"I begged your pardon then, Captain Marmaduke, and I beg it again if I've offended----" she began defiantly.
He interrupted her with an absolutely charming smile, a deference that was unanswerable.
"And I beg yours for remembering what I should have forgotten. So we are quits and can surely shake hands on it like the good friends we always were, and"--here his voice took on additional charm--"always will be. Of that I am sure."
His bold blue eyes were on hers frankly, and she gave him back his look steadily. So they stood, shapely hand in shapely hand, for a second. Then his left fingers caught at hers and felt the first one inquisitively.
"Hullo, seamstress, that's new?" he queried, evidently pleased with his own cleverness in detection.
Marrion Paul drew her hand away sharply.
"I've been at the dressmaking in Edinbro' these six years since grandfather married," she replied coldly.
Marmaduke looked at Davie Sim incredulously.
"What, Davie! You old reprobate, who the deuce did you get to marry you?"
There was no answer. Possibly Davie did not hear, for he was rootling round the kitchen fire with the poker--a most unnecessary task that sweltering June day. Perhaps, also, it was flame-reflection which made his face show red under the wide Tam o' Shanter bonnet he invariably wore in his own house; why it would be difficult to say, except that outside the precincts of home he was for ever doffing it before somebody or another. For Davie Sims had been born hereditary servitor to the Drummuir family, and had every intention of dying in the same position.
"He married Penelope from the castle," came Marrion's voice relentlessly, "and his lordship gave her away."
"The devil he did," remarked the young man helplessly to both pieces of information, after a moment's pause due evidently to mingled outrage and amusement. "Well," he added, in male defiance of the woman's point of view, "I expect she makes him an excellent wife."
"Most excellent!" assented Marrion, with a curl of her lip. "So, as she happens to be gone on a visit, I have come back to stay a while--a little while--with grandfather."
Her diction, bar the one slight slip, was as free from provincialism as his own, and Marmaduke Muir looked at her appreciatively. She was different from the hoyden he had left. Perhaps in Edinburgh she had gone in for classes. And she was better looking too, though much too tall for a woman. Then her mouth, though passable in its thin decided curves, was far too wide for beauty.
Still, she was altogether sufficiently pleasant to look upon for Marmaduke to feel it necessary for him to charm. Not that either by nature or art he was a lady-killer. To do him justice, he would have felt just the same had the attraction been male or neuter. Simply he always desired to please what was pleasant to himself, and his tastes were catholic.
So he said almost sentimentally:
"Well, I am very glad you're here. We shall be able to spend our birthdays together as we used to in the old times. Eighteenth of June! Waterloo day! Good heavens, I can scarcely believe that I shall be thirty tomorrow, and you?" He positively blushed, for in the year 1848 it was almost indecent for an unmarried woman to be six-and-twenty. Marrion, however, had no such qualms.
"Twenty-six," she said calmly; perhaps she knew she did not look it.
"Anyhow," he went on hastily, as if to escape from an unwelcome fact, "I have brought you a present from foreign parts." He had not even thought of one; in fact, he had only given his old playmate a passing remembrance, wondering whom she had married; but he knew his boxes contained enough trifles for the home folk to enable him to spare one, and he could no more help trying to charm than he could help breathing. "And now," he added, "I must be off. Tell me, Davie, like a good soul, where I am likely to find his lordship this time of day. I'm cursed early," he continued a bit ruefully, "but that's the worst of me. I'm always in such a devil of a hurry."
"You came across the ferry?" asked Marrion sympathetically.
He turned to her at once.
"Yes. It was the first coach. I wouldn't wait for the later one. And then when I got to the Cross Keys and saw the old place over the water, I wouldn't wait to go round by the bridges. So Andrew--you remember Andrew Fraser, of course?--'pon my soul, he's been a first-class orderly ever since he joined, and I don't know what I should have done without him; nursed me like a mother when I'd fever and all that sort of thing--a real honest good chap. Well, he got out the valise and carried it down the ferry road. I didn't know, you see, that the ferry was disused; but we luckily found someone's boat--and here I am--too soon!"
"I'm thinkin'," said Davie Sim, with caution, "that his lordship at this hour will, mayhap, be inspec'in' the pigstyes."
"Pigstyes!" echoed Marmaduke theatrically. "Say not so! Dash it all, I can't do prodigal in a pigstye! I demand a byre and a fatted calf. Well, I suppose I had better ring at the front door and ask the butler if my Lord Drummuir is at home like any orra' stranger. So--ta, ta, for the present!"
He waved an easy hand to Marrion as he passed out. She hesitated a second, then followed him into the sunlit courtyard and called--
"Captain Duke!"
He turned, looking so handsome and débonnaire that her purpose almost wavered. Why should she pour gall and wormwood into his cup of life before circumstances made the bitter inevitable? Still, since it had to come, and that shortly, it was as well he should be prepared for it. So much depended on the relations between him and his father that it was better he should not be taken unawares.
"If you are wanting to see his lordship the now," she said, her phrasing astray once more under pressure of other thoughts, "you wad find him in the south avenue. He was there when I came frae the town the now, cutting away at yen of the big beech trees."
"Cutting at a big beech tree! What the deuce do you mean?" queried Marmaduke incredulously.
She replied calmly, conclusively.
"Just that he must hae gotten a letter from your brother the Master. It aye angers him so that he orders out the men with the hatchets. It's as well you should know."
He stood staring at her. It was no news to him, of course, even though mails had been infrequent during those ten years, that there was an open breach between his father and the heir, nor was he unaware of his father's savage temper; that, and the impossibility of getting a decent allowance to enable him to live in England being responsible for those same ten years of foreign service. But distance softens shadows; besides, the very idea that a man could go and cut down historical trees just to spite another man was foreign to Marmaduke's nature.
"Oh, curse the whole lot!" he broke out at last. "Upon my soul I'll go back to the East--it isn't half a bad place--or wouldn't be if one only had a little tin--besides, I must get the money for my majority."
His words, following his impulsive thoughts, made Marrion smile indulgently.
"I wouldn't if I was you, Mr.--I mean Captain Duke," she remarked, with a twinkle in her eye. "Mayhap, my lord will bury the hatchet now you're home, if ye don't anger him." She looked pretty with that half-mischievous smile, and the sight cheered Marmaduke instantly.
"What a wise lassie you always were, Marmie," he said, with wilful charm, "and what a lot of scrapes you've gotten me out of, and what a lot you'd get me out of, if you were only bound up with me like the Shorter Catechism was by mistake with Tristram Shandy--d'you remember? Good lord, I've forgotten my duty to my neighbour! However, here goes, and I'll do my best not to anger the baron! You see, I must get the money for my majority," he added, half to himself, as he spun round on his heel rather dramatically.
In fact, there was no denying it, the Honourable Marmaduke Muir was a trifle flamboyant as he swaggered across the courtyard which led from the old keep of Drummuir Castle to the southern and modern portion of the building. Marrion Paul watched the figure with a certain distaste. Perhaps, she thought,