'Were we not? But, you know, we took such precautions. There was quite a party of us, including my father, who has travelled a great deal, and all the gentlemen wore kilts. My father said it was always prudent to do in Rome as the Romans do.'
'I have no doubt,' said Rob, 'that in that way you escaped the caterans. They are very open to flattery.'
'So my father said. We also found that we could make ourselves understood by saying "whatever," and remembering to call the men "she" and the women "he." What a funny custom that is!'
'We can't get out of it,' said Rob.
'There is one thing,' the lady continued, 'that you can tell me. I have been told that in winter the wild boars take refuge in the streets of Inverness, and that there are sometimes very exciting hunts after them?'
'That is only when they run away with children,' Rob explained. 'Then the natives go out in large bodies and shoot them with claymores. It is a most exciting scene.'
When the doctor's wife learned that this was Rob's first visit to the castle, she told him at once that she was there frequently. It escaped his notice that she paused here and awaited the effect. She was not given to pausing.
'My husband,' she said, 'attended on Lady Louisa during her last illness—quite ten years ago. I was married very young,' she added hurriedly.
Rob was very nearly saying he saw that. The words were in his mouth, when he hesitated, reflecting that it was not worth while. This is only noticeable as showing that he missed his first compliment.
'Lady Louisa?' he repeated instead.
'Oh yes, the colonel married one of Lord Tarlington's daughters. There were seven of them, you know, and no sons, and when the youngest was born it was said that a friend of his lordship sent him a copy of Wordsworth, with the page turned down at the poem "We are Seven "—a lady friend, I believe.'
'Is Miss Abinger like the colonel?' asked Rob, who had heard it said that she was beautiful, and could not help taking an interest in her in consequence.
'You have not seen Miss Abinger?' asked the doctor's wife. 'Ah, you came late, and that vulgar-looking farmer hides her altogether. She is a lovely girl, but——'
Rob's companion pursed her lips.
'She is so cold and proud,' she added.
'As proud as her father?' Rob asked, aghast.
'Oh, the colonel is humility itself beside her. He freezes at times, but she never thaws.'
Rob sighed involuntarily. He was not aware that his acquaintances spoke in a similar way of him. His eyes wandered up the table till they rested of their own accord on a pretty girl in blue. At that moment she was telling Greybrooke that he could call her Nell, because 'Miss' Meredith sounded like a reproach.
The reporter looked at Nell with satisfaction, and the doctor's wife followed his thoughts so accurately that, before she could check herself, she said, 'Do you think so?'
Then Rob started, which confused both of them, and for the remainder of the dinner the loquacious lady seemed to take less interest in him, he could not understand why. Flung upon his own resources, he remembered that he had not spoken to the lady on his other side. Had Rob only known it, she felt much more uncomfortable in that great dining-room than he did. No one was speaking to her, and she passed the time between the courses breaking her bread to pieces and eating it slowly, crumb by crumb. Rob thought of something to say to her, but when he tried the words over in his own mind they seemed so little worth saying that he had to think again. He found himself counting the crumbs, and then it struck him that he might ask her if she would like any salt. He did so, but she thought he asked for salt, and passed the salt-cellar to him, whereupon Rob, as the simplest way to get out of it, helped himself to more salt, though he did not need it. The intercourse thus auspiciously begun, went no further, and they never met again. It might have been a romance.
The colonel had not quite finished his speech, which was to the effect that so long as his tenants looked up to him as some one superior to themselves they would find him an indulgent landlord, when the tread of feet was heard outside, and then the music of the waits. The colonel frowned and raised his voice, but his guests caught themselves tittering, and read their host's rage in his darkening face. Forgetting that the waits were there by his own invitation, he signed to James, the butler, to rush out and mow them down. James did not interpret the message so, but for the moment it was what his master meant.
While the colonel was hesitating whether to go on, Rob saw Nell nod encouragingly to Greybrooke. He left his seat, and before any one knew what he was about, had flung open one of the windows. The room filled at once with music, and, as if by common consent, the table was deserted. Will opened the remaining windows, and the waits, who had been singing to shadows on the white blinds, all at once found a crowded audience. Rob hardly realised what it meant, for he had never heard the waits before.
It was a scene that would have silenced a schoolgirl. The night was so clear, that beyond the lawn where the singers were grouped the brittle trees showed in every twig. No snow was falling, and so monotonous was the break of the river, that the ear would only have noticed it had it stopped. The moon stood overhead like a frozen round of snow.
Looking over the heads of those who had gathered at one of the windows, Rob saw first Will Abinger and then the form of a girl cross to the singers. Some one followed her with a cloak. From the French windows steps dropped to the lawn. A lady beside Rob shivered and retired to the fireside, but Nell whispered to Greybrooke that she must run after Mary. Several others followed her down the steps.
Rob, looking round for Walsh, saw him in conversation with the colonel. Probably he was taking down the remainder of the speech. Then a lady's voice said, 'Who is that magnificent young man?'
The sentence ended 'with the hob-nailed boots,' and the reference was to Rob, but he only caught the first words. He thought the baronet was spoken of, and suddenly remembered that he had not appeared at the dinner-table. As Sir Clement entered the room at that moment in evening dress, making most of those who surrounded him look mean by comparison, Rob never learned who the magnificent young man was.
Sir Clement's entrance was something of a sensation, and Rob saw several ladies raise their eyebrows. All seemed to know him by name, and some personally. The baronet's nervousness had evidently passed away, for he bowed and smiled to every one, claiming some burly farmers as old acquaintances though he had never seen them before. His host and he seemed already on the most cordial terms, but the colonel was one of the few persons in the room who was not looking for Miss Abinger. At last Sir Clement asked for her.
'I believe,' said some one in answer to the colonel's inquiring glance round the room, 'that Miss Abinger is speaking with the waits.'
'Perhaps I shall see her,' said Dowton, stepping out at one of the windows.
Colonel Abinger followed him to the window, but no farther, and at that moment a tall figure on the snowy lawn crossed his line of vision. It was Rob, who, not knowing what to do with himself, had wandered into the open. His back was toward the colonel, and something in his walk recalled to that choleric officer the angler whom he had encountered on the Dome.
'That is the man—I was sure I knew the face,' said Colonel Abinger. He spoke in a whisper to himself, but his hands closed with a snap.
Unconscious of all this, Rob strolled on till he found a path that took him round the castle. Suddenly he caught sight of a blue dress, and at the same moment a girl's voice exclaimed, 'Oh, I am afraid it is lost!'
The speaker bent, as if to look for something in the snow, and Rob blundered up to her. 'If you have lost anything,' he said, 'perhaps I can find it.'
Rob had matches in his pocket, and he struck one of them. Then, to his surprise, he noticed that Nell was not alone. Greybrooke was with her, and he was looking foolish.
'Thank you very much,' said Nell sweetly; 'it is a—a bracelet.'
Rob went down on his knees to look for the bracelet, but it surprised