Miss Courtenay was busily engaged searching for a letter in her writing-desk when the butler announced, in his most emphatic manner, Mr. M’Kinlay; but she only turned her head round, and, with a weak smile, said, “Oh, Mr. M’Kinlay! I trust they did not keep you waiting on the road. You know we have been obliged to have the gate locked.”
“I heard so. Indeed, I have heard of little else since my arrival, Miss Conrtenay,” said he, not altogether mastering the anger he felt at his cool reception. “I hope Lady Vyner is well.”
“Yes; as well as she ever is. What a provoking thing it is to mislay a letter; but I suppose it is an oversight you have never committed. You have everything in order, docketed, pigeon-holed, and what not.”
“Pardon me, I am the most careless of men. All about me is a chaos of confusion.”
“Indeed!” said she, with a faint, very faint show of interest, as though quite unexpectedly aware of some favourable trait in his character. “Who would have thought it! It is a letter from my niece’s governess I have lost, and with it all clue to her address.”
“I can, perhaps, supply that,” said Mr. M’Kinlay; “at least, if it be the town she stopped at while the yacht is being repaired.”
“Exactly so. What’s the name of it?”
“Here it is,” said he, producing a small clasped note-book, from which, after a brief search, he read, “Mademoiselle Heinzleman’s address will meanwhile be, ‘Carrick’s Royal Hotel, Westport, Ireland.’ ”
“What a blessing is red tapery after all!” said she, in a sort of soliloquy. “If there were not these routine people, what would become of us?”
“I am charmed that even my blemishes should have rendered you a service,” said he, with a tingling cheek.
“I don’t think my sister knows you are here,” said she, ignoring all his remarks.
“I suspect Rickards must have told her,” said he, half stiffly.
“Just as likely not; he is getting so stupid—so old.”
This was a very cruel speech to be so emphasized, for Rickards was only one year Mr. M’Kinlay’s senior.
“He looks active, alert, and I’d not guess him above forty-six, or seven.”
“I don’t care for the number of his years, but he is old enough to be fussy and officious, and he has that atrocious activity which displays itself with certain middle-aged people by a quick, short step, abrupt speech, and a grin when they don’t hear you. Oh, don’t you hate that deaf-man’s smile?”
Mr. M’Kinlay would fain have smiled too, but he feared the category it would sentence him to.
“I’m afraid you expected to find my brother here, but he’s away; he is cruising somewhere along the coast of Ireland.”
“I was aware of that. Indeed, I am on my way to join him, and only diverged at Crewe to come over here, that I might bring him the latest advices from home.”
“And are you going yachting?” said she, with a sort of surprise that sent the blood to M’Kinlay’s face and even his forehead.
“No, Miss Courtenay, I trust not, for I detest the sea; but Sir Gervais wants my advice about this Irish estate he is so full of.”
“Oh! don’t let him buy anything in Ireland. I entreat of you, Mr. M’Kinlay, not to sanction this. None of us would ever go there, not even to look at it.”
“I imagine the mischief is done.”
“What do you mean by being done?”
“That the purchase is already made, the agreement ratified, and everything completed but the actual payment.”
“Well, then, don’t pay; compromise, contest, make difficulties. You legal people needn’t be told how to raise obstacles. At all events, do anything rather than have an Irish property.”
“I wish I had one.”
“Well, I wish you had—that is, if you are so bent upon it. But I must go and tell my sister this distressing news. I don’t know how she’ll bear it! By the way,” added she, as she reached the door, “I shall find you here when I come back—you are not going away?”
“Certainly not without seeing Lady Vyner, if she will accord me that honour,” said he, stiffly.
“Of course she’ll see you,” cried she, and left the room.
Left alone with his reflections, Mr. M’Kinlay had not the pleasantest company. Had he mistaken all the relations between Miss Courtenay and himself, or was she changed to him—totally changed? Was it thus that they met last? He knew that she always had a certain flippant manner, and that she was eminently what the French call inconséquent; but she was more, far more, now. The allusion to Rickards’s age was a direct impertinence, and the question as to his yachting tastes was a palpable sneer at the habits of his daily life.
“The case does not look well—certainly not well,” murmured he, as he walked the room with his hands behind his back. “Many would throw up the brief, and say, ‘Take a nonsuit.’ Yes, most men would; but I’ll do nothing rashly!” And with this wise resolve he took up a book and began to read; but still the hours rolled on, and no one came. By the clock over the mantelpiece it was now four. Could it possibly be that it was two hours and a half since—since she had left him?
CHAPTER VIII. AN OLD BACHELOR’S HOUSE
It is quite true Georgina forgot all about Mr. M’Kinlay. The gardener had met her on her way, and presented her with a bouquet of Japanese roses—the real purple roses it was supposed never could be reared out of a Tycoon’s garden; and so she hastened up to her sister’s room, as totally oblivious of the man of law as though he had been hundreds of miles away. They talked pleasantly of flowers—flowers for the china vase, and flowers for the hair—they laughed at the incongruous blunders of the people who wore “wrong colours,” and that “drab bonnet” they had seen last Sunday in church. They next discussed dress, and the impossibility of wearing anything “decent” on the dusty roads; and, lastly, they ordered the ponies and the phaeton, and drove out.
How charmingly pleasant are these lives of little cares and of little duties: where conscience has no burden that would be too weighty for the strength of childhood—where no torturing anxieties invade, no tormenting ambitions pursue—where the morning’s stroll through the garden is the very type of existence, a ramble amidst fragrance, and fruit, and flowers, with no other call upon exertion than to enjoy! And what a teachable faculty is that same one of enjoyment. How it develops itself under good training and favourable opportunities.
These sisters had a very pleasant life, and they knew it; that is, they no more overlooked the stones in their path than their neighbours; but they thoroughly understood that Fate had accorded them a very smooth road, and one right easy to travel. They chatted gaily as they drove along the side of a brightly eddying river, through a glen of some miles in extent. The day was one of those mellow ones of August, tempered with a slight breeze, that gently moved the cloud-shadows on the mountains, adding at each change some new effect of light and colour. “Let us go and call on Sir Within,” said Lady Vyner; “it would be a glorious day to see the old castle, and the mountain behind it.” Her sister agreed at once; for though the drive was full eight miles, the road was beautiful all the way, and at its end was a grand old keep, Dalradern Castle, with a charming old bachelor for its owner, than whom none better understood how to do the honours of his house. While the sisters push their smart ponies to a brisk trot, we shall take the opportunity to say a word of Sir Within