alone--as he had left Jeanie Duncan long years ago.
+
+The unbidden remembrance brought a new shame with it for that old
+offence, even while it intensified the sudden remorse he felt for the
+present one; since Jeanie, in all her sweet maidenhood, had never
+seemed so hedged about from evil as this Brynhild, whose very
+womanhood had been hidden beneath her glittering armour of mail. That
+he should have thought these things showed the strain of romance, the
+touch of mysticism, which was in him by right of his race, and though,
+as ever, he chafed against these things, he could not escape from
+them, or from the self-contempt which took possession of him. Ever
+since the night when he had said good-bye, as he had boasted, to the
+best part of him, there had been something to prevent his realising
+the extent of his degradation. First, the relief of certainty,
+bringing with it a very real content; then, the anxiety for the child,
+bringing out all the kindliness of his nature--finally, the knowledge
+that he was not, after all, so mercenary. But now he was defenceless
+against his own worldliness, against the memory of his wanton insult
+to Marjory--for it was an insult, nothing less.
+
+As he wandered moodily back into the town, back to face his world and
+its comments, it seemed to him as if there were not a rag anywhere
+wherewith to cover his wounded self-esteem. One thing he could do: he
+could go down and ask Marjory to marry him. He owed her so much. She
+would refuse him, of course, since she was not the sort to care for
+other folks' rejections; and he knew, by long experience, how keenly
+such love as he had seen in her eyes resented neglect, how quick it
+was in changing to repulsion if the pride were outraged.
+
+Yes! he would go down to Gleneira and regain some of his belief in
+himself by giving Marjory her revenge. Then he would go abroad and
+shoot lions, or do something of that sort. Everyone would know he had
+been jilted, so he might as well play the part to the bitter end, and
+behave as a man ought to behave who has had a disappointment.
+
+Meanwhile he might as well go and see Violet, and congratulate her on
+her acumen. He might even go so far as to tell her that, taking her
+words to heart, he was about to propose poverty to the girl he loved,
+as he had proposed it to the girl he had not loved. She, of course,
+not knowing of that wanton insult, would not understand how idle a
+proposition it would be; but she liked to be thought clever--liked to
+be at the bottom of everything.
+
+So he was not exactly in an amiable or easily managed mood as he
+followed the servant upstairs at Mrs. Vane's house. And, as luck would
+have it, he came at a time when she herself was too disturbed to have
+the cool head and steady nerve necessary to steer him into the haven
+where she would have him. Yet it was a trifling thing which had upset
+her: merely the certainty that little Paul Duncan would not get a
+penny of his grandmother's money. There it was in black and white, set
+down in the wills and bequests column of the _Illustrated London
+News_. Now, the difference between keeping a boy with a hundred
+thousand pounds from possibly inheriting some acres of heavily
+mortgaged bog and heather, and keeping a nameless, penniless waif from
+a name and some hundreds a year was palpable. She was no hardened
+criminal, and for the first time she found herself really facing the
+question: "Am I to do this thing, or am I not to do it?"
+
+Should she put those letters in the fire and say no more about them,
+or should she tell the truth?
+
+Though she knew its contents almost by heart, she took the slender
+packet out once more and looked doubtfully at the marriage
+certificate.
+
+"Captain Macleod," said the servant at the door, for Paul was a
+privileged visitor, with the _entrée_ at all times to Mrs. Vane's
+little sitting-room. She had barely time to thrust the paper under a
+book ere he was beside her.
+
+"How you startled me!" she said, with a nervous laugh, as she took his
+hand. "I did not expect you to-day; you were here yesterday."
+
+"I came to inquire for your fever," he replied a trifle coldly. "You
+have it again, I see--and feel. You should be in bed as it is."
+
+He wheeled the armchair to the fire, brought a cushion from the sofa,
+and waited, holding it in his hand to settle it comfortably for her as
+she sate down.
+
+She gave an odd little sort of choke.
+
+"What a coddle you are, Paul! There is nothing really the matter with
+me. I grow old, that is all; I grow old." It was not a good beginning
+for an interview in which she would need all her self-control, all her
+common sense; and had the letter been within reach at that moment it
+would have received scant justice at her hands, for nothing in the
+wide world seemed worth consideration save this man with his kind ways
+and soft voice. He, at any rate, must not suffer.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXV.
+
+
+The room was growing dusk. That pleasant duskiness which obliterates
+corners and seems to concentrate comfort on the flame-lit circle by
+the fire.
+
+"What a good nurse you are, Paul," she said, with an effort after her
+usual airiness. "The woman you marry will be lucky."
+
+"I'm glad someone thinks so," he remarked briefly, "for there does not
+seem to be much competition----"
+
+"Paul!" she interrupted, with a sudden flutter at her heart. "Do you
+mean----"
+
+"Yes! you were right, as usual, if that is any comfort to you. I have
+got my dismissal. Does that satisfy you?"
+
+She looked at him frankly. "It does. You do not like it, of course,
+but I cannot be sorry. She was never good enough for you, even when
+she was rich, and when she was poor----"
+
+"Don't let us discuss it, please. The thing is over; and what with
+those who are too good and those who are not good enough I seem to
+have made a muddle of it. By the way, I suppose Miss Carmichael is
+still at Gleneira?"
+
+"Certainly--but--but why? I fail to see the connection." It was not
+true; she saw it clearly enough, and her voice showed it.
+
+"Only because I am going down there to-morrow."
+
+"To burn your wings again?--that is foolish!"
+
+"I have no wings to burn; but I am going to ask her to marry me--to
+face the villa with me, as you put it."
+
+Mrs. Vane started from her pillow with fear, surprise, dislike in
+every feature.
+
+"Are you mad, Paul? The girl does not care for you; I'm certain of
+that. Then she is half engaged, I believe, to Alphonse--Dr. Kennedy, I
+mean. Her letter is full of him; you can see it if you like."
+
+"I have no doubt of it; he is a far more admirable person than I am. I
+fully expect she will refuse me, but I mean to ask her all the same."
+
+"But why? Since you have told me so much you may as well tell me all.
+Why?"
+
+"Because I choose, and because I like following your good advice."
+
+"My advice?" she echoed; "my advice? That is too much." Then
+recognising the fact that no good would follow on direct opposition,
+she tacked skilfully. "If you choose, I suppose you will do it, though
+I cannot for the life of me see why you should put yourself to
+needless pain, for it must be pain, since you were certainly in love
+with her at Gleneira----"
+
+"I believe I was," he interrupted, "but I'll risk the pain."
+
+"No doubt," she answered bitterly; "self-inflicted pain is always
+bearable. But for the girl--why not consider her comfort? It is always
+a disagreeable thing to refuse, and a man who forces a girl into that
+position without due cause is----"
+
+"Is what?"
+
+"A presumptuous cad, my dear Paul."
+
+"Thank you! You are clever, Violet, and your conclusions are generally
+right; but in this case you argue without knowledge of the premises."
+
+"I know that Paul Macleod never did and never will come under that
+category," she replied readily, "and that is enough for me."
+
+"If it were true, but it is not." He had not meant to tell her the
+truth, but a certain contrariety led him on. "I used not to be one,
+perhaps; but I was one to her. That last night, after I was engaged to
+Alice, I told her that I loved her."
+
+A little fine smile showed on Mrs. Vane's face. "Well, it was not fair
+on Alice, but it was very like Paul. Only why repeat the mistake?"
+
+"You do not understand. I was half mad, I think, at leaving her--and
+at her unconsciousness. And then--and then, I kissed her."
+
+"Really? That was very naughty, of course; but still more like Paul."
+
+He winced, as if she had struck him. "Don't laugh, Violet, as if it
+were the old story; it isn't."
+
+His tone struck a chill of fear to her heart, yet she still kept up
+her amused serenity. "Is it not? Yet she is surely not the first girl
+you have kissed without a 'by your leave.'"
+
+He was silent, and then to her infinite surprise, as he sate leaning
+forward looking into the fire, covered his face with his hands as if
+to shut out an unwelcome sight.
+
+"You don't understand," he said, in a low voice. "She hadn't a
+reproach--she--I can see the look in her eyes still."
+
+There was another silence, and then Mrs. Vane's voice came with an
+indescribable chill in it:
+
+"You mean that she loved you, or you think she did."
+
+"I am sure of it. She did not deny it. Violet! she is the first woman,
+I verily believe, who has loved me truly, and I repaid her by insult."
+
+A dangerous rush of sheer anger came to send tact and prudence to the
+wind for the time. "You say that! The only woman! Then I say, Paul,
+that you insult others by your doubts--others who have loved you
+longer. Paul!" She was very close upon the verge, when she pulled
+herself up short, and gave a little laugh. "You cannot think her love
+very deep if you say she will refuse you. But what reason have you to
+think she will? Because you kissed her? That is absurd, and you know
+it. I believe you wish her to accept you."
+
+"Do I?" he asked wearily; "for the life of me I scarcely know; but I
+mean to ask her. I must. Surely you can see that; you generally
+understand me."
+
+"I do understand you, Paul; better perhaps than you understand
+yourself. That is why I tell you not to go down to Gleneira. You are
+_tête montée_ now. You are not yourself. Look the matter in the face!
+Supposing she were to accept you; what then?"
+
+He paused a moment. "I should marry her, I suppose--but she won't. I
+am not the sort of fellow she could marry." His voice had the
+tenderest ring in it, but his head was turned away. To see it she
+leant forward closer to him, almost on her knees, and the firelight
+lit up her eager, appealing face.
+
+"Paul, don't deceive yourself with doubts. You love her more than
+ever, and if, as you say, she loves you, the result is a foregone
+conclusion, if you meet. It is a future of poverty, and, oh, how you
+will regret it! Don't go, Paul, I beg of you; I beseech you--I am an
+old friend, my dear."
+
+As she laid her flashing jewelled hands on his shoulder, his went up
+mechanically and drew them down. So holding them in his, he looked
+into her face kindly. "You are, indeed--but I must go--I have no
+choice."
+
+His soft, caressing touch made her risk all, and her breath came fast
+in swift denial. "No choice! That is not true! You said but now, no
+one had loved you truly but this girl. Think, Paul, did not I? You
+know I did. Was it for my own sake that I gave you up--that I sent you
+away? You know it was not. I am not of the sort on whom the world
+turns its back. I would have faced it gladly. It was for you. Because
+you loved your profession--because--but you know it all! Even when I
+was free, but poor, I would not claim you. Will Marjory do as much for
+you? Will she say, 'I love you, but I will not injure you by marrying
+you'? I think not. But I should not injure you now--I am rich, I am
+rich, and I love you."
+
+Once before she had told him so plainly, but it had then been with an
+easy self-control, suggesting the idea but withholding its inception.
+Now she was pleading as if for life.
+
+"You are very good," he muttered, feeling the truth of what she said.
+
+"Yes!" she echoed, with a tinge of bitterness at her lack of power to
+move him more. "How good you will never know. I have stood between you
+and more evil than you dream of; and now I ask you to stay with me,
+Paul, not because I love you, but because you are always happy with
+me, because you will be safe with me--with me--only with me."
+
+That was true also; he was always happy with her. But safe?
+
+"I do not understand," he said. "Why should I be safer with you? I
+know of no danger." Then he clasped her hands tighter, looking into
+her face curiously. "What is it, Violet? Is there danger? You
+speak---- By Heaven! there is something, Violet! What is it?"
+
+She drew from him quickly, realising her own imprudence, for she was
+not prepared for any decisive step. "Nothing, Paul--nothing to speak
+of," she said, rising to her feet with a hasty laugh, but her voice
+shook, her hands were trembling. "Since you will not listen, go to
+Marjory; she can protect you as well as I can."
+
+"I don't care to hide behind any woman," he said sternly. "Not even
+behind you. What is it? You are not the kind of woman to say that sort
+of thing unless you meant it. What danger do you know that I do not?"
+
+Even to hear his questioning roused her to a sense of what the
+knowledge would mean to him, and the instinct of defence overcame even
+her pride. "Am I not the sort of woman? All women are alike when they
+are jealous. Can't you see it, Paul--can't you understand? or will you
+force me to say it all over again? I know nothing, positively nothing,
+to prevent your marrying Marjory. Go down to Gleneira if you will."
+
+He shook his head. "Don't prevaricate, Violet. I had rather you lied
+to me, but for pity's sake do neither. Be my friend and tell me the
+truth."
+
+For an instant his gentleness overcame her fence. "I cannot, Paul--I
+cannot," she almost wailed; then remembering herself, she went on,
+"How can I, when there is nothing to tell?"
+
+"I will not leave the room till I know," was his reply. "There _is_
+something, and you shall tell me. You will not; then I must find out
+for myself--there was a letter in your hand. Let me go, Violet! I
+don't want to hurt you, but I must and will have that letter,
+unless---- No! I cannot trust you for the truth. I must see that
+letter for myself."
+
+She knew enough of him to recognise that now his imperious temper was
+roused, her only chance lay in an appeal to his affection.
+
+"Listen, Paul! I have done so much for you. Pay me back now--only this
+little thing. I don't want you to see that letter--you have no right
+to see it."
+
+He shook his head, and she flung the hands she had been detaining from
+her with a cry.
+
+"You do not trust me! You do not trust me! That is hard after all
+these years."
+
+"No! I cannot trust you, dear; you are too good to me," he said
+gently, as he walked over to the table.
+
+The dusk had grown into dark, and he passed on to the window, in hopes
+of sufficient light to decipher the letter he held; failing that he
+came back to the fire.
+
+"Don't strain your eyes over it," she said bitterly, as she leant--as
+if tired out--against the mantelpiece, watching him sombrely. "I
+strained mine over it once--needlessly. I will ring for lights, and
+you can surely wait for so much, now you have got your own way."
+
+So they waited in silence, standing side by side before the fire, till
+the servant had set the shaded lamp on the table, and drawn the window
+curtains carefully, methodically. Then he glanced at the
+superscription, and pointing to it, said, "Why did you read it?" for
+across the first blank page was scrawled legibly, "Not to be read by
+anyone till Paul Macleod of Gleneira is dead."
+
+"Because I chose--the reason why _you_ read it, I suppose."
+
+The old admiration for her spirit which, even now, did not hesitate to
+meet him boldly on his own ground, rose in him as, instinctively, he
+turned to the signature for some further light to guide him in reading
+the closely written sheets. Then his eye caught a name at the bottom
+of a page where the writing merged from ink to a faint pencil.
+
+"Jeanie Duncan!" he exclaimed, half aloud; "what can she have to do
+with me?" The instant after he turned to Mrs. Vane, as those who are
+puzzled turn to those who are better informed. "Janet Macleod! did she
+marry a Macleod after all?"
+
+"She married your brother Alick, and the boy is their son. Now you
+know the worst--and _I_ have told you it--_I_, who would not hurt you
+for the world."
+
+"She married---- Then little Paul?" He stood as if unable to grasp the
+meaning of his own words.
+
+"Sit down, dear, and read it, since you have chosen to read. There is
+no hurry. You know the worst," she said gently.
+
+So with a sort of dazed incredulity he read on in silence:
+
+
+"Paul Macleod! yes! Paul! you shall read this some day; some day soon.
+I am revenged. You were ashamed of me, and now I am the laird of
+Gleneira's wife. Yet I did not mean to be revenged till he came, like
+a fool, and put it into my head. I was getting tired of the life,
+too--of the hard, thankless life. It was by chance I fell in with him
+in Paris. I went there with someone and stayed on; so he could not
+guess that I was Jeanie Duncan, whom he had never seen. And I hated
+him because he was your brother; so he grew mad after me, and promised
+marriage. Then the thought came--I, whom the laird's Jock did not
+think good enough to love or marry, will take the laird himself, and
+flaunt it over them all. So we were married, and then, before I had
+time to settle anything, he died--died of drink, Paul!
+
+"Well! I hated him, so I did not care. I hated him for being so like
+you, and caring for me when you did not----
+
+"And now, if it is a boy, I will have my revenge--my just revenge--and
+turn you out of the old place. But I wait, because, if it is a girl,
+you will not care, and I will not have you jeer because my revenge has
+failed. I pray day and night that it may be a boy, and lest I should
+die, I write all about it, and put my marriage lines with the letter.
+Then my son can come, and turn you out. I did not seek revenge,
+remember. It came into my hand, and it is just. You know that it is
+just!
+
+                                  "Jeanie Duncan.
+
+"P.S.--Look in the photograph shops in Paris for 'La Belle Écossaise,'
+if you wish to know what I was like when _he_ married me."
+
+
+Paul, reading methodically, paused for a second, passed his hand
+across his forehead as if to clear his mind, and then went on to a
+fainter pencil scrawl:
+
+
+"Well! I have waited, Paul! It is a boy--so like you, Paul! I lie and
+think--for they say I am dying, and so it cannot hurt now--that he
+_is_ your son, and that we were married in the old days. But it is all
+a lie! He is _his_ son, and I will have my revenge! If only I could
+remember anything but the old days, Paul! Ah! surely when people love
+as we did---- No! I do not understand. Only, the boy is so like you. I
+lie and think, and I feel he must never turn you out. Never! never!
+Only, if you die, then the boy must have his rights, for he is your
+son.
+
+                                  "Janet Macleod.
+
+"P.S.--Mother will keep this; she has come to see me die, so it will
+be quite safe. She does not know I am married, and I have written
+outside that no one is to read it till you are dead. Ah, Paul! I wish
+you could have seen it. Forgive me, Paul--forgive me that he is not
+your son!"
+
+
+A greyness had come to the handsome face, and, as he folded up the
+letter methodically, his hands trembled.
+
+"How long?" he asked; and it seemed almost as if he could not finish
+the sentence.
+
+"Since the night of old Peggy's death. I suspected something, so I
+stole it."
+
+"You suspected!" he interrupted quickly. "What could you suspect?"
+Then he laughed bitterly. "I suppose you suspected I was the boy's
+father, and thought the knowledge would be useful. If I had been it
+would have been better." His hand holding the letter came down heavily
+on the mantelpiece as he rose in sudden passion. "My God! what a
+devilish revenge!"
+
+She gave a quick catch in her breath. She had been silent till now,
+but now it was time to begin--time to make him think.
+
+"You forget that she repented--that she gave up her revenge. That is
+why I said nothing, Paul. I am a woman, too, and I know how she
+repented. I did not dare to speak--to disobey her dying wish; who has
+a right to do that, Paul?--no one."
+
+"But the boy," he murmured, "the boy."
+
+"The boy will not suffer. If you die he will have his rights, as his
+mother wished. If he were really your son he would not have Gleneira
+till then, and you can look after him. It is not as if he were in
+want, dear."
+
+He sate listening, listening to that soft, persuasive voice, which had
+such a knack of following his every thought, and yet of leading them.
+
+"I had no right to steal the letters, of course," it went on a little
+louder, "but I am not sorry; for others might not have understood, and
+so the poor thing's repentance would have come to naught. Now, no one
+knows but you and I. You who loved her, I who pity her; because I love
+you, Paul, as she loved you."
+
+She came a step closer with wide-open, serious eyes, and touched him
+on the breast with her slender white hand. The faint perfume of
+jasmine which always lingered round her stole in on his senses
+familiarly, taking him back to many a past pleasure and kindness
+associated with it, and, half unconsciously, his empty hand clasped
+hers; and so they stood looking, not at each other, but into the fire.
+
+"So it is easy to fulfil her wish--her dying wish. You did her a
+wrong, Paul, in the old days, and you owe her reparation. She did not
+wish you to read the letter, remember; but that can be as if it had
+not been. Give it to me, dear! I would have burnt it before, as she
+would have wished it burnt, but I wanted you to know for certain what
+she had wished."
+
+Her small, white hand was on his, the paper rustled and seemed to slip
+from his hold while he stood, as if mesmerised, looking into the fire.
+It was all true--every word of it true.
+
+"Give it to me, Paul. You are thinking of the boy; but we could bring
+him up, you and I, if you would have it so. Paul! This is my reward at
+last! I can do this for you, now that I am rich."
+
+But still his fingers resisted faintly, and there was a pause, a long
+pause. Then the hand which lay in his seemed to slacken, to lie in his
+like a dead hand, and her voice came with a sob in its softness:
+
+"Paul! do this for me, and I will ask no more. Paul! let me save
+you--save you and Marjory!"
+
+It was her last plea. She had kept it back till now, hoping against
+hope, and, as she made it, she touched the highest point of
+self-forgetfulness it is possible for a woman to reach. But in
+touching it she struck a false note in the syren's song, and Paul
+Macleod's hand closed like a vice over his one tie to an honest
+life--the letter.
+
+The name had roused him. "Marjory!" he echoed absently. Then he turned
+and looked at his companion compassionately, yet decisively. "You mean
+to be kind, Violet, but you don't understand," he said quietly; then
+raised her little slack hand, stooped to kiss it, and left her so,
+standing by the fire alone. She had played for her love boldly,
+skilfully, and she had lost. She had tried to save Paul for his own
+sake, and she had failed. Yet even so, the innate courage of the woman
+faced the facts without a tear, without a complaint.
+
+"It is my own fault," she said, half aloud. "I ought to have burnt the
+letter long ago, but I was not meant for that sort of thing. My heart
+is too soft." Then she smiled a little bitterly. It was at the
+remembrance of Paul Macleod's assertion, "You do not understand!" If
+she did not understand him, who could?
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+
+Nearly a month had gone by since Marjory Carmichael had whispered to
+the darkness, "Come back to me, Paul, and we will forget our love."
+The sudden awakening to the realities, not only of life but of her own
+nature, caused by his reckless avowal of love, had passed, as all
+awakenings must, into calm acquiescence in the commonplace facts of
+consciousness. There was no denying of the truth possible to her clear
+sight, and as she sate on the last day of October, on the last day of
+holiday before she and little Paul set off together to make
+acquaintance with a new world, she laid down her pen in the middle of
+a sentence in the letter she was writing to Tom Kennedy, and looked
+out over the stormy whitecrested waves of the loch set in its rampart
+of grey, snow-powdered, mist-shrouded hills, and wondered how she
+could have been so blind for so long. Blind to half the great problems
+of life! And then, with a smile, infinitely sweeter than it used to be
+because infinitely stronger, she took up a letter which lay beside
+her, and leaning back in her chair began to read it over again, just
+as she had re-read a letter down by the river side three months
+before, on the day when her holiday began--on the day when she had
+first seen Paul Macleod.
+
+But it was a very different letter from the one Dr. Kennedy had sent
+her then; for all unconsciously the girl, in the first bewilderment of
+her awakening, had stretched out her hands to him, as it were, for
+help, and he had given her what he could, smiling a trifle bitterly as
+he wrote to think how little that was. "You ask me to tell you the
+truth," she read, "but how can I when I do not know it myself? If I
+had, the world might have been different--for us both. Only this
+seems clear, that friendship is a bigger thing than love, unless
+they both grow from the same root, and then--I fancy, Mademoiselle
+Grands-serieux, that the botanists ought to characterise the product
+as a sport! It is rare enough--God knows! I have sate for hours over
+the puzzle, trying to get at the bottom of myself, only to come back
+to the old paradox that Love is not worth calling Love unless it is
+something which is not Love. And that is no solution. Pure and simple,
+unveiled of mist and sentiment, it is all too easy of explanation. It
+is ever-present, and must be so--it seems--till the end of all things.
+Then there is--shall we call it the transcendental form conceivable
+only to those who recognise some innate, or almost innate, sense of
+order or beauty in mankind. That too, given this premise, is easy. I
+believe I understand it. I am sure you do. It is the hybrid of these
+two held up to our admiration, and believed in by the majority of
+cultivated people, which beats me altogether. Look round you, dear,
+and think for yourself. A man and a woman have mental sympathy with
+each other. What has that to do with marriage? A man and a woman are
+married. What has that to do with mental sympathy? The two things are
+not incompatibles. Heaven forbid! But have friendship and what the
+world calls love any real connection, and what part have they to play
+in marriage? That sounds like a conundrum, and perhaps it is as well,
+since we were getting too serious, and that is a fatal mistake when
+there is no answer to the riddle. But there is a sacrilegious little
+story, my dear, regarding the reasons for not enforcing celibacy on
+the clergy, which is not altogether irrelevant to our subject. Luther,
+I believe, is responsible for declaring that marriage is a
+'discipline' not to be surpassed in spiritual efficacy; a discipline
+before which hair shirts and flagellations are sensual indulgence.
+N.B.--Was Luther any relation of the Cornish man who said, 'Women was
+like pilchards; when 'ums bad 'ms bad, and when 'ms good they is but
+middlin'?' I beg your pardon, Mademoiselle G.S., but one must
+laugh--if one is not to cry. What if love were the mutual attraction
+of certain elements, which combined and neutralised in the children,
+would go to form a more useful compound of humanity? Would not this go
+further towards raising our instincts out of the mire than all the
+romance in the world? And then it would account, of course--since
+chemicals are apt to evolve heat in combining--for a good deal of
+friction in the married state, which in its turn must polish the
+sufferers! But as this theory canonises Mrs. Caudle, and makes
+wife-beating a virtue, perhaps we had better change the subject by
+saying, as we said at the beginning--friendship is a bigger thing than
+love, and so pass on to the lives we have to lead, love or no love."
+
+So with kindly thought, and a plentiful humour irradiating every page,
+he went on to tell her of his work, of stirring scenes in that
+hand-to-hand fight with Death, the great enemy of Love, in which he
+lived. A tender, charming letter, such as his were always. Letters
+which none know how to write save those who, despising the control of
+time and space, have learnt to lean over the edge of the world, and
+claim a part in some far-off life. Letters which, without one word of
+sentiment from beginning to end, leave both the writer's and reader's
+hearts full of a great kindliness and peace.
+
+They set Marjory a thinking, as they were meant to do, and the result
+was good, since her clear common sense never failed her. Yet side by
+side with that common sense existed a certain fanciful idealism, which
+took the place of the former in matters beyond the limits of plain
+reason. And this, as she read, made her pause to wonder if Tom could
+be right, and the calm content which came to her from him, so
+different from the unrest which the mere thought of Paul produced,
+meant that they were too nearly akin to need neutralisation. Then she
+laid down the letter and took up the pen again, striving unconsciously
+to imitate his playful touch.
+
+"No, Tom!" she wrote; "I am not growing morbid. I am not, as you call
+it, trying to measure my world with home-made imitations of the
+imperial quart; still, I do wish I knew what the cubit was! Then I
+would add it to my stature and rise superior--perhaps. If I had known
+what I know now when my holiday began would it have made any
+difference? If I had had a mother, if I had been brought up with other
+girls, should I have gone on as I did, using a wrong terminology? I
+will tell you something, Tom. What I thought was love in those old
+days is just what I feel for you, dear. Perhaps I might have thought
+so all my life if I had not met him. And now, if I meet him again,
+Tom, what will happen? I sit down before the proposition; but it is
+not to be solved like a problem in Euclid, because I have discovered
+that my heart and my brain are quite separate, and I used to think
+they were both a part of me. Don't tell me, please, that I am wrong.
+Perhaps I am physiologically. I know all about that horrid little
+V-shaped spot in the _medulla oblongata_, isn't it, where a pin-point
+will stop Tears and Laughter, Love and Friendship for ever. What then?
+Does it make it easier to understand why the heart beats, to know that
+we can stop its beating? I wish I knew! I wish I knew! I don't want it
+to beat, but it will. Oh! what a mercy it is that we two do not love
+each other!"
+
+She laid down the pen as a knock came to the door.
+
+"A strange shentlemen to see Miss Carmichael," said the new servant
+who had replaced the peccant Kirsty discovered--direful offence--in
+putting a dirty skimmer into the milk.
+
+Now, in the country a "strange gentleman" generally resolves itself
+into the piano-tuner, so Marjory bade him be shown up with a certain
+calm impatience at the necessity for explaining that his services
+would not be wanted; then, the thread of her thoughts broken rudely,
+she sate waiting, her eyes fixed absently on the words, "that we two
+do not love each other!"
+
+She looked up from them to see Paul Macleod standing at the door. He
+had come back to her!
+
+Five minutes before she had asked, almost passionately, of her friend
+what she would do in such case. Now there was but one answer.
+
+"Paul!" Her outstretched hand sought his, as he stood tall and
+straight trying to master his emotion, to preserve the calm to which
+he had schooled himself through the long journey which had ended
+here--here, where he might once have found rest; here, where all, save
+such self-respect as apology might leave him, was lost for ever.
+
+"Paul--Oh! how tired you look--how cold your hands are! Come,
+dear--come and warm yourself; you must be perished!"
+
+He did not speak, perhaps because the hoar frost of pride which had
+chilled his eyes melted before the radiance of hers; and hoar frost is
+but water after all. So she drew him to the fire, and then, still
+holding one hand as if loth to lose touch of it, knelt on one knee to
+stir the peats to a brighter blaze.
+
+"I'm so glad you have come back," she said, with a little tremble in
+her voice; "so glad!" And then she looked up suddenly into the face
+above her, surprised at the almost painful strength of his grip. For
+Paul Macleod's composure was almost gone, and he was struggling hard
+for self-control. What she saw kept her silent; but she bent towards
+him till her soft, warm cheek touched his hand caressingly. The
+action, with its tale of tender solicitude, its boundless sympathy,
+was too much for him. He drew in his breath hard, and resting his arm
+on the mantelpiece turned from her to hide his face upon it, and so
+escape the pity in her eyes.
+
+And he had dreamed of something so different! Of something coldly
+just, reasonably reproachful! Without a word she had guessed, had
+_known_, that he must be free to come, because he _had_ come back.
+
+"What is it, dear?" she asked softly, as she stood beside him. "Are
+you afraid that I am angry? Are you afraid that I care--about _that?_
+Paul! I do not choose to care--I will not. Look at me, and you will
+see if that is not the truth!"
+
+What he saw was a face soft with the passion he knew so well--the
+passion which lies so perilously close to self--which claims so much,
+and resents so easily. But it was radiant also, as with a white flame
+of cleansing fire, pitiless in its purity.
+
+"What is it to me?" she went on, her voice ringing clearer. "What is
+it to any woman unless she stoops to care? Oh! I understand now,
+Paul--I understand things of which I never even dreamed before; things
+which have been in your life--things which might have been in mine,
+perhaps--God knows!--if I had been in your place. But they are no more
+to me than this--a grief, a regret, because they are a stain upon your
+past, as all wrong must be. They are no more to me than that, because
+I do not choose to count them more!"
+
+So, with a smile in her eyes, and a quiver of pain on her lips, she
+raised her face to his and kissed him.
+
+Thus neither humiliation nor forgiveness was allowed a part in this
+woman's reading of the Divine Comedy. Perhaps she was wrong, and yet
+no scorn, no righteous indignation, could have made Paul Macleod feel
+more acutely the gulf which lay between his past and hers. Between
+their futures also. They might be friends, but from that pure Love of
+hers he was for ever outcast, though she might not know it--though he
+might spend his life in trying to conceal the fact that he lived on a
+lower plane than she did. Why! the past was with him _now_, even at
+the touch of her lips. He loved her, as he had loved so often before.
+
+"Marjory!" he cried passionately, "I don't deserve it, but I can't
+miss it--if you will put up with me?"
+
+She drew herself away, and looked at him with a half-tender,
+half-mocking expression.
+
+"Put up with you? What else is there to be done now that you have come
+back to me?"
+
+What else, indeed! She was right; it was he who had taken the
+responsibility, he who defied natural consequences in this dreaming of
+something beyond and above his past. He was not hardened enough to be
+blind to this, and the thought showed on his face.
+
+"Come," she said consolingly, "sit down and tell me all about it--why
+you came back, I mean; I know why you went away."
+
+If she did, he felt that she was wiser than he, since, sitting so
+beside her, sure of her sympathy, her confidence, it seemed incredible
+that he should have fled from this sure haven of his own free will. He
+told her all, it seemed to him without a pang; told her of his
+dismissal, of the change in his prospects. Yet, when he put Jeanie
+Duncan's letter into her hands, and walked away to the window while
+she read it, he felt more of a cur than he had ever done in all his
+life before. What would the girl say? What could she say but that it
+served him right? If she dismissed him also, and told him that she did
+not care to exchange her love for his, would not that serve him right
+also!
+
+And so, as he stood frowning moodily at the growing glint of sunshine
+far out in the West driving the mists in dense masses up the Glen, her
+voice came to him as she laid down the letter with a sigh:
+
+"I am glad she called him Paul."
+
+He turned quickly to her in a sort of incredulous amaze! Was that all
+she had to say? A sort of chill crept over him, even though he found
+himself at her feet, with her hands in his, kissing them softly as he
+told her, with a break in his voice, that she was too good--too good
+for any man. The thought brought him a certain consolation, as she
+went on, evidently with the desire of taking all sting from his
+memories--to speak of the strange coincidence of little Paul's
+devotion to her, and of her liking for the lovable little lad. Surely,
+if Gleneira had to go, he would far rather it went to him than to some
+stranger, who would care nothing for her and her ways.
+
+"Why?" she said, a trifle tearfully; "he has been so much with me
+lately, since old Peggy died, that I felt quite lost without him when
+he went yesterday for a farewell visit up the Glen to the Macintoshes.
+The boys were his great playmates. So you see, Paul, it will not
+matter so much, for he will live with us, of course, and it is a long,
+long time before he comes of age. And even then I don't believe he
+will turn you out of house and home altogether. We will teach him
+better things than that! Won't we?"
+
+In truth, spoken of in her calm, clear voice, and with her wise eyes
+on his, and that sweet convincing "we" in her phrases, the prospect
+did not seem so hopeless. Yet he caught himself wishing that she had
+not taken his renunciation quite so much as a matter of course;
+wishing that she appreciated his victory over temptation more keenly.
+Yet, how could she, when he had not told her that part of the
+business, or how near he had been to purchasing peace with dishonour
+by destroying Jeanie Duncan's letter and the marriage certificate it
+contained. But there were many things in his past, he told himself,
+with a sigh, of which it was better she should continue to know
+nothing; for her own sake, not for his. He could scarcely fear her
+blame, and it would have been a certain comfort to, as it were, bring
+her closer to him by confession. But Paul Macleod was too much of a
+gentleman for that kind of self-indulgence, and he was realising for
+the first time in his life the supreme impotence of repentance either
+in the past or the future. Had he not, even at the time, repented him
+of the evil in regard to Jeanie Duncan; yet had not a Nemesis grown
+out of his very repentance?
+
+"Come with me part of the way back, dear," he said, when the necessity
+for writing business letters broke through even his desire to linger
+within touch of her kind hand. "I can't bear somehow to lose sight of
+you for an instant, but I must go--there are the lawyers--and Dr.
+Kennedy."
+
+"I can tell Tom if you like," replied Marjory. "I write to him most
+days."
+
+Something rose up in her hearer and cursed Tom, though the next moment
+he was reviling himself. That sort of thing would have to be put away
+for ever when he was Marjory's husband.
+
+"You will have to marry me as soon as you can," he said, with what to
+her seemed great irrelevance.
+
+"I will marry you as soon as you like, Paul; you know that," she
+replied cheerfully.
+
+Yes! so far was easy; but afterwards? How would she ever put up with
+him? Yet the question was once more forgotten in the charm of the
+present.
+
+It was the end of a soft day, and the summitless mountains looked
+purple and green under the mist wreaths which every now and again
+seemed to descend to fill the valley and leave sparkling drops of dew
+on the little curls below Marjory's cap, while the river ran roaring
+beside them, making a kind of droning accompaniment to the shriller
+drip from the trees upon the stones. Then the fine rain would cease,
+the birds begin to twitter, rustling the damp leaves, and sending a
+faster shower on the path; while from the West a gleaming blade of
+light would sever the mists, and give a glimpse of a new heaven and a
+new earth, where the sun was setting peacefully.
+
+As she walked along beside him, her face seemed to hold the sunshine,
+his the mist, and once, in the middle of some talk over the future, he
+paused to hark back to the past.
+
+"If we could begin it all over again from the day I first met you on
+the river, I think I might have a better chance--at least, I would not
+play the fool so utterly--at least, my memories of _you_ would be free
+from pain--and I should have left undone the things that I have done."
+
+"Why should you say that?" she asked. "Is it not enough that what you
+did made me love you?"
+
+"Your godfathers and godmothers should have christened you
+Barnabasina," he replied, with an effort after his old, light manner,
+"for you are verily a daughter of consolation, Marjory; but even you
+cannot take the sting out of some things. If I could have the past
+over again! Nothing short of that will satisfy me."
+
+Her quick, bright face grew brighter.
+
+"Then you shall have it, dear, as far as I'm concerned. Yes! you
+shall! It will be pleasant for me, too. Don't laugh at my fancy, for I
+like fancies sometimes; they help one along the dead level bits of the
+road. I'll say 'good-bye' here, Paul, here in the very spot where you
+said good-bye before--do you think I could forget it? And then
+to-morrow----" she hesitated in her very eagerness.
+
+"Yes, to-morrow, Marjory?" he echoed.
+
+"To-morrow you shall meet me at the old place on the river--you
+remember it, of course, and we shall begin all over again--all over
+again from the very beginning, to the very end. I remember them all,
+Paul; everything, I believe, that you ever said--everything, at any
+rate, that you ever said which I disliked. Is that unkind? And so when
+the time comes for those bits you shall not say them--we will cut them
+out of the past."
+
+"It will be Hamlet with the Prince left out," he said, falling in with
+her playful mood.
+
+"Not a bit of it! Besides if it were I should not mind. It was never
+the prince I liked, but Paul--the real Paul."
+
+"I wonder which one that is," he replied quickly, yet with a smile;
+for her radiant face would not be cheated of its due.
+
+"We shall see to-morrow--good-bye, Paul."
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"No! No! Marjory. Neither that, nor adieu, any more. Till
+to-morrow--_Auf-wieder-sehn_, my love! _Auf-wieder-sehn_."
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+
+The beginning of a new day, a new life!
+
+That, perhaps, should have been Marjory's first thought when, drawing
+up the blind, she stood in the early dawn at the window looking out on
+a world white with hoar frost. But it was not; for her eyes fell upon
+a bunch of late rowans still adorning the tree, which stood so close
+that, on windy nights, the berries would tap against the panes like
+some ghostly visitant claiming admittance. They also were veiled
+in a silvery tracery, and so the trivial remembrance of a certain
+ball-dress came uppermost, instead of any sober reflection. As a
+matter of fact, the larger half of existence can be excellently
+executed on a penny whistle.
+
+What a very good imitation those berries had been which Tom had sent
+from Paris; and how unlikely it was, since she and Paul were both
+poor, that she would have so magnificent a garment again. It would not
+be wanted, that was one comfort, if they lived quietly at Gleneira,
+which, of course, they must do, unless Paul were to try and get back
+to active service again. She must talk that over with him--that and
+many another thing--when they began life again down by the river side.
+
+"It's ill singing the mavis' song but in the mavis' time," quoted Mrs.
+Cameron, with a wise shake of the head, when Marjory came whistling
+down the stairs to breakfast. "And half-past eight o' the clock on a
+chill November morn in a white world is no the time for anything save
+a sup o' hot porridge."
+
+"I wasn't singing the mavis' song," she laughed; "it was the lark's,
+and they always begin early." And her clear voice broke gaily into the
+phrase, "And Ph[oe]bus 'gins to rise."
+
+"Then it's ill singing on an empty stomach," persisted the old lady;
+"and ill manners, too, to be sae blithe when ye are leaving us. What's
+up wi' you, lassie?"
+
+Marjory gave her a queer look. "Everything! it's going to be a fine
+day for one thing."
+
+"Wha kens? That's no a thing ye can say at half-past eight o' the
+clock. Sing you the 'Flowers of the Forest,' my bairn; that's more o'
+the truth in this world."
+
+Her old, faded voice quavered over the first line, "I've seen the
+morning, wi' gold the hills adorning," and Marjory's clear, young one
+took up the song cheerfully, "And loud tempest storming before the mid
+o' day." Then she paused mischievously. "That's a foolish version,
+though; the old one is better: 'I've heard the lilting at our yowe
+milking, Lassies a' lilting before the dawn o' day.' And dawn is
+before half-past eight o' the clock, even in November."
+
+Mrs. Cameron looked at her somewhat mollified, beating time with her
+mittened fingers to the familiar rhythm.
+
+"Weel! weel! One way or the t'ither it's the bonniest song ever sung
+in this world, and I mind, when I was a lassie, thinkin' that my
+jo--he wasna John, my dear,--sang it like the angels out o' heaven.
+But there! commend me to a lassie that's in love wi' the most
+ordinair' o' men for a blaspheemous sacrileegous creature, if he's
+weel favoured, and that's the truth. There isn't one o' the cardinal
+virtues, but she'll dig up--maybe from some ither decent man's kale
+yard and plant it amang his weeds wi' a light heart. Aye! and watter
+it wi' tears too when she finds it no thrivin'. It's the way o' women,
+and she's happier when she gives up the gairdening and sets to rear
+bairns instead."
+
+"I wish Will could hear you admit that children are a comfort,"
+laughed Marjory, from her porridge.
+
+"And what's hindering him but sloth?" asked the old lady, rushing
+eagerly to an old battle ground. "But there! was it not predicted as
+the end o' a' things. Just a great Darkness as o' Night, and that is
+what folks is coming to nowadays. It just beats me to roust the
+hussies from their beds before six. And it's no from them bein'
+hirelings a'together, for it's the same with the cottages. Where the
+peat smoke used to go up wi' the mist wreaths at the earliest blink,
+there's naething but an empty lum. Aye! and a cauld hearth! Not even a
+gathering peat to keep the warmth o' home aboot the place. But there!
+what could ye expec' wi' such names as they give the matches--Lucifers
+and Damnstickers."
+
+"My dear mother!" exclaimed Will, in horrified accents, as he lounged
+in lazily.
+
+"I'm no swearing, William," she retorted, with great dignity. "Tho'
+maybe I hae a claim to be angry an' sin not, wi' a farmer son that
+comes down to his breaking o' bread when the beasts have begun to chew
+the cud."
+
+"My dear mother!" quoth Will, good-naturedly. "You look after the
+beasts, and my corn is all carried."
+
+"Weel! weel! When I'm carried to me grave ye'll find the difference,
+even if ye get a wife. Aye, aye! I ken fine what she'll be like--just
+one o' the sort wi' a hump somewhere. I kenna whaur the fashion'll put
+it then, since 'of that hour knoweth no man,' but it will be
+somewheres, an' her hair will be as if a clucking hen had bin scrapin'
+in't."
+
+"I deny it; I deny it," laughed Will; "when I marry, I shall marry a
+girl just like Marjory. Only she shall not be quite so tall, or so
+clever, and shall be thinner, and less opinionated--more of my sort,
+and----"
+
+"And her hair shall be of a different colour," laughed Marjory, in her
+turn; "I'm glad I don't leave you heartbroken--or anyone else,
+either," she added, half to herself.
+
+And as she passed through her little sitting-room, before starting on
+her rendezvous with Paul, she paused for an instant before her letter
+to Tom Kennedy, which still lay unfinished, as she had left it, and
+looked down again on those last words. They were true still, and with
+a sudden impulse she took up the pen to say so.
+
+"Tom!" she wrote, "the problem is solved! Paul has come back to me,
+and we are going to begin a new life together. Yet, I stretch out my
+hands to you, dear, as I did before, and say 'Friendship is a bigger
+thing than love!'"
+
+Then she went gaily through the garden to pick a late carnation for
+Paul's buttonhole, and as she picked it she sang the "Flowers o' the
+Forest."
+
+
+             "I've seen Tweed's silver streams,
+              Glittering in the sunny beams,
+              Grow drumly and dark as he row'd on his way."
+
+
+The tune, with its haunting cadences, lingered in her mind, and more
+than once fell from her lips, when with a light heart she faced the
+ups and downs of the white road as it crept round the loch to where
+the bridge, spanning the river, would enable her to strike across the
+moss-hags to the alder-fringed bank above. And Paul would be on the
+other side as he had been before. But he should not jump this time,
+for that was one of the things she did not like; those things which
+she was going to take out of his life and hers. The very thought,
+indeed, of the risk of a slip made her shiver as she paused for a
+moment on the bridge, and saw the yellow-brown flood, swollen with the
+night's rain, rushing against the piers.
+
+"Drumly and dark!" Drumly it was, yet scarcely dark. It ran too fast
+for that, and up yonder, where she was to meet Paul, it would be a
+mass of foam with yellow lights in it. A sort of syllabub of a river
+pouring over the curved edge of the rock heavily. Not like water at
+all, but like some drugged draught; falling not with a roar or a rush,
+but with slow, deafening boom. The waters of Lethe might fall so, she
+fancied. Well! Paul should run no risk of them to-day, for she was
+before her time, and would be there to warn him. So thinking, she
+clambered down to the water's edge, and seating herself on the only
+level slab of rock, which projected slightly over the boiling pool
+below, she faced the downward course of the river, certain thus of
+seeing the first glimpse of her lover's tall figure above the bracken
+which crested the almost perpendicular rocks on the other side.
+
+"I've seen this morning." It was a most distracting tune! All the more
+so because the words would follow Mrs. Cameron's sentimental lead,
+instead of keeping to the old lament with the lilt of battle and
+sudden death in it.
+
+
+      "The flowers o' the forest that fought aye the foremost,
+       The prime o' our land are cauld in the clay."
+
+
+That was why they played it as a Dead March in the Highland regiments.
+If Paul decided not to retire, it might be played at his funeral some
+day. At Paul's funeral! The very thought seemed impossible; and yet
+the girl's heart throbbed more with pride than fear. "That fought aye
+the foremost." Yes! if she were a soldier's wife that was what a
+soldier should do, even if she had to sit "drearie, lamenting her
+dearie."
+
+It was too bad, she told herself, for the tune to haunt her so, since
+Paul would be coming soon now, and when they had first met her head
+had not been full of the "Flowers of the Forest" and such things; she
+had been reading one of Tom's letters. How foolish of her not to have
+brought one to complete the illusion! unless, indeed, there were, by
+chance, one in her pocket. Yes! a scrap of one, old enough to rouse
+her curiosity and engross her attention as she smoothed it out and
+began to read.
+
+"To be disappointed in love! The phrase is arbitrarily bound up with
+the state of celibacy. Wherefore, my dear Marjory? wherefore? If love,
+as we once agreed, I think, is the touchstone of life, then marriage
+appears to me to be the continual essay of love, where, alas! the gold
+does not often reach the standard for hall marking; therefore it is
+conceivably better to be continually in love and not to marry. I don't
+know how it is, Mademoiselle Grands-serieux, but my philosophy
+invariably ends in paradoxes of doubtful propriety--now, doesn't it?"
+
+She looked up smiling, then rose to her feet quickly, for there was a
+rustle behind her. Paul might have been there ahead of her after all,
+and have gone up to look at the river. Yes! there was someone at the
+head of the fall, where the solitary rowan tree leant above the
+alder-bushes, for the branches swayed.
+
+"Paul!" she cried across the boom of the river, "is that you? Come
+down a bit; I'm here!"
+
+"I'm coming, Miss Marjory, I'm coming," answered a childish voice;
+"but it is the berries I'm getting for you first. It is the last I
+will be getting you in Gleneira, I'm thinking, and they're real
+beauties, whatever."
+
+Great heavens! how reckless of the boy! yet, was not recklessness in
+the blood? There he was, clinging to an overhanging branch; any
+instant he might fall, and---- "Paul!" she cried quickly,
+peremptorily; "come down at once. I don't want them."
+
+She saw his bright, flushed face through the sparse yellowing leaves,
+close to the bunch of red berries, clutched by the little brown hand.
+So like that picture of his mother--so like--so like Paul, too!--her
+Paul. Ah, God in heaven!
+
+The child had slipped. "Hold tight, Paul! Hold tight!"
+
+Vain cry! Almost before it was uttered the seething foam with the
+sunny glints in it had stifled his swift scream.
+
+Marjory made no sound. White, desperate, she leant over the slippery
+edge of the shelf, clutched at something that seethed upwards for a
+second, lost her balance, and was gone--in silence. The heavy foam
+closed over her like a snow-drift with the sun on it, and all the help
+the bravest heart could have given was the hope that unconsciousness
+might come quickly through some kindly rock, and not in the slow agony
+of suffocation.
+
+It was all over in a minute, for Nature knows her own mind when she is
+in the tragic mood. She allows no time for unavailing tears. When, not
+a minute afterwards, Paul Macleod's cry of "Marjory! Marjory!" with
+its ring of glad certainty, echoed over the pool, there was not a sign
+to show that she would ever give answer to his call again.
+
+"Marjory! Marjory! Marjory!"
+
+Pitiful appeal, though he knew it not, not even when a vague wonder at
+her tardiness clouded the careless joy which had come to him with this
+dawn of a new day, a new life. For the night seemed to have stolen his
+fears as fit companions for its shadows, and left him nothing but his
+hopes.
+
+"Marjory! Marjory! Marjory!"
+
+Is there anything in the wide world so terrible as the slow dread
+which comes as the minutes pass unavailingly by?--as the certainty
+that something has gone amiss seems to grow from the very passion of
+protestation against the possibility?--and then, when fear has gone,
+and unknown grief is the companion of the fruitless search, in which a
+wild hope will spring up sometimes to intensify the pain? Of such
+things all men may surely pray that fancy, and not memory, may speak.
+
+It was Tom Kennedy's letter--lighter than the love which had penned
+it--that gave the first clue, and the hope went out from Paul
+Macleod's face for ever when his quick eye found it like a foam bubble
+in a backwater near the ford.
+
+"It will be in the Long Pool we must be looking," whispered the rough,
+tender voices to each other, but Paul heard. Paul knew, Paul
+understood what would come--if not that night, then the next day--or
+the next.
+
+But Fate was merciful, and did not prolong the agony.
+
+"Don't look, laird! Oh, my dear! you that I carried in my arms as a
+laddie--don't look," sobbed old Macpherson, as, with the first streak
+of the following dawn, the men who had been working all the night long
+bent over the oil-strewn, torch-lit depth through which the grapnel
+came up, slowly, heavily.
+
+But Paul was no coward. He had looked death steadily in the face many
+and many a time.
+
+"Stand back, John!" he said quietly. "I'll lift her in."
+
+And as he held her there in his arms while they drifted down stream a
+space to a shelving grassy bank, he bent over her calm face, and
+thanked "whatever gods there be," passionately, for the gift of that
+sharp cut just showing beneath the damp curls through which some
+friendly rock had brought a quick end to life. As he looked up again,
+the dawn was out-paling the stars, and the birds in the alder-bushes
+were stirring into song.
+
+"What day is it?" he asked, drearily, of old John; and that sudden
+forgetfulness was the only sign he showed at the time of the terrible
+shock he had sustained. Yet none who noticed it could ever forget the
+look which came to his face, when, guided by the clue given by the
+child's cap still clenched in the girl's hand, a further search ended
+in the discovery of little Paul's body, and Marjory's lover realised
+that she must have lost her life in the effort to save his namesake.
+Indeed, in after years, old John, telling the tale, would often say
+that he never went in such fear of seeing murder done as when Mr.
+Gillespie had suggested the touching propriety of burying the brave
+girl and her little friend side by side. He had even taken the bunch
+of rowan berries found in the boy's fingers from the girl's breast,
+where they had laid them, as no doubt they had been intended to lie,
+saying, in a sort of fury, that nothing of the child's should come
+near her. But beyond that he made no sign.
+
+And old John said true. Paul Macleod came back courteous and calm
+among the many mourners who climbed one sunny afternoon to that sunny
+spot on the southern slope of the hill, where Marjory had said the
+light lingered longest. James Gillespie, his fair, florid face gaining
+a dignity from his office, leading the way bareheaded, in his white
+surplice, through the dead bracken and over the heathery slopes, while
+his voice steadied itself over the words of consolation and hope. Tom
+Kennedy, and Will, the laird, and Mr. Wilson--who, old as he was,
+would not be gainsaid--carrying their dear dead, resting at times upon
+some lichen-covered rock, or aided by other hands, tenderly,
+sorrowfully, willing as theirs, falling for a time a step behind. All,
+save Paul, who, setting even old John's offer of help aside, kept his
+clasp tight upon the tough ash staff until, as they passed the
+wishing-well on their downward way, he broke it across his knee
+fiercely and flung the pieces on the dismal little pile. And then it
+was that Father Macdonald, who, with sad, serene eyes, and softly
+moving lips, had followed at a little distance, pleaded with the Great
+Judge for another soul needing mercy.
+
+And Paul came back courteous and calm also from that smaller, drearier
+procession, which laid the new-found heir among his forbears in the
+stone vault belonging to the Macleods, far over by Ardmore point, in
+the old kirk-yard. Dr. Kennedy, knowing all the circumstances, would
+fain have spared the empty honour to the dead boy, but all his
+arguments in favour of silence were unavailing. So old Peggy's little
+grandson rested under a broad, silver plate, proclaiming him to be the
+only son of Ronald Alister Macleod, of Gleneira, and Janet Duncan, his
+wife. The sleet showers were slanting bitterly; and the outgoing tide,
+buffeting with the westerly wind, almost swamped the little white
+coffin as it lay in the bottom of the "Tubhaneer," while Paul sate
+steering for the point steadily, as if he were not chilled through to
+the marrow of both body and soul.
+
+It was the drenching he got, no doubt, as he stood alone, as chief
+mourner, on the bare, wind-swept point, that made him look so ghastly.
+He said so, at any rate, when Dr. Kennedy, noting his appearance with
+professional eyes, recommended him to go to bed. It was Indian ague,
+he said, nothing more; he was subject to it; had, in fact, had several
+similar attacks at Gleneira.
+
+So he retired, courteously, calmly as ever, to the Big House, where he
+set aside all offers of companionship. And there, Dr. Kennedy, with
+that look on Paul Macleod's handsome face haunting his professional
+soul, sought him next morning on pretence of saying goodbye. But by
+that time Paul was past anything save that odd, rhythmical tossing
+from side to side of the restless head, which comes when the brain is
+conscious of nothing but the fever raging in it.
+
+Lord George came down at once, gentle as any woman, and surprised to
+hear the long tale Dr. Kennedy had to tell, for Paul had only written
+of the sad accident. And Lady George followed, with two plain, black
+dresses and a little assortment of highly starched linen collars and
+cuffs in her portmanteaux, ready at all points to take up the rôle of
+nurse; though why a woman should nurse better in handcuffs, which
+prevent all natural play of the wrist, and why a patient should be
+supposed to like the dangling of starched cap-strings in his face, is
+another matter.
+
+And still the head tossed restlessly, and the parched lips went on
+muttering, muttering. At the first, of many things faintly articulate;
+many things, and of many places; then, by degrees, centring round one
+time, one scene; finally emerging into a monotonous whisper--
+
+"Violet! Violet! Violet!"
+
+"I think we had better telegraph for Mrs. Vane," said Dr. Kennedy,
+looking grave; "his mind has gone back to that time when she nursed
+him through something similar. It is often so in brain cases, and we
+cannot afford to lose a chance of saving him--sane. That previous
+attack lessens the chance terribly."
+
+She came, of course, without an instant's delay, as she would have
+come to anyone who needed her extraordinary tact and care; and Dr.
+Kennedy gave a sigh of relief when, stealing in for a look about dawn
+on the next day, he found her seated on a stool beside the low camp
+bed, one hand laid lightly on the sick man's breast, the other as
+lightly keeping the ice bag on his forehead, while he lay still, quite
+still.
+
+"I used to do it before," she whispered, "and it seems to soothe
+him--do you think it foolish?"
+
+For Dr. Kennedy, with a smile, had looked round the room, wondering at
+the woman's quick touch which had transformed it. A night-light
+flickered from the floor in one corner, the curtains had gone and the
+bed was shifted to the centre, so that the mingled light of waning
+night and dawning day fell sideways on the patient, and he could have
+seen--if he could have seen at all--the door set wide open to the long
+corridor to which some of Peter Macpherson's orange trees, the scarlet
+hibiscus, and a few hot-house plants gave the look of a verandah. A
+faint scent from them filled the air, and the large, empty room,
+almost devoid of furniture, had lost its snug English comfort
+altogether.
+
+"Foolish?" he echoed, going to the window, and looking out, absently.
+"Who can say? The brain knows its own secrets. He seems to have
+responded to the suggestion, and, for all we can tell, is ten years
+younger to-day than he was yesterday."
+
+"I wish he were! I wish he were." The whisper came so passionately,
+that Dr. Kennedy turned and looked at her curiously, sadly.
+
+"He is no worse, surely," she asked, rising softly, her hands seeming
+to melt away, as it were, leaving the sick man unconscious of their
+going. "Surely he is not worse?"
+
+"No! I was only thinking it might be better for us all if his memory
+stopped where it is now--if he could forget."
+
+She clasped her hands together tightly. "If he could!--if only he
+could forget--I would not care how much I remembered."
+
+
+
+
+                              EPILOGUE.
+
+
+It was once more autumn. The rowans were as red, the heather as
+purple, as it had been in the year when Jeanie Duncan had sate for her
+portrait and Marjory Carmichael had taken her holiday; as red, as
+purple, as both will be until--
+
+
+      "The slow sea rise and the sheer cliff crumble,
+         Till terrace and meadow the deep gulfs drink,
+       Till the strength of the waves of the high tides humble
+         The fields that lessen, the rocks that shrink."
+
+
+For Nature is supremely indifferent whether she gives birth to fools
+or knaves, or whether the Great Reaper fills his sheaf with wheat or
+tares.
+
+The evening shadows were lengthening in the Glen, and from the little
+school-house by the horse-chestnut tree the cadence of children's
+voices rose and fell over the stirring measure of a processional hymn.
+
+"Not so fast! not so fast! who told you to gallop it like that?" cried
+a smartly dressed young woman at the harmonium; a young lady with that
+curious resemblance to a commonplace book, which the profession of
+teaching brings to all but clever faces.
+
+"Miss Marjory was saying it should be gay-like," murmured a rebellious
+voice among the elder scholars; the younger pausing with awed glances
+at the only authority they had known.
+
+"Then she was wrong," retorted the Reverend James Gillespie's owner.
+"It should be stately and solemn as befits a--a hymn. Don't you agree
+with me, James?"
+
+"Perfectly, perfectly. The Bishop agrees also." His face beamed
+unalloyed content; for he had read "dust to dust, ashes to ashes,"
+over many a coffin since his voice broke down one November morning
+some years ago, and the memory of one funeral scarcely troubles him
+more than another; each and all have a place in that growing sense of
+his sacerdotal position, which makes him greatly regret that in those
+earlier days he did not wear a biretta when exercising his priestly
+function in committing his flock to their graves.
+
+And the evening shadows were lengthening also along the white road
+that curves and crests the points and bays of the loch. A glint of
+light where Paul had stood like St. Christopher, a deeper shadow where
+Marjory had sate listening to the blabbing of the waves. Light and
+shadow mingled in the woods, through which they had run hand in hand,
+though with every moment the sunset glow left some golden birch or
+scarlet cherry; and down among the tall, silver firs by the house a
+faint white mist was beginning to rise over the trim lawns.
+
+"It is growing chill, Paul!" said an anxious voice.
+
+"To be continued in our next, Blazes; your aunt is inexorable!" The
+tone was gracious as ever, but thinner, as Paul Macleod rose from his
+lounge chair.
+
+"But, Uncle Paul! How many runs did you make?" cried Blasius, eagerly.
+It had been his first term at Harrow, and this tale he had been
+hearing of past prowess in cricket was too interesting to be thus left
+pointless.
+
+"How many? I forget. Perhaps your aunt will remember----"
+
+A little spasm of pain passed over Violet's face. "How lazy you are,
+Paul! You will end by remembering nothing."
+
+"Why should I remember when you do it so much better than I? It was a
+good lot, Blasius, and I recollect being awfully proud at the time.
+But these things slip by, somehow. When you are as old as I am----"
+
+"You really ought to go in, Paul!" came that warning voice, with a
+studied patience in it. "This is not the Riviera, remember."
+
+"No, worse luck! I suppose it is the proper thing to come down here,
+but it is an awful bore in some ways. Ah! there's George, back from
+the hill--well, he likes it, that is one comfort."
+
+Blanche stood at the jasmine-covered porch to welcome her husband, for
+the advancing years had, as is so often the case, decided her final
+selection of a part in favour of the devoted wife--the fact being that
+she was becoming a trifle too matronly for most of the others, while
+the growing independence of the children stood in the way of a
+satisfactory rendering of the maternal one.
+
+"Taking him in? That is right," she said approvingly, to her
+sister-in-law, as Paul, on his wife's arm, paused to look at the birds
+old John's son was laying out on the step. Old John himself, sturdy on
+his legs as ever, but mindful of the dignity due to head keeperdom,
+standing by. And then, not to be outdone, she turned to her husband.
+"George! you ought not to dawdle about in wet feet. Please go in, too,
+and change."
+
+"Wet? My dear, the moors are as dry as a bone. Aren't they, John?"
+
+"As dry as they will have been these fifty years, whatever," replied
+the old man. "As dry as they would be that summer, Gleneira, when you
+and----"
+
+"Do come in, Paul!" came the anxious voice, again. "Look, how the mist
+is rising----"
+
+"By Jove! that's a fine young bird!" interrupted Paul, inconsequently,
+with a flash of his old interest. "By the way, Violet, you might tell
+the cook not to roast them to cinders as she did last night, and,
+while I remember it, I wish you'd speak to Cunningham about that
+horse----"
+
+"Really, Paul!" said his sister; "I think you might give the grooms
+their orders yourself."
+
+He smiled kindly, and laid his other hand upon his wife's, as together
+they went slowly to the smoking-room.
+
+"I am afraid I give you a lot of trouble," he said apologetically, as
+he held the door open for her to pass through--"but I have such a
+wretched memory, and you are so kind."
+
+"Don't say that, Paul! don't say that; what does it matter? I am quite
+happy if you are."
+
+She watched his face curiously, eagerly, almost passionately; but she
+saw nothing save that easy, kindly smile.
+
+Had her wish been fulfilled? and had he left memory behind in the
+Valley of the Shadow, where he had left so much of the old Paul? She
+could scarcely tell, for he never spoke of that one summer, but lived
+his life as if it had not been.
+
+
+                          *   *   *   *   *
+
+
+But the light was lingering still on that steep slope, whence the
+purple cloud of Iona could be seen lying like an amethyst on the
+golden shield of the sea--for the sky was hung with blood-red pennants
+as if the hosts of heaven were going forth to war.
+
+And Tom Kennedy looked out over sea and sky from the gravestone which
+told that Marjory Carmichael died in attempting to save the life of
+Paul Macleod. There was a bunch of red rowans on the green grass. He
+brings one every year when, his brief holiday over, he climbs over the
+hill--as he did on the last day he saw her--on his way back to the
+work-a-day world, and that hand-to-hand fight with Death in others
+which will cease with his own.
+
+His eyes are troubled, for it comes back to him every year as he sits
+there that he might have saved her--if he had known.
+
+Known what? A smile comes to his face as he takes out an old letter
+and reads the last words she ever wrote to him, "Yet I stretch out my
+hands to you and say, again and again, Friendship is a bigger thing
+than Love!"
+
+The mists are rising even there as he turns to breast the hill, the
+cloud wreaths sweep solemnly in from the sea in stately curves, and as
+he pauses on the summit for a last look downwards, lo! there is
+nothing at all in earth, or sea, or sky, save himself and a grey,
+encircling mist. Love and Friendship, Life and Death, Sunshine and
+Shade! Where are they?
+
+
+
+                               THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Red Rowans, by Flora Annie Steel
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 40141 ***