My Lady of Wellwood never took her eyes off the gardener's face.
"Come hither and help me to dismount," she said, beckoning with her finger.
Wat Gordon went reluctantly enough, dragging one foot after the other. He realized that the end had come to his residence among the flower-closes of Balmaghie, and that he must e'en bid farewell to these walks and glades as of Paradise, upon which, as upon his life, the hazel eyes of Kate McGhie had lately rained such sweet influences. Meanwhile the laird stood meekly by. The caprices of great court-ladies were not in his province, but, having set out to humor them, he was not to be offended by the favor shown his servitor. He had heard of such things at Whitehall, and the memory rather kindled him than otherwise. He felt all the new life and energy which comes of being transported into a new world of new customs, new ideas, and even of new laxities.
Wat gave my Lady Wellwood his hand in the courtliest manner. The habit and gait of the under-gardener seemed to fall from him in a moment at the sound of that voice, low and languorous, with a thrill in it of former days which it irked him to think had still power to affect him.
"You have not quite forgotten me, then, sweet lad of Lochinvar?" asked the Duchess of Wellwood softly in his ear. For so in the days of his sometime madness she had been wont to call him.
"No," answered Wat, sullenly enough, as he lifted her to the ground, not knowing what else to say.
"Then meet me at the head of the wood on my way home," whispered the lady, as she disengaged herself from his arm, and turned with a smiling face to Roger McGhie.
"And this is your sweet daughter," she murmured, caressingly, to Kate, who stood by with drooping eyelids, but who, nevertheless, had lost no shade of the colloquy between Wat Gordon and her father's guest.
The Lady Wellwood took the girl's hand, which lay cold and unresponsive in her plump white fingers. "A pretty maid – you will be a beauty one day, my dear," she added, with the condescension of one who knows she has as yet nothing to fear from younger rivals.
To this Kate answered nothing. For her flatterer was a woman. Had the Duchess of Wellwood been a man and condescended to this sort of left-handed praise, Kate would have flashed her eyes and said, "I have not seldom been told that I am one already." Whereupon he would have amended his sentence. As it was, Kate said nothing, but only hardened her heart and wondered what the great court lady had found to whisper to the man who, during these last months, had daily been avowing himself her lover. And though Kate was conscious that her heart sat secure and untouched on its virgin throne, it had, nevertheless, been not unpleasant to listen to the lad. For of a surety Wat Gordon told his tale wondrously well.
Roger McGhie conducted the lady gallantly through the garden walks towards the house. But she had not gone far when she professed herself overcome by the heat, and desired to be permitted to sit down on a rustic seat. She was faint, she said; yet, even as she said it, the keen eye of Kate McGhie noted that her color remained warm and high.
"A tass of water – nay, no wine," she called after the Laird of Balmaghie; "I thank you for your courtesy."
And Kate's father hastened away a little stiffly to bring it. She knew that his Sunday shoes irked him. It served him right, she thought. At his age he ought to know better – but there remained the more important matter of the under-gardener.
"Come and sit by me, pretty one," said the Lady Wellwood, cooingly, to Kate.
The "pretty one" would infinitely rather have set herself down by the side of an adder sunning itself on a bank than shared the woodland seat with the bold horsewoman of Grenoch.
"Ah! sly one," she said, "I warrant you knew that your under-gardener there, that handsome lad, was not the landward man he seemed."
She shook her finger reproachfully at her companion as she spoke.
Kate blushed hotly, and then straightway fell to despising herself for doing it almost as much as she hated my lady for making her. Lady Wellwood watched her covertly out of the corner of her eyes. She cultivated a droop of the left eyelid on purpose.
"I know that he is proscribed, and has a price set on his head," Kate said, quietly, looking after Wat with great indifference as he went down the avenue of trees.
"And do you know why?" asked the duchess, somewhat abruptly.
"No," answered Kate, wondering at her tone.
"It was for wounding my late husband within the precincts of Holyrood," said Lady Wellwood.
But Kate McGhie's anger was now fully roused, and her answer ran trippingly off her tongue.
"And was it for that service you spoke so kindly to him just now, and bade him meet you at the head of the wood as you went home?"
The duchess stared a little, but her well-bred calmness was not ruffled.
"Even so," she said, placidly, "and for the further reason that Walter Gordon was on his way to see me on the night when it was his ill fortune to meet with my husband instead."
"I do not believe it," cried the girl, lifting her head and looking Lady Wellwood straight in the eyes.
"Ask him, then!" answered the duchess, with the calm assurance of forty answering the chit of half her years. For at first sight my lady had envied and hated the clear, blushful ivory of the girl's cheek and the natural luxuriance of her close-tangled curls. And since all the art of St. James's could not match with these, she was now getting even with Kate in ways of her own.
The girl did not speak. Her heart only welled within her with contradiction and indignation.
"Or if you will not do that, sit down half an hour hence and read your book in the little arbor by the end of the avenue, and you will hear news. Whether you may like it or not is another question. But, at all events, you shall not have cause to say again that a Duchess of Wellwood lied."
Kate rose and walked away without answering a word. She cared no jot for Wat Gordon, so she told herself. He was nothing to her, save that she desired his safety and had risked much to give him shelter. Yet this Duchess of Wellwood – that woman of whom the gross popular tongue whispered commonly the most terrible things! Had Lochinvar made love to her? Was he to meet her at the end of the avenue? She could not believe it. It was, indeed, no matter if he did. What did she care? Go to the arbor, become an eavesdropper – not for any man alive, least of all for Wat Gordon! Thank God, she had a tongue in her head, and was not afraid to ask Wat Gordon, or any living soul, whatever she desired to know.
But after a little hesitation she went up-stairs to her chamber, and, denying herself the listening of the ear, she listened with her eyes instead. For she watched my Lady Wellwood being helped into her saddle right courteously by her father. She saw her looking down at him the while with a glance professionally tender – a glance that lingered in the memory by reason of the quiver of an eyelid and the pressure of a soft, reluctant hand. And Roger McGhie bowed over her plump fingers as though he had been bidding farewell to some angelic visitant.
For the first time in her life Kate McGhie despised her father. And, lo! to hurt her heart yet more, and to convince her of the ultimate falsity of all men, there was Wat, his tall figure overtopping the hawthorn hedge, walking briskly in the direction of the pinewood at the end of the avenue.
Kate went down-stairs with a set, still face. She would not cry. She did not care. She was only bitterly disappointed with the whole race of mankind, nothing more. They were all no better than so many blind fools, ready to be taken in by a plausible tongue and a rolling eye. A fine figure of a woman, and – Lord, where was the best of them?
But her Wat – and with the Duchess of Wellwood; she could not believe it! Why, she might be his – well, hardly that – but his mother at the very least.
Not that she cared; she had her work to think about; and Kate McGhie went down to the little