CONTENTS - Marmaduke - 4 - Flora Annie Webster Steel

"Hello, Davie! Is that you, Davie Sim?" cried a joyous young voice; then it changed suddenly, with a verve which showed pure delight in the unfamiliar yet familiar dialect, from correct English to the broadest Aberdeenshire accent. "Eh, mon, ye're joost the same ow'd tod o' a pease-bogle wi' yer bonnet ajee, an' a crookit mou'; yen hauf given tae psaulm singin' and tither tae pipe-blawing!" The voice paused a bit breathlessly as if it had exhausted itself over the unwonted exercise, then went on in slightly less aggressive Doric. "Well, I'm blythe to see you lookin' sae weel. An' is that tall lass Marrion?"

An easy gallantry came to his tones as the speaker, a fine young fellow of obviously military bearing, turned to a girl who stood very still by the window.

"By gad," the young man went on with the same easy condescension, "you have grown into a pretty girl! Give us a kiss, my dear; you know you used to be fond of 'Mr. Duke' in the----"

Then suddenly silence fell between the two young people. Something in the tall still figure by the window seemed to abash the tall figure making its way easily towards it, and left them looking at each other critically.

They were as fine a couple physically as God ever made to come together as man and woman. They were almost alike in stature and strength--she slightly the smaller--and both seemed equal in abounding health, though he was florid and she somewhat pale with the pallor of the thick creamy skin that goes with red-bronze hair.

She spoke at last, the thin curves of her mouth clipping her words sharply.

"There's mony to tell me yon and crave kisses since you an' me was hafflins together, Mr. Duke," she said coolly. "I beg yer pardon, Captain Marmaduke!"

The Honourable Captain Marmaduke Muir, second son of the sixteenth Baron Drummuir of Drummuir, home on leave after an absence of ten years on foreign service, looked at the grand-daughter of his father's head piper and general majordomo as if considering anger. He was too good looking to be accustomed to such rebuffs from pretty girls, especially when they were manifestly beneath him in station. Then suddenly he laughed. The years had fled, and he was a boy again in fast fellowship with a small hoyden of a girl; a girl four years his junior, but infinitely his superior in common sense; a girl who had kept him out of many a scrape and who hadn't scrupled on occasion to box his ears, young master though he was. With a sudden flash of memory the occasion came back to him, and he saw himself, a strong lad of fourteen, wading a swollen stream with the ten-year-old girlie on his back, a string of handsome trouties he had been catching hanging like a tail from his hands clasped behind his burden. He heard the agonised cry in mid-stream, "They're slippin', Maister Duke, they're slippin'! Let me down till I hoosen them up!" He heard the stiff reply: "Let 'em slip; I'll no let ye down tae soak ye through!" And then the woeful battle of wills that ensued, while the trouties slipped from the string one by one. A battle which ended in a sobbing girlie ankle deep in water, an empty string, and a defiant lad with young crimson ears. He felt his mature ones tingle with amusement at the recollection, and at the recognition that the girlie was as ready of resentment as ever.

"Ods bobs, Marmie!" he cried, his face full of mischief. "It seems you've no forgotten the whaur-aboots of my lugs," and his hands went up to his face as if to protect them.

The girl crimsoned.

"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, it was only the ultrafashionable dress, the all too palpable fit-out of a smart military tailor, eager for a bill, that clashed with the grim old walls. Inside he had seemed much the same as she remembered him. Kindly, affectionate, not over wise, but charming, absolutely charming. And, after all, who was she to judge a gentleman born? That question was a hard one to answer. Her mother had undoubtedly been Maggie Sim, old Sim's daughter, who had been maid to the first Lady Drummuir. But her father had been Paul, the foreign valet, whom Lord Drummuir's younger brother had brought over with him when he was invalided from the diplomatic service. A very decent, respectable sort of chap, as old Sim admitted even while he objected strongly to his daughter's marriage. Not without reason it turned out, since Paul, after tending his sick master with unremitting care and resource until his death, disappeared the day of the funeral, leaving his young wife expecting her first child. And he had never been heard of since. That Mrs. Paul should pine away and die early was, the folk about said, only to be expected, for Paul, despite his foreign birth, had been a man to be regretted--a man who had a way with him which his daughter had inherited. She, however, would never hear a word in his favour, and nothing made her more angry than to find in herself little traits of character unaccountable to her sturdy Scots upbringing.

So she told herself that she was no judge of what a gentleman's dress or deportment should be, and turned at the sound of a footstep coming through the archway of the keep behind her to greet the newcomer with a more effusive welcome than she would otherwise have given the young man who came towards her carrying a valise on his shoulder. He set down his burden and grasped her outstretched hand in a sort of transport.

"Ah, Marrion--Marrion, my lass!" he cried. "God, but it's gude to see you once mair!"

The words summed him up from the crown of his head to the tips of his toes. You might have spent long hours in analysing Andrew Fraser's mind and body at that particular moment, and you would have got no nearer the mark, since for the time being existence was sheer gladness because of the sight of a woman.

"And I've brocht him safe home as ye bade me when I joined. Ye'll have seen him yerself. He's fine, isn't he?"

There was a world of pride in his tone; the pride of the soldier-servant who is responsible for the smartness of his master's outturn.

"Aye!" assented Marrion, grimly recognising that the figure before her was more to her mind in some ways than the other which had gone swaggering through the quadrangle. This one was broader in the chest, simpler in its ugly angular face and small pathetic-looking blue eyes, and simple--oh, so irritatingly simple!--in the devotion writ large in its every look, its every intonation.

"Well, I'm glad you're both home safe," she said, putting the barrier of refined speech between them. Then a resentment, of which she was innately ashamed even while she yielded to it, made her add: "And I suppose you've brought home a wife on the strength of the regiment?"

Andrew Fraser stared for a second, then shouldered his valise again deftly--

"Ye ken fine, Marrion Paul," he said sternly, as he went on, "that there never was but ae woman in the wurrld for me, an' never will be."

And so he left her feeling small and mean.

She watched him across the courtyard following on his master's steps. A fine figure of a man. No swagger there, nothing to clash with the grey old walls.

But that made no difference, no difference at all. That was the worst of it.

[CHAPTER II]

Marmaduke Muir had meanwhile found his familiar way through the low arch which, piercing the extreme corner of the eastern side of the quadrangle, formed the connecting link between the older part of Drummuir Castle and the new. For the rest, this eastern wall showed blank save for a loophole or two. It was, in effect, simply the back wall of what in Scotland is called the square; that is, the continuation of stables, cow-houses and woodsheds which appertain to a country mansion in the north. It had evidently been built as a wind-screen to the western wing, which, overlooking the river, had been the residential portion of the house before the southern wing had been added to close in the quadrangle. Altogether it was a fine old place, magnificently situated in the slight hollow which dipped between the high old red sandstone cliffs of the Aberdeenshire coast, and the lower yet still high old red sandstone cliffs which for a mile or two formed the eastward bank of the river Drum. Standing still on the grass-plot in the centre of the courtyard a quick ear could detect two water sounds--the rhythmic roll of the waves of the North Sea on the one hand, and the incessant rush of the running river on the other.

Marmaduke did not pause to listen. He only felt a thrill of pride in the beauty of the stern old place before he passed through the arch into totally different surroundings. Here were wide well-kept lawns, beds of rhododendrons, then somewhat of a novelty, and in those northern climes ablaze with blossom this middle June. Further afield lay a typical East Aberdeenshire landscape of rolling arable land set with square plantations of wood and dotted at sparse intervals with solid grey granite farm-houses. Behind him, despite its wide portico and Grecian balustrade, the new wing of the old castle looked stern and stubborn as the rest.

He stood for a moment on the curving flight of massive steps and drew in a long breath of satisfaction; for right in front of him stretched something that once seen could never be forgotten. People came from far for a sight of the great beech avenue of Drummuir. And what they went out for to see was worth the seeing.

A cathedral aisle, not made by hand, solemn, serene. Soft sunlight filtering through a vaulted roof of leaves, wide spandrils of brown branches sweeping to wide arch from the pillars of the mighty tree trunks--a tessellated pavement of shade and shine.

He had seen the sight a thousand times, yet it brought now, as it had always brought, a vague wonder as to the long years since those giant beeches had sent their first feeler into Mother Earth's bosom. But, as ever, after the manner of such idle human wonders when confronted with the permanence of what men class as lower life, it passed, contentedly unsatisfied, to a flood of remembrance. How frightened he had been as a little chap when his nurse had dragged him home to bed--dark, lonely bed!--through those solemn shadows in the gloaming. He had changed, but the avenue had not. It was just the same. No, hardly! There was more shafted sunlight in the distance surely? And that rasping sound in the air--what was it?

Surely a cross-cut saw at work! Then Marmie had as usual told the truth. His father must be cutting down one of the historic beech trees, and there was no need to ring and ask for Lord Drummuir--no need at all! He was to be found as usual ungovernable, insensate, intolerant. A whole youth of rebellion stormed through Marmaduke Muir's mind as, at quick march, he fumed down to where the shameful deed was being done.

From far he could see it was in full swing. The team of horses ready to give the final pull, the stays to other trees, the whole paraphernalia of destruction including the cluster of workmen busy round the doomed tree. And see! Safe to windward--aye, you bet, safe, jolly safe!--the knot of spectators gathered round a bath-chair. That held his father, of course. And the others? They would not be the old sycophants possibly, but they would be of the same kidney. A woman, too! Not his half-sisters--they, poor souls, would be weeping in the dower house over the injury to their brother the heir and to the heirloom beech! And it would not be Penelope--she had been handed over to Davie Sim. By Jupiter, it was too bad! He quickened his pace, fretted by the rush of bitter resentment; then paused suddenly--

Hist! The melodious whistle of a blackbird overhead ceased, and a little rustling sound asserted itself above the constant burring of the saw. The squirrels were leaping from branch to branch.

"Look to yersels--look to yersels! She's yieldin'! Stan' clear for your life. Stan' clear! She yieldin'!"

The cry rose none too soon. There was an instant's hurry, then an instant's intense silence, on which came a sharp crack like a pistol-shot, as the fine old tree, less tough than men had reckoned it, tilted slowly as if uncertain which way to seek its grave. So while men held their breath it stood arrested, defiant; then with a roar and a rush, a swish of sweeping branches, a surging of green leaves, it sank like the tumultuous onrush of some mighty wave, to fall a confused tumbling heap of shade and shine upon the kindly earth exactly where the wit of man had destined it to lie.

A noisy clapping of hands and a high-pitched feminine laugh rose from about the bath-chair; but, ere the applause ceased, a young accusing figure positively flaming with wrath had sprung forward, leaped upon the sawn root of the fallen tree, and so framed as with a halo by the new-cut bole--which measured over seven feet in diameter--bawled out in a voice quivering with sheer passion:

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, sir! Go home to bed, you miserable old gouty cripple; you've done enough mischief for one day!"

Marmaduke was given to being dramatic, but he had never been more effective than at that moment. He stood his ground like a young avenging angel, secretly elated at having done the business thoroughly well and defied his father, despite Marrion Paul's advice. He almost smiled at the thought of her dismay. Meanwhile, the face of the old man in the bath-chair had grown positively purple with anger, and the colour did not improve the heavy contours of chin, double chin, treble chin, which melted over the high white stock. Yet, barring this exuberant fleshiness, the face was not a bad face. It had indeed its measure of good looks, being not unlike Marmaduke's own. The bald head, if a trifle small, was well shaped, the blue eyes clear, if a trifle cold, and the lips, cruel enough in their heavy curves, had evidently done a deal of laughing in their day to judge by the lines about them. Altogether a strong, sensible face; but arrogant, intolerant to a degree, especially now when its owner was listening to the defiance of his son--a son dependent on him for every farthing beyond his miserable pay as a captain in His Majesty's forces--a son who----

For a moment Baron Drummuir looked as if he must have a fit; then he laughed--a great rude, rough guffaw.

"'Pon my soul," he chuckled, "it's as good as a play! So it's you, is it, you young fool? How the deuce did you get here at this time of day? We didn't expect you for another two hours, so I decided business first"--he waved carelessly to the fallen tree--"and pleasure--that's you, jackanapes--afterwards. Eh, what! Hey!"

This calm reception of his insults completely took the starch out of them and poor Marmaduke, who, standing on his pedestal, could think of nothing further to say save to mumble something about the short cut by the old ferry road.

The baron, as he loved to be called, chuckled again.

"Good boy--anxious as all that to see his poor old dad. And came in the nick of time to see me kill my fatted calf"--he waved to the fallen tree again. "I've killed it nicely, haven't I? And"--here a flicker of pure hatred passed across the fleshy face--"the devil take the man who made me do it!"

His father's expression re-aroused Marmaduke's anger.

"You curse yourself by saying that, sir," he burst out; "for God knows you always do what you want--nobody makes you."

Once again the old man took the starch out of the young one.

"Smart!" he said coolly. "Demned smart, my dear boy! I wonder you don't get on better in life than you do, judging by your constant but fruitless appeals to my cash-box. But get down off your high horse, there's a good lad--you look like some damned play-acting fool up there--and give your old dad a paw; the left one, young ass, the left! Can't you see my right is all bandaged up with the most infernal fit of my old enemy I've had since last Christmas? All that Périgord-pie old Hare sent me. I'll baste his fat liver for him when he comes to-morrow. Lordy lord! Puts me in mind, Marmaduke, of the old days when your mother--she was the best of the three--used to say to you, a little lad, 'The right hand, my dearie. The right hand, my lovie.' And you never could remember. You were a bit of a dullard, but fine and strong and handsome. Not like that cursed skunk, Master Pitt--but there, don't let's mar the harmony of the occasion, eh, Jack?" He turned to a small man with somewhat of a weasel face who stood beside him listening devoutly, as were all the group. "You remember Jack Jardine, don't you, Duke?"

"Slightly," smiled the young man, grasping the other's hand and shaking it violently. "One of the few pleasant reminiscences, sir, I have of Drummuir Castle." He echoed his father's reckless disregard of other folks' feelings with superb indifference and gave back the old man's critical look coolly.

The latter laughed.

"Just what I was at his age--eh, what? Lordy lord, Jack, how we smashed all the lamp-posts in Dodston and told the provost to send the policeman with the bill! Ha, ha! and old cat Carnegie sitting in the hearse with her skirts up to her knees going to the Hunt ball when we'd commandeered every other conveyance in the town. Ha, ha! how the pretty little lassies showed their sandalled ankles, bless 'em, trying to keep their dresses clear of coffins. But I am forgetting. Sandalled ankles reminds me--eh, Fantine? Come here, my dear. I must present you to my second son, Captain--he wants to be a major, I'm told--Marmaduke Muir. Marmaduke, make your due respects to Mdlle. Fantine Le Grand, your future stepmother!"

The dainty little figure, which till then had been standing with one tiny, much-beringed hand resting on the back of the bath-chair, its inquisitive, almost colourless grey eyes taking in the minutest detail of the scene, took a step forward and prepared to make a full-flounced curtsey. But Marmaduke was too quick, too prompt in his perceptions. He grasped the situation and the little lady in a second. The general pinkness of complexion and furbelows, the jimpness of the long trim waist, the uncompromising bands of black velvet, the showers of fair ringlets. His hat was off with a flourish, he also took a step forward to meet the curtsey, but, bending with a "grand air" that did him infinite credit, gave the powdered face a resounding kiss.

The recipient let loose a decorous shriek outwardly; within it was easy to see amused acquiescence. Once again old Lord Drummuir looked as though he would have a fit.

"You dashed young scoundrel," he spluttered.

Marmaduke held his head very high.

"Excuse me, sir," he said, "if I've done wrong; but you said she--I beg pardon, Mdlle. Fantine Le Grand"--his eyes flashed into hers boldly and met a smile--"was to be my stepmamma, so I thought----"

"Oh, the devil take your thoughts," growled his father, but his lips twitched suspiciously. Then suddenly he burst out once again into one of his rude, rough guffaws. "Regular chip of the old block, hey, Jack? Well, Fan, I dare say you don't mind. Haven't too long, you know, of such gay young sparks, for as soon as I'm about again he shall dance at your wedding. Now, for heaven's sake, don't let's stop chattering here! I've got to see my daughters and I want to talk to my son. No, no, you jackanapes, keep away just now! My gout's cursed, the road is cursed, and my temper will be cursed too; so I should likely disinherit you before we got on to the lawn. Fan shall stop by me. I won't have you gallivanting with my son, d'ye hear? He's a good-looking chap, confound him, but you've got to pay for the title, my lady! Have a care, blockhead! Didn't you see that stone? Don't let it hurt your pretty little feet, Fan."

Marmaduke, dropping behind with Jack Jardine, gave a fierce sigh as he watched the little cavalcade move off amid this running fire of curses and kindliness.

"Is it all just as it used to be, Jack?" he asked helplessly.

The little man cleared his throat.

"A little worse perhaps. Your father is a very remarkable man, Marmaduke--a very remarkable man!"

[CHAPTER III]

Anyone who had seen Lord Drummuir ten minutes after Jack Jardine's remark must have echoed it, for a more complete volte face of manner, speech, and apparently temperament than that which overtook the baron in the dower house could not be imagined. Still in his bath-chair, which Marmaduke had dutifully pushed in through the French windows on to the green-grounded, cabbage-rosed drawing-room carpet, he beamed round on his daughters and their chaperon with a paternal affection which was almost pathetic. The Honourable Miss Muirs were three in number and they had all greeted their younger half-brother with reserved kisses. But then everything they did was reserved. Miss Mary, the eldest, was reserved even about her tendency to grow stout, which, all things considered, was the strongest interest in her life. Miss Elizabeth, the second, a very elegant looking woman, was equally reserved about her undoubted intellect, while Miss Margaret, a great tall, strapping figure with all her father's force of character and all his soundness of constitution, held both in check, except when she managed a lonely walk with her dogs in the woods. Then her voice would ring out deep and true, and at the crack of her whip every puppy within miles would come in contentedly to heel.

Her father liked her the least, probably because of the contrast between her and his ricketty male heir, so in the shabby Victorian drawing-room she generally sat mumchance, showing up badly against her sisters' exquisite manners. For no one knew better than Lord Drummuir what a gentlewoman should be, and therefore he had been extremely particular about his daughters' education. To what end, heaven alone knew, since they lived on, year after year, in the dower house, occasionally visiting in stately fashion the late minister's wife (though this distraction was no longer theirs owing to the State appointment of a bachelor to the living), and, very occasionally, seeing some of their father's older and more respectable friends. In regard to this, however, and to kindred matters no grand Turk could have been more autocratic than was Lord Drummuir. So he sat and discoursed on Shakespeare and the musical glasses, on his delight at seeing his dearest boy again, leading the latter on to detail some of the more instructive portions of his foreign life, until the full half-hour which he daily bestowed on his daughters was up. Then with the utmost punctuality he took out his watch, said he feared he must be off, and congratulated himself and the three young ladies on a charming conversation.

"You are too good, papa," replied the young ladies, as they deposited a decorous kiss on his bald head. So they stood and watched the bath-chair roll along the lawn till it reached the turn by the rhododendrons which hid it from view, and then they waved their handkerchiefs. And the baron waved his in return, thereinafter using it to mop his forehead relievedly, while he ejaculated, "Thank God, that's over!"

Whereat Marmaduke smiling, the old man went on serenely.

"Never forget, my boy, how to treat women of good character. The other comes naturally, but I'm damned if I ever forgot my manners with a really good woman. And you will find it pays, Duke, it pays. So now have not you got some bit of spice, or an on dit to amuse the old man with? Curse me, but I lead a miserable life here, tied down by this infernal complaint; but I am paying now for the follies and indiscretions of youth. Confound you, Marmaduke, you might think of your poor old father's joints and not rush your fences in that way!"

"I beg your pardon, sir," replied Marmaduke, meekly glad of the turn he had given the conversation by deploying the bath-chair into the gravel walk; for, in good truth, he had no great relish for spicy stories. Not that he was a prig, but that he had been born a sportsman, to whom indoor life was dull and irksome. So he welcomed another interruption in the shape of a young man who came hastily down the path to meet them.

"Why, I believe it's Peter!" he cried joyously, and the next minute was shaking hands with his young half-brother, the fruit of Lord Drummuir's third but not last marriage; for his wives never lived long, except the first, who had lingered for years, only giving him useless daughters. "Why, Peter, how you've grown!" remarked Marmaduke unnecessarily, seeing he had been away ten years.

"So've you--you're a giant beside the rest of us, except Meg! Pitt and I----" The lad pulled himself up sharp. "Well, I say, sir, we must have a rousin' night to celebrate Duke's return!"

Marmaduke, looking at the slender, fair-haired youth with a weak mouth and an excited manner, thought he had probably roused too much. Instinctively, therefore, since he had often been drunk himself--it was the fashion of the time--he changed the subject again to one that had come uppermost in the old familiar surroundings.

"I say, how about the grouse? Is it to be a good year?"

His eyes as he spoke almost yearned over a swelling purpled horizon curve which told where the best moors in that part of Aberdeenshire were to be found.

Five minutes after the old lord, still in his bath-chair, was discoursing in the most animated and amiable fashion about sport past and present and to come, while his two sons, one of them sprawling on the lawn, joined in amicably.

So amicably that Mdlle. Fantine Le Grand, watching them from her boudoir windows, turned to a man who was lounging in a chair reading the papers, and said--

"This sort of thing won't do, Compton. That young man is too charming."

The man to whom she spoke did not look up. He went on reading, as he said--

"You don't often find them too charming, Fan!"

"Don't be a fool, Tom," she replied curtly, coming to sit beside him. "You know quite well what I mean. Young men of that sort always are in debt; besides, I've heard the old man say something about money for a majority. Now the estate's entailed, so payments of that sort must come out of what I mean to be mine--and I won't have it!"

"Sound common sense, Fan," said her companion, yawning; "but you are always in such a hurry to begin. Wait a few days and see how the land lies first. You've always the best of weapons in your hand."

"What's that?"

"Jealousy. The old man is as jealous as old boots. Once make him fancy young Marmaduke is sweet on you, and he goes to the right-about."

Fantine sat back and laughed.

"You are always so comforting, Tom."

He rose and put down his paper.

"Always ready to help, my dear; but you remember our compact--half shares when the old man dies."

"He'll be good for another ten years if I marry him," she called after her late companion, as he strolled out of the room.

Then she sat down and faced facts. In truth she was getting tired of her rôle of première danseuse at a London theatre. Perhaps, she even admitted, she was a trifle too old for the agile cutting of capers. She felt vaguely that she would like to draw in her horns and let her waist out, and she was quite ready to take Lord Drummuir as a means of satisfying both ambitions. In her way she was neither bad nor unkind, simply egotistic to a degree. In this last episode of an eventful career which seldom outlasts the age of forty, she had deliberately played for semi-respectability, and had only come down to stay at Drummuir Castle under the wing of an impeccable duenna. Not that the fact had in the least imposed on the old lord. He was shrewd enough to know Miss Fanny Biggs, or, as she chose to style herself, Mdlle. Fantine Le Grand, down to the ground. But it was something to have someone to dance for him (as she did to distraction), when he had a fit of the gout and look quite deucedly pretty at all times. So the bargain was made. A title in exchange for amusements. But Fantine Le Grand looked beyond the old man's life; she looked for comfortable widowhood. So she wandered again to the window and watched the family trio on the lawn. It was far too filial for her tastes. Tom Compton, so-called Colonel of Irregulars, one of her oldest friends, had been right. Jealousy would be a good card to play. And then she laughed suddenly at the recollection of Marmaduke's filial salute. He was better-looking than his father must have been at his age, but, according to the latter, he was "a chip of the old block." So he would be easy prey.

Meanwhile, Colonel Compton having joined the group on the lawn, the conversation had drifted round to politics, and the old lord, being an ardent Whig, had waxed fast and furious on the enormities of the Tories. A perfectly innocent subject, but one which did not interest Marmaduke, who thereupon drifted away to find Jack Jardine, from whom he hoped to hear the truth as to his father's present relations with the heir, the Master, and also--though this interested him less, since it was to a certain degree patent--with Mdlle. Le Grand. So, as they sat smoking Fubaurg's tobacco out of long clay pipes after the fashion of the times, they discussed the situation.

"You ask how the breach has widened," said Jack Jardine. "Well, I don't think it has done so abnormally. It has been going on ever since poor Pitt turned out such a weakling. You know the family history. After he married Lady Helen, whom he shouldn't have married because she too, poor soul, was, as it were, doomed to disease, though she was a duke's daughter and so, satisfied his lordship's pride--a miserable story, Duke, a miserable story. Well, there was one disappointment about an heir after another, as you know, Duke, and it hit home into the peer--for he is no fool. Put it briefly, though he is quite ready to tell you he is suffering from the indiscretions of youth while he is in torments with the gout, and at the same time supping every night on broiled foxes' tongues and mulled claret, he can't bear to see the results in Pitt. He hates him because he hasn't the physique to carry on the name. He is a very remarkable man, Duke, is your father."

"Very," assented the young man grimly. "I wish the devil he wasn't."

"That's why I, and all the rest of us who have Drummuir interests at heart, are so glad you've come home. You're presumptive heir now, and to all intents and purposes you're 'apparent.' And you're straight and strong, thanks to your poor mother. So we look to you to keep up the honour of the name. I believe if you play your cards well, you might easily oust Miss Fanny Biggs, or Mdlle. Fantine----"

Marmaduke burst into a laugh.

"Thank you," he said; "that is most succinct! I needn't ask any more. But does the old man really mean to marry her?"

Jack Jardine nodded.

"Would have done it three months ago but for the gout. And she isn't really so bad, but devilish sly; and that man Compton, whom the peer has taken up with over the railway business, is in with her." He gave a sigh and knocked the ashes out of his pipe. "I've my work cut out for me, Duke, I can tell you."

There was a slight pause, and then Marmaduke said curiously--

"I've often wondered, Jack, why you, who by your brains could have made your own way, have been contented to stick on in this cursed old place among us cursed people, letting us youngsters call you Jack and borrow money from you. By the way, I shouldn't have been able to come home if you hadn't sent me that last hundred pounds."

Jack Jardine said nothing; then he walked to the window.

"You may as well know, Duke, it may help you to steer your way. It is because I, a poor lawyer, loved your mother--not before, but after she became Lady Drummuir! Of course she never guessed; but I helped her to try and keep your father straight. She led an awful life----"

"You needn't tell me that!" broke in Marmaduke, fiercely.

"Yet your father didn't mean ill to her. Anyhow, I tried to help her, and so I suppose it became a habit. Love is a queer thing, Duke!"

"I believe it is," said Marmaduke, magisterially, "but it has not come my way yet," and he added joyously, "I hope it won't for some years to come, for I like enjoying myself."

Apparently he did; for as the summer evening began to close in on Drummuir Castle and the menkind, with only Mdlle. Fantine and her duenna to represent the opposite sex, gathered in the huge dining-room to attack a heavy dinner which would have sufficed for a regiment, he was the life and soul of the party, and ate through the menu with a relish which aroused regret and admiration in the old lord.

"Dash it all," he bawled, "why can't I eat soup, fish, top and bottom and four sides through five courses like that dashed youngster of mine, who puts it on to his shoulders instead of his waist like I do?"

And when the claret began to circle round faster and faster Marmaduke never let it pass; so that when, with sweet decorum, Mdlle. Fantine and her duenna prepared to withdraw, he nearly killed the Skye terrier in his flamboyant haste to open the door. Nay, more! He followed them into the corridor for an instant. What passed there none saw, but he returned to his seat with flushed cheeks and throbbing veins, feeling vaguely that the battle of wits had begun.

Of what followed his memory was confused. He remembered that outside the windows the summer twilight was still flooding the green lawns, while humanity inside, after guzzling itself stupid with rich food, was trying to grow witty over the boozing of mulled claret and whisky-toddy. They began, of course, with the young queen's health, and went on methodically till they came to the good old Scotch toast: "Here's to oorsels. Wha' better? Damn few!" After this, which seemed to afford general satisfaction, they proceeded to particularise, and Marmaduke had a dim recollection of someone proposing "The future Commander-in-Chief, coupled with the name of Captain Marmaduke Muir."

But whether he replied, or whether the effort to rise and do so was too much for him and he rolled under the table, he could not say.

Certain it is that on that first night of his return to the home of his fathers Marmaduke Muir was hopelessly drunk.

Certain also that he erred in company, the only sober man being Jack Jardine, who invariably sought the shelter of the table at an early period and lay there comfortably, his head on a buffet, listening to the commiserations on his weak head until he fell asleep, to wake when the carouse was over, and see that the gentlemen's gentlemen sorted their respective masters to their respective beds.

[CHAPTER IV]

Marrion Paul sat in the semi-darkness of the summer night waiting for her grandfather to return from his duties at the Castle. She did not generally do so, for he was apt to be late; but on this, the first day of Captain Duke's return, sleep would have been out of the question until she heard something of the evening. For she did not mince matters with herself; those six years of independent life in Edinburgh had opened her eyes to the world, and the first sight of Marmaduke Muir had told her that the long ten years had not changed her at all; that he was as much the sun in her heaven as he had been in the old childish days. The sun in her heaven, and something more superadded to those olden times.

Then the day had been disturbing. Everyone had come to her praising the Captain's looks and ways and general charm; to all of which she had replied coolly, feeling the while in a perfect quiver of gladness. Miss Margaret had been the hardest to damp when she had appeared in the afternoon with the sporting dogs and a stout crop in her hand on her way to take them a scramble over the rocks and round by the lower bay.

"Oh, Marrion!" she cried enthusiastically. "Saw you ever the like? Elizabeth says he's like the Apollo Belvidere!"

"I am not knowing the gentleman," protested Marrion distantly. "But Captain Duke has grown to a fine figure. But has Miss Muir seen Andrew Fraser? He's twice the man he was when he went away."

It was a false move on Marrion's part, for it brought on her instantly the hearty reply--

"I'm glad to hear it, Marmie; so I suppose we will be having you cried in the kirk before long. Duke says he has been most faithful."

Whereupon the speaker called to her dogs in a stentorian voice worthy her father's, cracked her whip scientifically, and strode away for an hour or two's freedom. For the atmosphere of the dower house was stifling, and there was always a chance of meeting the Rev. Patrick Bryce on the sands below the rocks, where he went always to compose his sermons, with which the reverend gentleman had no little difficulty. Not because he was stupid, but because he found it laborious to reconcile his own views with those of his flock; they, however, being inclined to be lenient with one who had earned for himself the nickname of "the bonny parson," and who was known to be the best shot and fisherman in the district. For this reason he would have been welcome at the Castle, but for his unswerving outspoken protest against its general behaviour.

Marrion, meanwhile, finding more peace as the day died down, took to wandering at the far side of the quadrangle listening to the distant sounds of revelry; her hands, as she walked, busy with her knitting-pins--after the fashion of Scotchwomen in those days--going faster and faster as her thoughts grew hotter over what she knew was happening at the other side of the blank wall. Guzzling and boozing! First the masters, then the men-servants, while away in the back premises the scullerymaids and kitchenmaids were working hard. It was a shame, a burning shame; but if ever she had a son she would see to it that he was different.

But she never would have a son; anyhow, not Andrew Fraser's, be he ever so sober, so upright. That was the worst of it. With an impatient sigh she hurried outside the keep door to stand and watch the last faintly flushed clouds of sunset in the nor'-west fade over the darkling stretches of moorland.

It must be nigh twelve of the clock, for eastwards, over the darkling stretches of the sea, a faint lightening of the horizon, which held such a hint of restlessness even in its shadow, told where the sun would soon rise again. For in those high northern latitudes there is a bare two hours' darkness in a summer night.

Twelve o' the clock, and after that would be their birthday. Well, good luck to him wherever he went! Some day he must be the laird--Baron Drummuir. Nothing to hinder that must come into his life--nothing!

The faithfulness of inherited service was in her blood. She recognised this and sometimes wondered if her own devotion to the honour and welfare of the House of Drummuir was not stronger even than her grandfather's; possibly because her father, by all repute, had been a faithful servant, too; such things are not to be escaped.

She was aroused from her thoughts by a wavering step in the quadrangle, and returned to meet her grandfather in the expansive stage of intoxication.

"Aye, my lass," he went on, when he had wept a few easy tears over her goodness in sitting up for him, "it was just a gran' nicht. The pipes seemed fey and I blawed at them till we was baith like to burst. An' my lord, he was for havin' oot the biggest bottle o' pickled foxes' tongues, an' he devilled them himsel' in a chaffin' dish afore them all, an' they a' drunk wi' mirth an' guid claret. Jock, the butler, was tellin' me--there was twal o' them--that they were drinkin' thirty bottles o' the best, forbye sixteen tum'lers of hot whisky-toddy, the Sheriff and the Lord Provost had, honest gentlemen, to their lane--an' there wud be no 'hoot-toots' where the Shirra was concerned! Then the laird o' Balbuggo--he has a weak head, yon man, was for ridin' hame and was no to be hindered frae it; sae Captain Duke an' anither young spark jest perched his saddle to the loupin'-on-stane and pit the guid man to it. An' there he sat tittuping away his lane for an hour or sae quite blythe, till they tell't him he was at Balbuggo, and he just aff an' awa tae his bed like a lammie."

"And Captain Duke?" asked the girl, with scorn in her voice, pity in her heart, despite the irrepressible smile in her eyes. "Was he drunk, too?"

Old Davie winked solemnly.

"Aye, that was he--he was fair fou--but," he added carefully; "he took his cups real well! Not like Mr. Peter, that syne gets tae sickness and----"

"Gran'father," cried the girl passionately, interrupting him, "it's gettin' late! You must away to your bed, or you'll no be up the morn to pipe 'Hey! Johnnie Cope, are ye waukin' yet?' I'll see to the doors."

"No be up?" contended the old man. "I tell ye if the arkaungel Gabbriel was tae soun' his trump any day at half-after seven, he'd find Davie Sims--aye, and his forbears an' descendants--skirling awa' at that same tune up an' dune a' the passages in Drummuir Castle tae wake the gentlefolk! Aye, that wad he"--here he began stumbling up the stair with his candle held at an angle of forty-five--"though it's hard on a body that's had tae pipe to the deil ower nicht to think o' his duty tae the sluggard."

Here his maunderings became unintelligible, and the girl he left turned to the closing of the house, her heart hot as fire with indignation, chill as ice with scorn.

What else was there to expect? Like father, like son! When she had drawn the bolts she went up to her own room and flung its little window wide. The full moon shone round like a shield, and by its light she could see the whole wild coast stretching northwards from Drumkirk Point to Rattray Head. And after that? The North Pole, of course! Dear inaccessible region to all but the strong, the single of heart, the men who could command others--and themselves.

She scarcely knew what it was that she raged against as slowly, methodically, she began to undress. The little brilliant or paste brooch, she knew not which, formed of two crossed p's which was the only relic she possessed of her dead father, arrested her for a second. What sort of a man had he been really, she wondered, and what sort of a son would hers be when she had one?

She flung the tiny bauble from her impatiently, so stood for a second drawn up to her full height, her bare arms crossed, her shapely hands clasping their smooth roundness; then, with a sudden sob, she realised what had come to her, and, throwing herself face downwards on her bed, lay for a minute or two still as the dead. Then as suddenly she sat up again with a world of puzzled wonder in her strained eyes.

"I canna think," she murmured, "what gars' me love him so, but I do, and there's an end o' it."

Possibly; but such knowledge as that which had just burst over her like a storm does not make for quiet sleep. She told herself a thousand and one wise things, but the hours slipped by, bringing at last a conviction of hopelessness. She would be better up than pretending to rest, so she went to stand at the window once more.

The flush of coming day was clear now in the northeast, the flood-tide of the full moon lay mysterious in the embrace of the rocks. Ere long the rising sun would send battalions on battalions of shining golden ripples to storm the estuary and climb the shadowy cliff on which the castle stood--where he lay drunk!

Ah, well! That would not spoil the beauty of it all, which she had so often seen, and the nip of the salt North Sea might check her silly desire for him. The room felt stifling; she would be better outside.

So, slipping on her swimming-dress of coarse white flannel blanketing (for ever since those childish days when she and Duke had done everything in common she had been an expert swimmer), she threw a plaid round her, and made her way through the keep gateway to the rocks below. There was no breeze, the tide must be at its height almost, and there was the spent moon, pale with its long night-watch, hanging on the grey sky of dawn. Ah, these were the things worth having--the others could be set aside with joy!

Ere five minutes were over, breathless from her fierce driving strokes through the water, she had turned over on her back, and, face to the skies, was trying to imagine she was floating thitherwards. The gulls, wakened by the coming light, skimmed over her in their quest for food. The little pointed wavelets that rose and fell, marking the course of the river stream, made a fine, sobbing, tinkling noise in her ears.

Full flood-tide!

She laughed aloud in the joy of it; then, rolling over again, struck out for the opposite shore. Higher up the estuary there was a little sheltered bay whence she could watch the panorama of dawn. When she drew herself out of the water on to a convenient rock the air struck warm, and the stone beneath her had scarce lost yester-sun's heat. It would be a perfect day--if anything over hot, for a faint opalescence already lay on sea and sky.

As she sat waiting for the first rays of the sun to "skim the sea with flying feet of gold," she unplaited her russet hair, which had become loosened, and, combing out its long length with her fingers, prepared to plait it up again.

Suddenly a voice startled her.

"A beauteous mermaid, by Jove! Fair lady----"

The theatrical intonation did not deceive her. She slipped like any seal into the water, and so protected looked back to see Marmaduke Muir. He was still in his over-night's dress-clothes, but their utter disarray made them more consonant with his occupation, for he held a salmon-rod in his hand, a creel had unfastened his ruffled shirt at the neck, and he had evidently torn off his stiff stock for more ease, and kicked away his pumps for firmer foothold on the rocks. His face showed no sign of last night's carouse, and Marrion, looking at it, could not but confess that some sins leave no mark on a man. Ere she could utter a word, his surprise found speech.

"Why, Marmie!" Then in a half-awed tone he added: "What beautiful hair you've got, my dear!"

"Aye," she replied imperturbably, feigning perfect calm, "it's fine! Folk is aye tellin' me o' 't. The hairdresser in Edinbro' was offering me a lot for it."

He sat down on the rocks above where she lay swaying with the long roll of the distant waves outside the bar, her hands holding to the seaweed.

"Goth and Vandal! But you didn't let him have it. Wise Marmie, but then you always were wisdom itself! I remember----"

He was becoming vaguely sentimental, so she brought him back to earth with a round turn.

"You'll no have been gettin' any fish the morn?" she queried.

"No fish!" he echoed loftily. "What do you call that?"

He pulled out of his creel a seven-inch burnie and laid it with pomp on the rocks. Then their young laughter echoed out into the dawn.

"But I got a hold on another," he went on, keen as a boy. "A real good one--as big as any I ever got in the castle pool--perhaps bigger. You see they were talking of the fishing yesterday and they all said it was no good. Not enough water. So I didn't intend to try; but--well, you see, my dear, I got drunk last night--I did--and I woke up about half an hour ago with a beastly headache. So then I thought I'd go out and see if the fish weren't moving, and as they'd put me to bed in my clothes--I must have been horrid drunk, and Andrew, you see, was away with his people--I just took one of Peter's rods and ferried myself over in the boat. It's up yonder. I'll take you back in it, if you like."

The idea was preposterous. Marrion imagined herself arriving at the castle, where the servants were ever early astir, in her bathing dress with the Captain! So she hastily drew a red herring across the trail.

"And was the fish real big, Captain Duke?" she asked.

"Big! I tell you it was the biggest I, or, for the matter of that, anyone else ever caught in the castle pool."

"Fish are aye big when they are in the water, I'm thinking," she cast back at him, as, loosing her seaweed hold, she struck out.

He sprang up.

"You're not going to try and cross now!" he cried, pointing to where in mid-stream a wide oily streak told that tide and river were flowing out fast. "The ebb is at its strongest. Marmie, don't be a fool!"

She gave a quick glance forward, then looked back to smile farewell.

"Aye, it's strong, but I've done it before now. There's no fear for me, Captain Duke."

So saying she turned her head upstream, seeing indeed that she would have to be careful not to be swept past her bearings when she got to mid-channel; so she did not see Marmaduke tear off his creel, his coat, and waistcoat, and, in thin ruffled shirt and kersey breeches, launch himself into the water. But his tremendous underwater strokes soon brought him up almost beside her to shake his curly head like a retriever. She looked at him startled and quickened her strokes, whereupon he changed to overhand and ranged up beside her without effort.

"Where did you learn yon?" she asked, more for something to break a silence which made her heart beat than from curiosity. "You usen't to swim that way."

"In the Indies," he replied, laughing. "I must teach it to you; but it isn't much good in currents. By Jove, how jolly this is. Why the deuce did I take the boat? I say--look out! I feel the trend of the stream."

Small doubt of that. They were through the backwater and in another minute would be in the full of outgoing river and outgoing tide. The opposite bank seemed slipping past them rapidly. Duke changed his stroke instantly and ranged up beside Marrion.

"It will be easier together," he said, passing his hand over her shoulder, and obediently she passed hers over his.

"Now then, together!" he cried. "And if you tire you know what to do; and keep time, there's a good girl."

So they struck off, the forward lunge of his long legs aiding hers, that were so far behind in strength. Thus they battled the stream shoulder to shoulder, almost cheek to cheek, her long loose hair sweeping across him, until the worst of it was over and the girl would fain have loosed her grip and turned shorewards definitely.

"Not yet!" he laughed. "Let's swim out to sea a bit! Look--isn't it worth it?"

Aye, worth everything else in the world. Far out in the east over that restless horizon the first ray of the sun had tipped, sending a widening, radiant path of pure gold to meet them. It shone on her red-brown hair, turning it to bronze; it shone in their blue eyes, turning them to sapphires; and it shone on their wholesome, happy faces, transfiguring them out of all semblance to beings of dingy earth and purifying them from all mortal taint. They were freed souls swimming in the vasty ether, all around them the dawn of a new day.

So they went on and on, till suddenly Duke veered their course shorewards with one guiding stroke.

"I shall tire you out," he said softly, and his freed hand, as he disentangled her hair from his neck, lifted the shiny strands to his lips for a second. "You have got such jolly hair, Marmie! I wonder you don't wear it down your back. None of the fellows could resist you then."

Their faces were away from the dawn now and hers already had a cloud on it.

"I'm going to the big rock. I left my shawl there," she said, directing her course towards it.

Duke followed suit in silence. Suddenly he said--

"I can't think how I was such a fool as to get drunk last night. It shan't occur again; but, you know, I shouldn't have had this perfectly stunning time if I hadn't, should I? We must repeat it every morning, Marmie, mustn't we?"

"Weather permitting," she replied, almost bitterly. "But it's no often sae comfortable to be in the water as it is this morning, Mr. Duke."

"Ah, you should have been with me in the Indies! You could stop in all day. You're not feeling cold, I hope?"

Cold! With every pulse in her body clamouring for sheer joy in his presence.

"I'll no be cold when I get my shawl," she said calmly; then, seeing him turn, called quickly--

"You're no going across again, Mr. Duke, it isn't safe!"

"Didn't I tell you so from the beginning, eh? No; of course I'm not. I'm going to swim up the side to the steps and send the ghillie for the boat."

She watched the rhythmic spluttering of his overhand stroke past the point. He would be home before her, she thought, as somewhat wearily she climbed the rocks to the keep. It had been a real joy. In all her life, long or short, she would never forget it.

That was the pity of it, for the memory might become a pain.

[CHAPTER V]

Marmaduke Muir's repentances, like many of his virtues and vices, were apt to be evanescent. So the next week, it is to be feared, saw many a lapse from his intention that drunkenness should not occur again. In truth it needed a strong will to be sober in Drummuir Castle. The old lord himself had a head which nothing could upset, and though he went to his bed groaning with gout, no one could have said his wits were in the least astray. Now Marmaduke had to a certain extent inherited this toleration of alcohol, a fact which at once gratified his father and set the old sinner to the graceless task of inciting his son to more and more glasses of good claret, champagne, and port in order to see how far the inheritance went. And Marmaduke, partly because he was anxious to ingratiate himself with his irascible parent and partly from sheer joie de vivre, fell in with the old man's whim. In reality it meant much to him that he should get to the right side of his father. He had a chance of his majority if only fifteen hundred pounds odd could be found over and above the regulation purchase money. It was a big price; but the vacancy was in a crack Highland regiment and the majority would give him almost the certainty of commanding in the future.

"The peer has never done anything for me in his life," he said angrily to Jack Jardine. "I've gone into a West India regiment. I've lived on my pay--and your allowance, old chap. By the way, I do wish you'd make up accounts between us. We three brothers must owe you a lot already, and though we've all given our post obits on the property when the old man dies, I myself don't like it. Worries me when I have a headache, you know!"

Jack Jardine smiled. The proposition for a clear account had been made many times in the past ten years, sometimes by one brother, sometimes by another--but generally by Marmaduke--without in any way altering the relative positions of creditor and debtor. So he set the point aside.

"Why should you have a headache, Duke?" he began as a prelude to a sermon on sobriety he had been meditating for some days; but Marmaduke's candour took the words out of his mouth.

"Not the least reason in life, Jack, except that I want and will have my majority, and I must keep straight with the peer till I get the money. Look here, I'll tackle the old man to-morrow, and if I succeed I'll cut and run. I don't drink anywhere else, Jack, I don't indeed--not, I mean to say, drink."

Looking at the speaker's clear, almost boyish, face his hearer could well believe it.

"Your father is suffering a lot from the gout just now," he said, dubiously.

"And he'll go on suffering as long as I'm here, and he wants to make me drunk," retorted Marmaduke, whose perceptions were by no means dense, "so the sooner it's over the better for both of us!"

Accordingly the very next day when, in accordance with his usual custom, he wheeled his parent to the paternal visit to the dower house, Marmaduke broached the subject of finance on the way back. It was not a very auspicious moment, for the old gentleman had been made at once irritable and pious by an unwary allusion on the part of his youngest daughter, Margaret, to the new minister of the parish, the Reverend Patrick Bryce. Now the reverend gentleman in question was at the time Lord Drummuir's bête noire. To begin with, he had been presented to the living by the Crown, and the Barons of Drummuir had for generations claimed the right themselves. Evil thinking people, indeed, said that it was this fact which made the old man so wholehearted an advocate of that disruption in the Church of Scotland which was then rending the country in twain. People talked of little else, except railways, and on that point Lord Drummuir held the most conservative of views. They would, he said, not without truth, play the devil with country society and make it impossible for a nobleman to travel in comfort. But no one who knew his lordship ever asked for consistency in his opinions. He simply held them with a tenacity that was perfectly appalling. So the mere mention of the Reverend Patrick Bryce's name, with the addition of a fine blush on his daughter's face when she discovered her slip of the tongue, had put him into a white heat of politeness and piety.

"I am surprised at you, Margaret," he said. "I should prefer your having nothing to do even with the school feasts of a man who, denying the headship of the church to the Almighty, continues to batten on the loaves and fishes of--of--and has the cursed impudence to find fault with other people's meat and drink, too," he added, fiercely.

Despite this, Marmaduke, who had inherited no little of his father's obstinacy, took the opportunity of the bath-chair reaching the finest point of the view to say with a great show of courage--

"By the way, sir, don't you think it's about time to send that money for my majority? Pringle is rather in a hurry to retire, and the price may run up if we don't act soon."

His lordship rather admired this home thrust without warning, but he was on his guard at once and cleared his throat for a speech.

"It's a positive disgrace to our army, and so I told poor Brougham the last time I saw him, that promotion should not only go by purchase but that private individuals should have power to fill their pockets with the proceeds of further extortion. It is a kind of simony; it is the sale of valour, of one's country's good!"

Lord Drummuir was a noted orator when he chose, even in those days when everyone could string words together into high-sounding phrases, and when Edmund Burke's foaming fulminations were held up to the young as models of eloquence; but Marmaduke was obdurate.

"Possibly, sir," he interrupted, "but I want to do it. You see, sir," he warmed with his subject, "I'll be dashed if I've troubled you much in the last ten years--now have I? You've made me an allowance on which I couldn't live in a gentlemanly way at home. So I've exchanged again and again for foreign service, going down and down till I've landed in the West Indies. And now I have this chance of getting back to my old regiment, to a soldier's life that is worth having----"

"No soldier's life is worth having. If you will be kind enough to remember, I objected from the first to the army," interrupted the old man, with icy politeness.

Marmaduke groaned aloud.

"Oh, don't let us go back so far as that, sir. The thing's done, and practically you have to decide now whether you're going to wreck my fortune or make it."

Lord Drummuir took out his pocket-handkerchief solemnly.

"And this is what I am asked to do, when my physicians insist on absolute rest of body and mind. I am asked to consider, to take all the responsibility. No, Marmaduke, you are old enough to decide for yourself!"

"Then you wish me to go back to that miserable hole?" began the young man vehemently.

"I am informed on the best authority that the climate of the West Indies has sensibly improved of late years," remarked his lordship, imperturbably. "The discovery of the cinchona plant----"

"Damn the cinchona plant!" burst out Marmaduke. But at that instant a silvery artificial little laugh rose behind them and Mdlle. Fantine Le Grand appeared tripping over the grass with the daintiest of sandalled feet.

She had again been watching father and son from her window, and after a week's hesitation she had suddenly decided that something must be done to stop what seemed to be growing confidence. She had hitherto played with the plan of arousing the old man's jealousy, confining herself to half-hearted flirtations with Marmaduke, who, also on the watch, had fallen in with the amusement quite pleasantly. But that morning Colonel Compton had spoken out his fears.

"You'll have to look to your p's and q's, Fan, or that youngster will be running away with some of the peer's loose cash. And as the estate is strictly entailed that won't suit us. I overheard that weasel, Jack Jardine, talking to the captain about the purchase of his majority, so you had better look sharp."

The words echoed in her brain as she had stood watching father and son in an apparently amicable conversation which clinched her decision. The result being her appearance before the two conspirators, provocative to the very tilt of her carefully held pink parasol.

"Oh, pardon," she began, in the stage French accent she affected in society, "but I mean not to disturb! Only the filial picture of milor and his too charming son was irresistible to poor me--so sans famille."

She did not look in the least forlorn, and Lord Drummuir's clear, wicked old eyes, that had seen to the bottom of so many evil things, took her in from head to foot, and his clear wicked old brain considered what she would be at. Then he chuckled softly, thinking he had found out.

"No apologies needed, dear little Fan," he said affectionately; "you are almost one of the family already, so we've no secrets. Marmaduke and I were just discussing the purchase of his majority. It will take more than two thousand five hundred pounds, I'm afraid, won't it, dear boy?--what with the regulation and non-regulation figures. A big sum, my dear, a big sum. It will make a hole in what's available for wedding presents, eh, little woman?"

He looked at her with amused malevolence, thinking he had settled her hash; for little Fan was not the woman to flirt with a man who was to do her out of a farthing. And Fantine's eyes were steel as she made a little curtsey.

"Who, my lord," she warbled tenderly, "could regret money spent in such a good cause? Pardon," she added, remembering her accent, "was that not right said? I mean that Marmaduke"--her voice cooed the name--"is welcome to all zat I could give to him."

The baron burst into a huge rough guffaw.

"Come, that is a real good 'un!" he cried, highly amused. "I declare you're as good as a play. But it's not settled yet." Here he glanced at his son, keen to tantalise him too, and with reckless devilry sowing the seeds of evil broadcast. "I shall have to choose between diamonds for my wife and promotion for my son. Meanwhile, my lady, don't get your pretty little feet damp on the grass. Remember you have to dance to us to-night. Ogilvie and all the good fellows for miles round are coming to see you, and you mustn't be a failure."

When the bath-chair and its wheezy occupant had been handed over to the valet, Fantine Le Grand and Marmaduke lingered on the steps together in silence.

"You have not yet seen me dance?" she said, suddenly. "Well, you shall see me this evening! I will dance for you alone, monsieur."

His eyes laughed into hers boldly.

"It is a bargain, mademoiselle; but I shall ask for more, I warn you."

"Dieu merci," she said, with a tiny shrug of her shoulders, "you must not ask too much!"

So with provocative laughter she fled up the steps with the prettiest of little glissades and disappeared, leaving Marmaduke gratified at the impression he had evidently made, and with a certain new admiration for the demure daintiness of Mademoiselle Fantine. His father, devil take him, hadn't a bad taste.

He said nothing of all this, however, to Jack Jardine when he raged for a full hour over his father's absolute lack of human sympathy.

"Why only yesterday," he stormed, "he signed a cheque for one thousand pounds because he wanted to pose as the patron of these dispossessed parsons. It isn't moral, it isn't Christian. He doesn't care if he ruins me body and soul. Anyhow, I've done with him for ever."

"Then you will leave at once?" suggested Jack Jardine.

In truth he was anxious to get the young man away from temptation as soon as possible, and he knew well that in the end he himself would have somehow or another to negotiate the money for the majority.

"No," replied Marmaduke. "I'm going to stop on for a bit."

And he set his nether lip hard. He was not going to give a cheek to the enemy. He meant to hit back if he could. If his father couldn't spare two thousand pounds because he wanted to spend it on a dancing woman, he might find himself in the position of not having the dancing woman on whom to spend it. He, Marmaduke, would have a try at it, anyhow. It was mean and horrible, of course, but so was the old man. He began it.

Peter Muir, coming in yawning, exclaimed at his brother's face.

"What's up, Duke?" he asked. "You look in the devil of a temper."

"So I am," retorted Duke. "And so would you be if you had the spunk to ask anything of the baron. But you haven't, you see."

"Phew!" said Peter. "So you've been attacking the money bags. I could have told you it was no go. That's why I learnt picquet of that Italian count the governor got hold of last year and sent about his business when he had rooked him of a thou! Now I can get a guinea or two off everybody who comes in to the house--except you, Jack. You never will play."

"I don't wish to add to your pocket-money, Peter; you've too much already," replied Jack Jardine sternly. "Ah, I've heard of your beguiling that wretched girl!"

"Not for the first time, old man," put in Peter. "You shouldn't talk about things you don't understand; and a fellow must have some amusement in this cursed hole, especially when the river is low. But for the life of me, Duke, I can't see why you shouldn't go on half pay and stop at home a bit. We should have some fine fun together, and I'd teach you picquet, if you like."

Marmaduke stood gazing at his young brother for a second or two angrily. Then his face softened, he went over to him and laid his hands on his shoulders, and so remained looking down on the weak effeminate face.

"You're talking what they call 'bosh' at school, Peter. You're not a bit content here. How could you be? Give it up and come along with me when I go. The old man doesn't deserve to have a son."

Peter wriggled himself away from his brother's hold.

"I don't really see why you should go."

"Don't you? Well, I'll tell you. Because I'm a soldier born and bred. I don't suppose I shall die on the field of glory, but I shall have a try at it. And I mean to have my majority in my old regiment if I have to forge the old man's name to get it."

With that he gloomed away and loafed about, irritated at all things and everything, even at the preparations that were being made for the festivities of the evening, for these necessitated his being turned out of his comfortable room in order to accommodate some of the guests.

"Where are they putting me?" he asked angrily of Andrew Fraser, whom he found, very long and lank in consequence of repeated attacks of malarial fever, busy packing up his dressing things.

"It will be tae whatten they used to ca' the 'Agäpemoan' in the old lord's young days, sir," replied Andrew. "Jest yon big room wi' the outside stair in the west wing close to the keep, sir. 'Tis a bonny eneuch room with a fire to it, an' Marrion Paul has ben reddin' it up a' day."

Marrion Paul! The name came as a relief and a regret, for he had not seen her--not anyhow for speech--since their dawn-tide swim together. Now the mere memory of it in its coolness and freshness and beauty calmed his irritation, and half aimlessly he strolled across the quadrangle to inspect his new quarters. She might be there still. Apparently she was, for a sound of determined sweeping came down the stairway.

"Hullo, Marmie, is that you?" he cried joyously, bounding up the steps two at a time.

"Aye, Mr. Duke, it's me," replied the figure with the broom laconically.

Certainly it was a nice comfortable room with the fire blazing and the casement window, still somewhat hung with cobwebs, set wide to the summer sunshine. Marmaduke passed to it and looked out. Beneath him, far down the slanting red cliffs dotted here and there with sombre pines, lay the castle pool, and over yonder to the right were the rocks on the other side where he had found Marmie combing her hair like any mermaid. It was hidden now under a most unbecoming dust kerchief; still the memory was pleasant.

"I say, Marmie," he remarked, "that swim of ours was stunning, wasn't it?"

"It's aye nice in the dawning," replied Marrion comfortably. "I've been out twice since then, and I'm no saying which I enjoyed the maist."

Marmaduke made a wry face.

"You look as if I were interrupting your work," he said tenderly.

"So you are, Captain Duke," she assented calmly. He clapped his hands to his ears in mock alarm, and with a laugh raced headlong downstairs, calling back half-way that 'Andry' would have his work cut out for him getting his master to bed if so be the latter had had a glass too much.

When he had gone Marrion ceased sweeping and rested her cheek on the broom handle for a bit.

He--there was but one he in her life and she faced the fact quietly--did not look so well as he did at first, but of that Andrew Fraser had warned her. He had, in fact, told her of many things which otherwise she would not have known, for she had seen much of him in the last week. The racket of the noisy servants' hall, the whole dissolute life of masters and men up at the castle had not been to his taste, and he had taken to going over to the keep-house for quiet, if not for peace. But even that was coming to him by degrees as he realised the utter hopelessness of his love for Marrion. But he realised also that if she was not for him neither was she for any other man--except one; and that was impossible. So, indeed, he had told her plainly but a day or two before, when half-dazed with fever and ague which had attacked him suddenly, in the keep-house.

She had insisted on his lying down in her grandfather's room, and when she went in to bring him a cup of hot tea he had slipped his feet to the ground apologetically, and sitting up, a lank figure among the blankets, his small pathetic eyes full of fever, had laid a hot hand on hers and said--

"I'll no be troubling you again, Marrion. I canna help loving you and you canna help loving him. It's no oorsels, ye see. It's just Providence; sae we must just both thole it."

She had stood silent, startled by the sudden attack for a second; then she had said gravely--

"Aye, Andry, we must just thole it."

Since then a strange confidence as to Marmaduke's sayings and doings had sprung up between the two, and even at dinner-time that very day he had told of his master's irritability.

"Things have gone ajee," he remarked, "an' I'm thinkin' it's the money for the majority. But what's filthy lucre to health?--and sure as death the captain is no what he was. Gin' it wad make him quit yon bad auld man an' the whore-woman he is takin' to wife, I'd be heart glad."

For Andrew Fraser, being acquainted with his Bible, did not mince words. Neither did Marrion; but having more wits than Andrew she appraised the evils more reasonably, yet with more prejudice. Lord Drummuir was Lord Drummuir, and therefore in a way must be accepted; but the woman was different.

Marrion Paul's eyebrows levelled themselves to a straight bar as she went on with her work.

[CHAPTER VI]

The company had roared over a broad farce; for Lord Drummuir, when he entertained his neighbours, did so with a lavish hand, and thought nothing of importing a theatrical company from the nearest big town. A coach and four went for them and took them back, full up with supper and good wine. This particular one was not up to much, but they did well enough, as his lordship said, for the country bumpkins; and the real entertainment was yet to come.

It was a pretty little miniature, this theatre which Lord Drummuir had fitted up in the days of his youth, though Marmaduke, as he sat in the sham Royal box into which his father's armchair had been wheeled, thought it smelt a little musty and fusty.

But even his laughter had been long and loud. And now there was a pause during which the noisy band of four--a cornet, a fiddle, a 'cello, and an oboe--hustled up their instruments and music and disappeared. Marmaduke, with the fine instincts for art he had inherited from his father, and which still made the latter a gourmet and not a gourmand of all good things, felt relieved. Then suddenly a thin thread of sound, vibrant, musical--just a whing like the whing of a mosquito on a hot Indian night--made itself more felt than heard. It seemed to thrill the air, to go further and thrill the heart-strings. Marmaduke leant forward expectantly as the curtains drew up slowly on a background of pale pink velvet hanging in loose folds to a pale pink velvet floor. And the musty fustiness had gone! That was attar of roses, pale pink roses like the pale pink mise-en-scène. And hark, the thread of sound changed to two! It became rhythmic, louder! A guitar? No; it must be a Hungarian zither. Marmaduke, thoroughly roused, thrilled through to the marrow of his bones as he waited. Bent on conquest, he had dressed with the greatest care; from head to foot he was perfection. Expectant as he was, he was yet prepared to be critical; but one glance at the figure which, after peeping with roguish face between the velvet folds, stole out on tiptoe to the very footlights, then stood, finger on lip, as if imploring silence for an escapade, told him he was in the presence of a past mistress in her art, and he sat back prepared for enjoyment.

And La Fantine, as she had been called, had brought pleasure to many men. She was looking her best, dainty to a degree. The footlights, with the larger possibilities of powder and paint, had restored her youth, and her dress was entrancing. Short clouds of pale pink tulle scarcely veiled with gossamer black lace, all set and sparkling with dewdrops of paste diamonds. How they glittered and disappeared, twinkling one moment like stars amid the diaphanous black lace wings she wore on her head, then sinking to shadow again as she moved.

And heavens, how she moved! The zither thrilled louder and Marmaduke sat entranced, for their eyes had met and he realised that she was keeping her promise--she was dancing for him, for him alone. Like most young and vital creatures dancing was sheer delight to him, and the very precision of the black lace-shod, sandalled feet was pure joy to him. And now the rhythm grew faster and faster; she was like a mad butterfly drunk with honey from the waiting flowers.

The desire of the eyes does not take long to flame up and flare, and Marmaduke felt quite dizzy as he joined in the burst of applause when, with a final pirouette, the danseuse kissed her hand to the audience. Or was it to him?

"Never saw La Fantine dance better, Drum," remarked a thin old man, a relic of the past youth when he and the bridegroom expectant had roystered about together, "except, perhaps, that time, you remember, when she danced the fandango with that South American fellow she----"

He paused, remembering that this incident in Mdlle. Le Grand's career had best not be mentioned under present circumstances.

"The fandango?" put in Marmaduke, afire. "I should like to see her dance that. It's the finest dance in the world. I learnt it in Cuba."

"Hullo, Drum," said the old buck, "here's a chance! Your son says he can dance the fandango. Here's a chance. Let's have it. They'd make a handsome couple."

Marmaduke blushed up to the ears; why, he knew not. Then he said stiffly--

"I'd rather not, Sir John."

The refusal was opportune for the fandango; it roused the old man's arrogance.

"Why not, sir?" he asked angrily. "You'd never get a better partner. Here, Fantine, my dear," he added, raising his voice, "this oaf of a boy of mine says he can dance the fandango! Show him he can't, there's a good girl!"

"I will do my leetle best, milor," she replied, with a maliciously provocative smile that would have incited anyone of spirit to action.

"I am at mademoiselle's command for tuition," said Marmaduke, with a fine bow.

His head was ringing, his pulses bounding. He was divided between anger and delight, between a desire to teach the little devil and his father a lesson, and keen pleasure at the thought of the coming dance.

A minute after he stood making his bow beside La Fantine.

"Do you really know it?" she had whispered.

"Better than you do," he had whispered back brutally. "I've danced it in the pot-houses of Habana."

Then it would be a trial of skill between them! She nodded to the zither player to begin, striking the strings with loud full-blooded notes that vibrated and thrilled through the little theatre and came back to aid the growing clamour of the music. It was grace and grace, suppleness and suppleness at first; then by degrees something fiercely beautiful, profoundly, almost overwhelmingly, appealing to the senses. The audience sat spellbound, while to those two there grew an absorbing forgetfulness of all save that they two, man and woman, were playing each with the other. Suddenly, when that reckless forgetfulness seemed to have reached its climax, the woman faltered for a second, turned to her companion.

"Don't you know the rest?" he whispered softly. "Come on, I'll teach it you."

Half-hypnotised by his look, his manner, she followed his lead. The music, bewildered, ignorant, failed, came to a full stop. But it was not needed. Those two danced to the music of the spheres. The coarse sensuality of this earth had passed. This was the refined super-sensuality of a world of art, of sentiment. It was self-renunciation divorced from its real meaning, and when finally, with La Fantine's heart pressed to his, he laid his burning lips to hers, a great silence like a sigh came to the whole audience. It was broken by Lord Drummuir's stentorian voice--

"You--you d----d young scoundrel! This is too much----"

Marmaduke looked up jubilant.

"It's in the original dance, isn't it, Mademoiselle Le Grand?"

"I--I believe it is," she faltered uncertainly. She had met with her match, and that she knew.

"A most remarkable performance," said Sir John, with unction. "I'll tell you what it is, young man. You two would be the talk of London if you could persuade Mdlle. Fantine----" he paused again, coughed, and added precipitately, "Really, my dear Drum, you are to be congratulated on such a son, and such a future wife! Inimitable, quite inimitable! You'll never feel the least dull in the long winter evenings. Ah, Mdlle. Fantine, mes compliments! I have not seen you for years; not since----" here once more he pulled himself up short, and Lord Drummuir, beguiled from wrath by his ever-ready sense of humour, burst in a loud guffaw.

"Look here, Johnnie," he cried, "hold your tongue and don't splay that old foot of yours about any more. Winter evenings be dashed! Marmaduke is going back to his Cuban partners, and little Fanny here is going to make my gruel, aren't you, Fan? Meanwhile, let's come and have some supper."

So they supped outrageously, and the noise of their laughter echoed out over the quadrangle, where Marrion Paul sat at her door listening for Marmaduke's step. She had promised to call Andrew Fraser the moment she heard it; Andrew, who for two hours had been shivering and shaking with ague under the spare-room blankets, and had now apparently fallen asleep, secure in Marrion's promise to rouse him on his master's appearance.

She had been up twice to see that the captain's room was in order, and like any valet had laid out everything that would be required for the night. So, leaving the candles alight, she had come down to stand at the door of the keep-house again and watch the slow whirling stars almost stupidly, and wonder what had best be done at once to keep Duke friends with his father, and at the same time to get him away from the godless crew up at the castle.

A staggering step and Marmaduke's voice joyously thick saying--

"All right, James, you needn't come any further. I can find my way now. Good-night. Andrew--where the deuce are you, Andrew? Why weren't you waiting?" sent her in haste to fulfil her promise. But the hot fit had this time had a firmer grip on Andrew than either she or he had expected, and she found him lying with closed eyes half-unconscious. And though he roused at her touch it was only to mutter: "Let me be, mother! I'm no goin' to the schule the day. I wunna; let me be, I say!"

Marrion, seeing he was useless, laid a wet cloth on his head and returned to her station by the door. It was a dark night and she could see nothing. Neither could she hear anything.

What had happened? Had Marmaduke managed the stairs by himself? If so, well and good. He could be left to his own devices, and serve him very well right! The candles were in a safe place. But if he had fallen by the way, he would be out all night. Serve him right also! Her lips curled with scorn, and she was about to go in and close the door when she remembered that the kitchen girls shaking their mats in the quadrangle in the early morning would see him if he were lying there. If it were men it would not have mattered, but that girls should see and snigger was unbearable. She must go and make sure this would not happen. Taking the lantern--for it was pitch dark--she made her way to the foot of the stair. He was lying with his head on the lowest step, as he had fallen, sleeping peacefully. The cool night air had completed the work of wine, and so doubtless he would sleep for hours. But he must not; that disgrace must be avoided. Kneeling beside him she shook him violently by the shoulder; he roused a little, but not much, and as he sank back to renewed slumber she looked helpless for a moment, then angry. It was too bad! He must be roused somehow. She lifted her hand and gave him a good smart blow on the cheek.

The effect was magical.

"Marmie," he murmured dazedly, then sat up and said confusedly, "What is it, my dear?"

"You've got to get up and go to your bed, Mr. Duke," she replied. "Come, be quick about it."

He stumbled to his feet obediently.

"Certainly, certainly! No objection whatever," he said thickly; but when by the light of the lantern he saw the stairs he gave a silly laugh, and said amiably: "Quite impossible, I 'sure you. Where's Andrew?"

"Andrew is not here, Mr. Duke," she replied firmly. "I'll help you up. Hold on to the rail with your right hand; I'll see to you."

He delivered himself into her strong grip, body and soul, and so, with a few stumbles, they reached the top of the stairs. Here she hesitated a moment, then led him on.

"Sit you down on your bed, Duke. I'll help you off with your coat. Ye'll sleep better without it. An' now kick off yer pumps," she went on calmly, a sort of fierce motherhood possessing her, "an' I'd better loosen yer stock; 'tis tight enough to suffocate ye."

He acquiesced in all, sinking to sleep without a word almost before she had finished her ministrations. Then, taking a plaid that hung over a chair, she covered him over and prepared to go. But regret, anger, outraged affection were too strong for her. She flung herself on her knees beside the bed and buried her face on his unconscious breast.

"Ah, Duke, Duke," she moaned, "how can ye! Ah, Duke, Duke, you mustn't, you shall not spoil your life--you shall not, you shall not!"

After a time calm came to her, and, drawing a chair to the side of the bed, she sat down on it and, clasping her hands tight together, forced herself to think of the future. But again and again she caught herself comparing those two unconscious faces--Andrew's all flushed with fever, Duke's all flushed with wine. Yet comparisons were useless before Fate. She stood up at last, crossed the room, blew out the candles, shut the door, and went downstairs, certain but of one thing, that somehow she was bound by the very greatness of her love to stand between Duke and danger.

Her grandfather was home, and snoring. Andrew she found better and beginning to fret over his inability to serve his master.

"Dinna fash yersel," she said kindly. "I heard James bring him over a while back, and he'll have seen to him."

So, absolutely outwearied, she went to her bed, to sleep at once and dream that Duke had thanked her and gone away from the godless household never to return. But Duke, meanwhile, was dreaming about wonderful white arms that had left powder on his coat and wonderful red lips that he had kissed boldly, defying the world.

[CHAPTER VII]

It was not only Marrion Paul whose night had been disturbed. Lord Drummuir, brought thereto by many days' indiscretions, Périgord pie at supper, and perchance his hot though transient anger at the finale to the fandango, fell a victim to the sharpest attack of gout he had had since Christmas and kept his side of the house awake with his curses on things in general, and his valet in particular.

And, on the other side of the south wing, Fantine Le Grand, alias Fanny Biggs, sat till dawn, staring at herself in the looking-glass and ciphering out the effect of something, new yet old, which had unexpectedly come into her life. She had sent her maid to bed, but felt no inclination for her own, until the disturbing element had been thoroughly reckoned with; for she was eminently practical and shrewd.

So she sat, her elbows on the dressing-table, her fingers cramped in her loosened hair, taking stock of the pretty painted face which had been the loadstar of her life. It was beginning to show age. She had admitted that to herself for some time past, and had told herself it was time for her to draw in her horns. But now had come this disturbing factor. Only that morning she had remorselessly plotted to turn Marmaduke out of the house by fair means or foul. Now she was clear-sighted enough to admit that she would much rather keep him beside her.

Strange that one dance, one delicious abandonment of herself to his directions should have revived her youth--made her think of the gouty old man with positive loathing.

"You are a fool," she murmured to her reflection in the glass; but the reflection answered back--"It is your last chance. Why miss it?"

She thought and thought, only one thing coming to her with certainty. To play with Marmaduke, as she had proposed to do, would be to play with fire. Was she prepared for this?

At last, wearied out, she rose, poured out a double dose of sleeping drops, and put off further considerations for the morning, since no matter at what decision she arrived, she could not afford to be haggard. She woke, late as usual, to feel, with the usual buoyancy of perfect health and practically no conscience, that she had been making a mountain out of a molehill; but the first glance at the breakfast-table laid in her little boudoir sent a thrill through her which reminded her that there were indeed pitfalls ahead. For on it lay a huge bunch of red, red roses, tied together somewhat clumsily with a red silk officer's scarf, and in it was tucked away a boyish note: "Excuse tie, I hadn't any other ribbon. Hope you aren't tired after our wonderful dance. My love to you."

So it was real, tangible; and something must be settled one way or the other. She frowned over her breakfast and then, untying the bouquet, disposed the roses about the room, since Lord Drummuir, of whose illness she had not yet heard, might come in at any moment. The tie she set aside, its fate being not yet decided.

After a while Colonel Compton, as usual, lounged in, a cigar in his mouth.

"By George, Fan," he said admiringly, "that was a treat you gave us last night! Upon my soul, if I'd known you had so much spunk left in you, I'd never have advised your going on the shelf! If you could only get that young fellow as a co, you'd take the town by storm."

"Should I?" she answered, with a half yawn; but her mind seized instantly on a new idea.

"Of course you would," he went on, "and I've done a bit of impresario work in my time. Marks, if he'd seen it, would have offered you fifty sovs a night on the spot. The old man is no mean judge, and you saw how it angered him."

She burst into a little laugh.

"But he soon got over it. You see he has a sense of humour; if he hadn't, I could not stand him, I really couldn't!"

"Don't know about getting over it. He's down to-day with a real bad fit of the gout----"

"Is he?" she remarked coolly. "Then I shall have a holiday." As she said the words her mind travelled over the possibilities of even a few days. "Compton," she said suddenly, "I never quite understand the position of affairs in regard to Drummuir's sons. The estate's entailed, isn't it?"

"Heir male of the body," replied the colonel. "That is why I warned you to look out lest Marmaduke should worm money out of his father. So long as the old man lives you're all right; but when he dies you will only have the cash and the savings--and the title. The rest all goes to Pitt--after him, as he has no children, and isn't likely to have any--to Marmaduke as heir presumptive. After him to Peter, but Marmaduke is sure to marry; he's really a very good-looking fellow----"

She interrupted him curtly; she did not need to be told that.

"Thanks. I quite understand, only I wished to be sure."

She passed to the window and looked out. Peter, as usual surrounded by a perfect pack of silly, silky spaniels--they suited him exactly with his wide weak mouth, long fair hair, and general exuberance of dress--was on the lawn talking to Marmaduke. The latter looked up, saw her, and bowed. She kissed her hand to him and returned to her seat, her mind still confused, but her will steady.

"Well," she said lightly, "I suppose by and by I shall have to go in and cheer up my fiancé, but I shan't be sorry for a few days' holiday."

She told Marmaduke so also when she appeared, exquisite and dainty, declaring that, as she was useless at home, since his father, poor dear, could not even bear the sight of her for more than five minutes, she thought it would be a fine opportunity to see a little more of the place than she had hitherto been able to; and would Marmaduke tell her where to go.

The result of which innocent interrogatory being that in the full glory of a summer afternoon, the sea calm as a mill pond, Marmaduke found himself sitting in a boat as it drifted idly beneath the old red sandstone cliffs facing the North Sea with his arm round La Fantine's waist and a curious mixture of desire and disdain in his heart.

"You see, my dear boy," she was saying, "I dare say you think ill of me."

"I don't, I don't indeed!" he protested.

"Well, you did think ill of me," she continued, with a heavenly smile; "but I really have all the Christian virtues. That is the worst of it. I hate giving pain, or seeing people suffer. And I like doing my best for people, if I can. Now my proposition sounds rather impossible, but it really is quite feasible. I'm not going to talk about our feelings, Duke. We both of us remember last night, so we will leave them out of the question. But you are a young man, you have a future before you--that is to say, if you play your cards properly. You want to be a soldier----"

"I don't mean to be anything else," interrupted Marmaduke decidedly, "so your plan of my making money by dancing with you is out of the question."

"Not on six months' sick leave, under an assumed name? Now, Duke, listen and don't interrupt. If you and I join forces and run away from here, I will engage to get the money for your majority. I tell you any manager would advance two thousand on the fandango alone--or Jack Jardine could finance one half--as he always does, and I the other. Then you could join, get leave, disappear, have a real stunning six months with me--London, Paris, Vienna perhaps. You don't know what the life is like, Duke--and I'm not jealous or exacting. I like to amuse myself, and so should you."

He looked at her admiringly.

"What an imagination you have!" he said. "And you settle everything so quickly. You remind me----" And here the thought of Marrion Paul made him suddenly shift back to the thwart and begin to scull once more. "We are nearing the current," he said apologetically, "and she needs steering--and so do I!" he added, with a charming smile, "so go on, please, with your imaginations."

She gave him a sharp look, saw he had still some fight left in him, and like a good fisherman let him have his head a bit.

"Of course it is all imagination," she assented, "and it depends on whether you think it worth while to pay the price I ask for all this. I am five years older than you are, Duke" (in reality she was fifteen, but under a rose-lined sun hat years disappear), "but I am still attractive."

She said the word so cunningly that he laid on his oars and bent forward till his burning eyes were close to hers.

"Attractive!" he echoed. "You're more than that, and you know it--at any rate, I do!"

"I am glad of it," she assented, "for it makes it easier for both of us; but, as I said, I don't want to dwell on our feelings, they are too recent to be--er--reliable. It is purely as business that I put it to you. I want to get back to the old life, if I can do it with any chance of success. Last night showed me I could. But I also want to be Lady Drummuir. You want to get your majority, and also--there is no use in mincing words--to spite your father for not giving you the money. Now all these desires can be combined----"

The grating of the keel on a shingly shore interrupted her, and Marmaduke stood up, shipped his oars, and held out both his hands.

"Let's leave it for the time, little lady, or you'll persuade me out of my persuasion that you're right. There's the most ideal spot for lovers just round that rock. Let's go there and forget everything and everybody except that I am the most delightful man in the world, and you are the most delightful--and attractive--woman!"

The hint of artificiality in his tone made her frown, but there was frank sensual admiration in his look as he set her down after lifting her from the boat.

"I think," he said softly, as he held out a finger bleeding from the prick of a pin, "you are the daintiest, thorniest thing I ever touched. You're like the roses I gave you this morning, all colour, sweetness and scent, and--thorns."

Whereat they both laughed as they made their way to the ideal spot for lovers. To their surprise and discomfiture they found it already occupied by Margaret Muir, who was looking sentimentally out to sea with the Reverend Patrick Bryce's arm round her waist.

"Meg!" cried Marmaduke, aghast.

"Oh, Marmaduke! Why? How did you come?" wailed his sister, jumping up and looking round as if for escape.

The Reverend Patrick Bryce, however, stood his ground. He was a small spare man of about fifty, dapper and spruce, his curling grey hair having the appearance of a wig under his low crowned hat, his clear, starched clerical bands natty to a degree.

"Captain Marmaduke Muir, I presume," he said, with a bow of a marquis. "I regret much exposing my dear Miss Margaret Muir to this unpleasantness, but I beg you to believe that, as my affianced wife, I am ready to defend her to the uttermost."

Marmaduke looked from one to the other of the delinquents.

"You don't mean to say, Meg," he said at last, "that you wish to marry the minister?"

The very idea seemed to him preposterous, absurd; he almost laughed at it.

The Reverend Patrick Bryce gave her no time for reply.

"She not only desires to marry me, sir, but she is going to do so, please God, before long. Yes, sir, I propose to take her away from a demoralising atmosphere, and give her, to the utmost of my power, the love and affection she deserves."

He looked very gallant as he made his little speech, and Marmaduke acknowledged to himself that he played the gentleman well. Still, he turned again to his sister in incredulity.

"You can't do it, Meg. To begin with, if the Baron----"

"Baron Drummuir, sir, will have nothing to say to it," interrupted the little minister once more. "The Honourable Margaret Muir is of age, and if she chooses to marry a man of birth equal to her own--I do not care to boast of my ancestry, sir, but Bryce and Bruce are the same, and my family tree shows Robert of Scotland to be my immediate ancestor--she is at liberty to do so."

"That is for Lord Drummuir to decide," said Marmaduke grimly. "Of course, I shall tell him, Meg, what I've seen."

Margaret clasped her hands in entreaty.

"Oh, please, don't, Duke--please, please!"

"Margaret," interrupted the minister sharply, "oblige me by not entreating your brother to silence. Let him speak if he chooses. We are not ashamed of ourselves."

All this time Mdlle. Le Grand had been watching the scene with her sharp eyes, and her acute little brain had been working out any advantage to herself. Now she saw her way and slipped forward with a smile.

"My dear Marmaduke," she said, as the two men stood glaring at each other, "live and let live is a valuable motto. You must remember that Margaret can also tell on us. Silence on both sides is the best way out of the difficulty. Don't you think so, Miss Muir?"

Margaret gave a frightened look at her brother.

"Ah, Duke," she cried, "you don't mean to say you----"

Fantine Le Grand interrupted her with perfect aplomb.

"That has nothing to do with it, my dear young lady; but you know as well as I do what would happen if your father got wind of this excursion of ours. So, as I said, silence is wise. Don't you agree with me, sir?"

The Reverend Patrick Bryce once more made the bow of a marquis.

"I reserve the right to speak if I choose----"

"And so do I," she retorted sweetly, "only we won't choose. Come, Marmaduke, it is time we were going back. Had we not better take your sister with us? It will look better--for both sides."

And here she gave a delightful tinkle of a laugh.

She kept up the rôle so well on the return journey that simple Margaret Muir was quite fascinated, and when, artfully, the suggestion was made that Marmaduke should see his sister home to the Dower House, the latter took the occasion to remark, as the former had hoped she would, on her surprise at finding Mdlle. Le Grand so agreeable and so well mannered.

"She is very charming," replied Marmaduke, a trifle gloomily, "and very clever."

He felt vaguely that he had been played with, and that he had had no more responsibility in the game than a pawn at chess. He felt also that the compact of silence with his sister brought imaginings nearer to reality.

And the idea of that six months on the Continent was a temptation; anyhow, he would have another go at the old man first.

If he still refused--well, on his head be it!

[CHAPTER VIII]

Days are long to a man and a woman when one of them passionately desires the other, for every instant counts, every moment spells success or failure. And Fantine Le Grand, with her almost lifelong experience of intrigue, was not one to let the grass grow under her feet. So when, two days later, Marmaduke ran over the quadrangle to beg a favour of Marrion Paul, most of his scruples had disappeared, and, for the time, at any rate, he was an admiring lover, eager to do anything and everything for the woman of the moment.

"You can, quite well, if you like, Marrion," he pleaded. "It would only be for a day or two, till Josephine could put her foot to the ground again. And Mdlle. Le Grand--she has been very much maligned, Marmie--is perfectly charming. Now do. It isn't often I ask you to do anything for me, is it?"

Marrion Paul had opened her eyes at the proposition, which was briefly that, during the temporary disablement of Mdlle. Le Grand's French maid, she should go over and take her place. She had been on the point of refusal when that "for me" startled her. Was it possible that he could count that woman's convenience his own? She hesitated, but only for a second.

"I will do what I can for you, Captain Duke," she said.

In an instant all the old charm, all the old camaraderie came to his voice--

"I knew you would, Marmie. I told her so. You're a real friend, you do such a lot of things for me." Then he in his turn hesitated, looked confused, and finally spoke: "I had such odd dreams that night--the night we danced, you know. I dreamt that you helped me up the stairs and--and put me to bed like a baby." He paused. "Did you, really, Marmie?"

The colour rushed to her face.

"Aye, Captain Duke, I did. Andrew was ill and you were drunk."

Her straightforward candour abashed him beyond words.

"I'm sorry," he said at last, so humbly that her heart melted within her. Then he added, with a sudden influx of joyousness, "But I'm really going to turn over a new leaf. I'm going to cut and run before long and let my father stew in his own juice."

She caught him up instantly.

"Your father's your father, Mr. Duke, and you're the heir to the old barony. You mustn't forget that. It's laid on you, and it's not to be put aside."

He paused as he was going, vexedly.

"I'm not going to put it aside, Marmie. I am only going to make the best of a bad bargain. If the old lord won't give me the money for my majority, I'm not going to stick on here getting drunk to please him."

There was distinct virtue in the last phrase, and Marmie smiled. And as she looked in the old clothes drawer for some black silk-frilled aprons which her mother had worn when she was maid to the first Lady Drummuir, she told herself that Duke was nothing but--as he had said--a big baby, and that, no matter what the dancing-woman might be like, she, Marrion, was glad to be in a position where she could see for herself what was going on.

She looked very demure, very uncompromising and upright, therefore, when that same afternoon, attired after a little coloured sketch of her mother as maid, she stood waiting for Fantine Le Grand to come up and dress for dinner. Yet, even so, the latter's instant and quite unpremeditated remark was--

"Captain Muir did not tell me you were so good-looking."

It was a revelation to Marrion's quick wits, but she was ready in reply.

"Maybe he never looked to see, ma'am," she said demurely, "having his eyes busy with prettier things."

Fantine Le Grand laughed easily and her manner changed to more familiarity at once.

"You know which side your bread is buttered, my girl. So much the better. Now I wonder how much use you will be?"

"I was six years at the dressmaking, madam," replied Marrion, "and the forewoman gave me all the touching-up work; she said I had a good hand for folds."

Fantine gave a relieved sigh.

"Then you're not quite a bumpkin, but I suppose you can't do hair?"

"I can, a little," said Marrion; "I learnt just a wee while in Perragier's shop in Edinburgh. The foreman wanted me to stop, but I don't care for the business."

All of which was absolutely true; for the hairdresser who had offered her gold for her russet hair had afterwards offered her his heart and hand. What is more he had hardly yet withdrawn his offer, and only that morning the post had brought her a long and friendly letter enclosing a sachet and a most particular account of how he had dressed the hair of all the Edinburgh celebrities in the latest fashion for the last big ball.

"I'm thinking," she went on deftly, "that the new Sevigné style would just suit madam, if she will allow me to try. There will be time to change if it doesn't please."

Five minutes later Fantine Le Grand, in pink wrapper, was watching in the glass Marrion's fingers curling and twisting and combing and puffing. And Marrion was watching the glass also, a half inherited, half acquired perception of what was beautiful and becoming aiding her lack of practice.

"My dear girl," said Fantine delighted, when Marrion stepped back, her task completed, "you're an artist! It makes me look ten years younger. You must come with me." She paused and gave a little conscious laugh. "Anyhow, you are much better than Josephine, and so I shall tell Captain Muir."

Apparently she did, for Marrion, meeting him by chance that evening on the stairs, had to draw back from his outstretched hand.

"Hang it all," he said, almost boisterously, "I forgot you were a servant here! Do you ever forget your p's and q's, I wonder? I wish you would sometimes. Anyhow, you have made her look quite divine, and she says she means to ask you to take the place permanently."

"It is very kind of her," replied Marrion, accenting the pronoun; but Marmaduke was too absorbed to notice it. Only that afternoon he had had his final attack on his father's purse-strings, and had come down to the library where Jack Jardine and Peter were smoking, white with rage.

"It's all up!" he said. "The old man--I'll never call him father again--insulted me beyond bearing."

"I warned you, Duke," began Peter; "he isn't half recovered yet."

"And do you think I've got time to waste until my precious parent takes enough colchicum and nitre to kill a horse, all because he guzzles and swills? No. As I told him, Pringle won't wait over the week, so--so I'm making other arrangements. I shall have to ask you, Jack, to raise two hundred pounds to clinch the bargain when I meet Pringle. I don't know how the devil you do it, but you always do."

"Yes, I always do," assented Jardine a trifle wearily; "but you know, Duke, it would be wiser to raise the two thousand pounds at once and have done with it. If Pitt and Peter here were to join in a post obit, and I were to back it----"

"Thanks!" said Marmaduke curtly. "I only asked for two hundred pounds, and you can put that in the bill, can't you?"

"Yes," assented Jardine again wearily, "I can put it in the bill"

When Marmaduke had gone out of the room Peter crossed over to the fire and knocked the ashes out of his pipe.

"I wonder what he has got in his head," he remarked thoughtfully. "It's something to do with Fantine, alias Fanny Biggs, I'm sure."

"Fantine?" echoed Jack Jardine. "Why, of course, anyone can see that Marmaduke has been trying to get to the right side of her. I advised him to do so. And she, of course--by that scoundrel Compton's advice, I expect--has been trying to make the peer jealous in order to get rid of Marmaduke!"

Peter burst out laughing.

"Look here, Jack, you're excellent as a man of business, but you're a mole with women, you old bachelor! I could tell you a thing or two, but I won't--it's too amusing." And he strolled out of the room chuckling to himself.

Over in the keep-house, Marrion Paul felt that she, also, could tell a thing or two, even after the brief experience of being maid to Fantine Le Grand; but she did not find it amusing. On the contrary, it sent her about her new work with a frown in her eyes that were keen for every sign.

The day had been a troublous one. The old peer, up for the first time, had been so irritable that the whole household was upset. Fantine Le Grand, indeed, coming up for her usual late afternoon rest, had professed herself so outwearied by a protracted penance in milord's private room that she bade Marrion give her a double dose of her sleeping draught and tell the butler she was not coming down to dinner. She would have a dainty little supper in her boudoir at ten o'clock, and till then did not wish to be disturbed. Being thus set free, Marrion was going home when, as she passed the stairway leading to the room which Marmaduke had occupied and where Andrew Fraser still kept some of his master's spare things, she heard a noise as of someone shifting boxes. Running up to see what it was, she found Andrew busy packing up.

"Aye, we're awa' the morn's morn," he replied cheerfully to her query, "and blythe am I that the finest gentleman in the Queen's army will run no more danger o' bein' ruined by a whore-woman and an auld, auld man, as s'ould be thinkin' o' his grave an' the Last Day."

Despite a sudden catch at her heart, his hearer acquiesced calmly.

"Aye, it's well he's goin! But where is it to?"

"To Edinbro'. He's an appointment tae meet Major Pringle the morrow's morn aboot the exchange."

"An' when he's comin' back?" asked Marrion sharply.

"I heard no tell o' returnin', and I'm thinkin' not. Ye see the exchange he tell't me was settled into the auld regiment."

"Then his father----" she interrupted.

Andrew shook his head.

"It's no the auld lord. They had just a fearfu' stramash aboot it. It will be Jack Jardine again, puir fallow! He always manages it somehow. Well, he'll hae his reward at the Judgment, though I'm thinkin' he'll hae to wait till then for a reckoning."

"Maist o' us have to do that, Andry," said Marrion grimly, and then her face, looking into the hard, honest, homely face before her, softened; "an' you, abune all, abune all, my lad," she added, as she went on her way.

Andrew Fraser hesitated for a second, then followed fast.

"Thank ye for that, my dear," he said hoarsely at the foot of the stairway, "it makes it easier. An' I'll wait--aye, I'll wait till then, never fear, Marrion!"

His outstretched hand was in hers as they stood gazing into each other's eyes, his very love forgot in the flood of friendship which surged through their hearts and brains, when Miss Margaret Muir, fresh from an afternoon among the rocks with her gallant little parson, came whistling and calling to her dogs through the keep-gate. She had spent so many long years of her life without one touch of glamour and romance that, now it had come to her at last, the whole world seemed transfigured into a place full to the brim of lovers and their lasses. So in an instant the sight of those two set her becking and smiling.

"Good luck to you both!" she called. "Good luck, good luck! After all, Marrion, you see you will be asking Mr. Bryce to get you cried."

Andrew, shamefaced and confused, escaped up the stairs, but Marrion stood her ground boldly.

"There'll be scant time, Miss Marg'ret," she said, not without some scorn, "for Andrew is away with his master the morn, and Captain Duke says he will not be coming back."

Her hearer turned visibly pale. Ever since the rencontre on the rocks Margaret had been haunted by a fear lest Marmaduke should break the half-formulated compact of mutual silence. And now this news of his unexpected departure sent a thousand wild conjectures to her mind. Had he quarrelled with his father over the woman? Had he in revenge told----

"Going away!" she gasped. "I didn't know. Surely it's very sudden! Why? Can my father have found out about Mdlle. Le Grand----" Then realising her slip, she went on hurriedly, "But it is all nonsense about Duke's saying he will not come back. The boys always say that when there is a quarrel; but father forgets, and so do they, as you know quite well, Marrion. And it's only right that it should be so, for after all he is their father, isn't he?"

"Aye, Miss Marg'ret," replied Marrion gravely, "my Lord Drummuir is the present holder o' the barony, an' Captain Marmaduke is the heir to it if the Master has no son; so that settles it outright."

Margaret Muir looked at her with a sort of wistful surprise.

"You put things very plain, Marrion," she said, "but you always were a sensible girl; and, being what you are, your grandfather's granddaughter--you--you belong to Drummuir, as it were."

When she had passed on whistling and calling to her dogs, Marrion Paul stood echoing those last words in her heart. Yes, she belonged to Drummuir; but over and above that inherited loyalty there was a passion of protection for Duke himself. He must not be harmed in any way.

Was there indeed anything between him and the painted woman she was serving?

Before she wakened her for the dainty supper at ten o'clock that evening Marrion stood looking at the sleeping face, all its charm of espièglerie gone, the mouth cruel, the lines about the eyes hard and set.

No, whatever came, that woman should not have the spoiling of Duke's life! Not that there could be much fear since he was leaving the next day.

[CHAPTER IX]

No danger!

The thought--such an ill-considered thought, it seemed--recurred to Marrion Paul as she held a slip of crumpled paper in her hand and read its slight contents over and over again.

She had found it on the floor of the room where Andrew Fraser had packed up his master's spare things. There had been heaps of other papers on the floor, when, during the time that Fantine Le Grand was on duty with the old lord, Marrion, more to still thought than from necessity, had set herself the task of clearing up and making tidy; but this one showed her Duke's handwriting, and, half mechanically, she had reached down to pick it up. And then? Women, as a rule, have not nearly so hard and fast a rule of conventional honour as men on such points, so she had smoothed it out and read--

Evidently a memorandum made to help out a memory excellent in its way, but random, careless.

"Write for rooms at Cross-keys. Order trap from Crow; 9.30, copse by avenue gate."

She drew in her breath and considered, her thoughts punctuated by the rapid beating of her heart.

The Cross-keys? That was the inn where the south coach stopped, and where the ferry road branched off; she could almost see it from her window across the estuary on the edge of the moorland. What did Marmaduke want with rooms there? And the trap from the Crow? That was the little inn down in the back purlieus of the town. For whom was that trap wanted? And why not order from the big posting hotel as usual?

Then in an instant a solution flashed upon her. Marmaduke had not really gone by the afternoon coach; or, if he had, so far, was to return that night to the Cross-keys, and the trap was to take Fantine Le Grand to him by the bridge road!

The beating of her heart steadied itself. She folded up the paper and put it in her pocket, her vehement determination, somehow or another, to frustrate this plan almost forgotten for the time in wonder at the chance which had brought to her this knowledge.

The paper must have fallen out of the pocket of some coat Andrew had been packing up--how easily it might not so have fallen! How easily she might not have noticed it! A facile wonder obscured real thought, and, as usual in such sudden crises, concrete determination hid itself under one general determination to frustrate the machinations of the enemy, if possible. She did not even ask herself how this was to be done; all she told herself was that it must be done.

So, rousing to a sense that afternoon was passing to evening, and that it was time for her to be in attendance at the castle, she went thither, feeling vaguely that if it was necessary to kill the woman, even that must be done, sooner than she should be allowed to hamper Marmaduke's young life.

Fantine Le Grand had not yet come up from her daily duty of amusing Lord Drummuir, so Marrion mechanically began, as usual, to prepare for the evening's toilette, She found all the valuables gone from the jewel-case, and, after a hasty search, discovered them in a tiny valise, ready packed hidden away behind laces and ribbons in a drawer.

So she had been right. Fantine Le Grand meant to give them the slip. Ere she had time to consider a fretful voice came from the boudoir.

"Marrion, Marrion! I do hope the girl's there. Just like 'em if she isn't. Ah," as Marrion appeared at the door, "for heaven's sake, girl, take off my shoes and bring me my dressing-gown! That wretched old man has worn me out. I shall be fit for nothing! Oh, lord, it was too bad--nothing would please him! What o'clock is it? Six o'clock! Good gracious, I shall hardly have time before dinner! I won't go down; there's no one to go down for now Marmaduke's gone. Lord, what a relief it will be! Tell them to bring dinner up here at eight and give me my sleeping drops. Not too much, as I don't want to sleep too long; but I have such a headache, I shan't be fit for anything without a rest."

Fantine Le Grand did not see her attendant's face. Had she done so, she would have been startled. The colour had left it, every feature was set and hard. For she had found the clue. Even if an overdose killed the woman, she must be made to sleep sound.

"Yes, madam," she replied, "but a rest will take your headache away, I hope."

She poured out the narcotic without a tremble, doubling the double dose. It was a risk, of course; but risks must be run.

"That is very strong--how much did you give me?" asked Fantine, as, with a sigh of content, she snuggled down under the duvet.

"Only as much as was necessary," replied Marrion steadily.

Her heart was hard as the nether millstone. She waited in the boudoir till the soft regular breathing told her Fantine was asleep, then, giving orders in passing that her mistress did not wish to be disturbed, she made her way back to her own room at the keep-house in order to mature further plans. In this she was hampered by ignorance as to what she had to frustrate. It would have been easy to walk down to the Crow and countermand the trap, but for aught she knew to the contrary, Marmaduke might be awaiting Mdlle. Le Grand there; so she judged it better to adhere as far as possible to what she did know, and this pointed to someone taking the trap, as ordered--whether to the Cross-keys or not, mattered little--and meeting Marmaduke. The very idea stirred her blood! Of course she must do it. She must go and beg him--nay, force him to reconsider an action which would for ever ruin him with his father.

The colour came back to her face, the light to her eyes, with this decision, and her mind was busy at once with precautions.

The Cross-keys, she knew, was held by new people who would not be likely to know her; still she must do her best to avoid recognition. To begin with she must secure retreat. She looked down the estuary, then at low tide, and little more than a still pool with a faint stream in it, and saw no boat at the further side. That, however, could easily be remedied. The castle boat lay this side, and it would not take her half an hour to row it over and swim back.

By this time it was full seven o'clock, the shadows were lengthening and everyone at the castle would be busy with dinner. Now was her opportunity. Ten minutes afterwards in her bathing suit, but wrapped in her plaid, and with a lighted lantern at the bottom of the boat, for she remembered it would be dark on the return journey, she was pulling with long vigorous strokes to the little pier of seaweed-grown slippery rocks. To fasten the boat to the outermost ring on the shore, so that she could get at it at all tides, and hang the lantern over the bows as a guide to the whereabouts, did not take her long. That done, she folded the plaid away, placed it in the stern sheets, and slipped over the side like a seal.

So much, then, was done. She must now go and carry up Fantine Le Grand's supper and then prepare herself to take the latter's place.

She was relieved to find all well. Fantine lay comfortably snuggled up, very dead asleep it is true, but breathing quietly and regularly, and Marrion, with a lighter heart, for all it was still hard as the nether millstone, closed the door on her, secure that no interruption was likely to come from that side.

And now to disguise herself so as to pass muster with the driver of the coach, should he happen to be an acquaintance. This was easy enough. High heels, silk stockings, a little lace, a furbelow or two, and a big black silk cloak go far in semi-darkness, and all these were to be found in her mother's wardrobe.

Having time to spare, indeed, Marrion spent it, half-eagerly, half-reluctantly, in seeing how near she could bring herself to the daintinesses of modern fashion. And she so far succeeded that, as she went away from the looking-glass, her face showed radiant, as of a girl going to her first ball. Unconfessed, the thought was there that Marmaduke would see her so, possibly in the discarded brocades worn by his own mother in her youth; anyhow, in the garments of his own class.

So, with the ample cloak round her, its hood drawn over the shining hair piled in the latest fashion, she made her way to the copse by the avenue gate. The chariot with two horses was in waiting; the driver, touching his hat, asked if there was no luggage. She answered no, stepped in, and they were off. Evidently the man had his orders, for they skirted the town and crossed the river by the lower and older bridge. This lengthened the journey by some two miles; so much the better. It would be quite dark by the time they arrived at the Cross-keys. Hitherto Marrion's mind had been fully occupied with action. Now, in this hour's drive, she had time to think of what would happen when she met Marmaduke, and her heart sank a little. Not that she was afraid of him or of herself, but it was all so strange, so unlike real life. Then in a flash came the memory of that dawn-tide swim of theirs! That was not common, trivial, everyday life either. They two had somehow the trick of escaping from that sometimes. Why not now?

The day had been brilliantly fine and warm, but with the sun setting, clouds had gathered and lay dark and threatening on the horizon, though the moon rode unobscured high in the heavens. A few spots of heavy rain fell in great splashes, and the bustling landlady of the Cross-keys, as she came to the door, was full of congratulations that madam had escaped the thunderstorm which was evidently brewing. Meantime, Captain Muir, who had not expected his lady quite so soon, was away in the kennels to see if some medicine which he--kindly gentleman--had prescribed for a puppy ill of distemper had bettered the poor beastie; but he would be back syne and the rooms were ready.

This was a relief to Marrion as it ensured that their meeting would be private; so she followed the landlady upstairs, the latter asking if Mrs. Muir would rather a cup of tea, or to go to bed at once, since she would have to be up so early to catch the first coach south.

Marrion, as she refused both suggestions, felt startled at the Mrs. Muir. Was it possible that there was to be more than a mere intrigue? In Scotland one did not pose so easily as married--unless indeed Marmaduke was reckless--he was so, often----

She glanced round the bedroom into which she was shown, recognising that some of the luggage in it must be a woman's, then passed into the sitting-room adjoining. The fire had lately been lit, doubtless with a view to a sudden chilliness foretelling the coming storm, and the flames of its crackling wood danced on the walls, making the two lighted candles on the table unnecessary. Half mechanically she blew them out, and with a sombre, almost stern face, stood watching the blazing sticks.

Suddenly a cheerful well-known voice rose below.

"The puppy's much better, Mrs. McTavish. What, my wife has come? That's all right."

My wife! For an instant Marrion's head whirled. Was she too late? No. Confused memories of what in Scotland constituted an irregular marriage sent a flood of crimson to her face as she realised that Duke had all unwittingly acknowledged her as his "wife" before witnesses. His footsteps coming up the stairs two steps at a time steadied her; but what followed shook her to her very foundations. Unheeding of her feeble "Duke" as he opened the door, he was across the room holding her in his arms and passionately kissing her averted face, her neck, her hair.

"This is good," he whispered. "Now for a splendid honeymoon!"

For a second she yielded; then she wrenched herself from him and faced him fairly.

"You're making a mistake, Captain Muir," she said sharply, "I am only Marrion Paul."

She would have liked to add "your friend"; but she dared not. At the moment she knew she was far more than that.

"Marmie!" he echoed stupidly. "Marmie!"

At first he was too surprised for more; then he drew himself up and stared at her angrily.

"What the deuce are you doing here?" he said at last, adding hastily, as possibilities struck him, "Did she send you? Is she ill?"

In her long drive the girl had gone over and over the coming interview, settling what she would say, but the sudden solicitude of his tone swept all her preparations away. Did he then really care? If so, nothing but the naked truth would be any use.

"No," she replied calmly, only her tightly interlaced fingers showing the tension of her mind and body. "She is quite well. I gave her a double dose of her sleeping drops to prevent her coming. I came instead because I wanted to speak to you."

The flickering firelight showed sheer anger on the young man's face--sheer brutal anger.

"Because you wanted to take her place, eh?"

She gave a little sort of sob. What would she not have given to take it? The very intensity of her desire made her pass the insult by.

"It is no use being angry," she said quietly. "I came to try and make you hear reason. You may as well listen. She can't come to-night, and surely, meanwhile, we can sit down and talk it over--as friends!"

"We used to be friends, I admit," he replied coldly; "but if you are going to presume on friendship as you appear to have done, the sooner the farce ends the better."

For all that he sat down, his bold eyes taking in every detail of her altered appearance.

"Your dress suits you," he jibed. "I suppose you put it on to----"

"I had to put it on," she interrupted; "I had to pass muster. I didn't want to set the town talking. You know, as well as I, that it wasn't easy--it wasn't pleasant."

"No one asked you to do it," he replied, "and I wonder how you had the--the cheek!" Then suddenly he laughed; he could not help it. The whole business tickled him and his eyes took on a certain admiration. "It beats cock-fighting, my dear," he went on. "No one but you would have dared to do it. But it won't do, Marmie. You don't understand. That old man--I won't call him my father, Marmie--won't give me the two thousand pounds for my majority. Fantine Le Grand has shown me how to get it, and I----" He paused; in sober truth now he came to think of the plan for so getting it, the less it appealed to him.

Marrion waited a second, then said--

"How?"

There was no reason why he should have answered her categorically, but he did; perhaps at the back of his mind was a desire to know what she thought of it. He gave a forced laugh.

"We are to dance for it. Oh, I know all the stuff that's talked about dancing men and women, but we would go abroad! I should get leave of absence for six months on urgent private affairs, and no one would be a bit the worse."

"You would!" commented Marrion briefly.

There was a world of scornful criticism in the words.

"Oh, dash it all," cried Marmaduke, "a man can't always ride the high horse! And you've put me in the deuce of a hole, though I suppose you meant well. You see, I can't wait for her now, as I must see Pringle tomorrow; but I can come back again," he added complacently, "and I will."

"Then you mean to--to marry--that woman?" put in Marrion.

He rose angrily and began to pace up and down the room. In sober truth once more, now that he was away from Fantine Le Grand's allurements, he had begun to wonder if he were not paying rather dearly for his two thousand pounds.

"Of course I do; it's in the bond, and I'm a man of my word. And you've no right to call her that woman. She is far better than you think, and I am very fond of her, very fond of her indeed!" He stopped opposite Marrion with a certain defiance. The blaze of the fire had died down; it was almost dark, save for a red glow on their faces. "Of course," he went on, "I ought to be deucedly angry with you, Marmie; but somehow I'm not, and if you will only take her a note from me----"

She started to her feet passionately.

"A note!" she echoed, her voice vibrating with scorn. "Oh, Duke, Duke, sometimes I wonder if you can understand?--if any man ever understands? I came here, risking all, everything for you; you've been the sun in my heaven ever since I can remember; you've always been something very bright and very far away that is not to be touched or harmed. Yes, I come here to beg you not to ruin yourself body and soul, and you ask me to take a note!"

A sudden flash of lightning from the storm, now nigh at hand, lit up the room for a second, and showed her to him standing white and rigid like some accusing angel.

"You say you're fond of her, but you're not. I tell ye you're no fond of her, Duke; ye ken na what love is--an' I do--for I love the verra ground you tread on, the verra things you've touched----"

Her voice, which in the extremity of her passion had forgotten its acquired accent, failed; she sank back to her seat, and, throwing her arms out over the table, buried her face in them.

And a great silence fell between them, man and woman.

At last he laid his hand on her shoulder, and spoke humbly.

"I beg your pardon, Marmie; I did not understand, But I'm not worth it, child. Let me go my way----"

She pulled herself together.

"It's time I was going home," she said, unsteadily.

"You can't go in this storm," he put in relieved, as all men are, that the mental storm was over, "you'd better stop here for the night. I"--he went to the fire and deliberately lit the candles, as if, with their light, to bring things back to normal again--"I--I'll find a bed somewhere, and you can stop----"

Marrion interrupted him hastily.

"No, no, I must go! Folk will wonder. The boat is on this shore. I can easily slip over."

He walked to the window and looked out.

"It's raining cats and dogs; you can't go!" he said masterfully. "You stop here like a good girl, and I'll go and settle up something for myself."

He left the room and for one second she stood irresolute. Should she stop? He had called her his wife, would doubtless call her so again to the landlady, and if she stopped--if she stopped----

Then, with a little sob, she caught up her cloak and ran downstairs. The night was dark, but the moon shone fitfully between rifts in the clouds. The rain, coming in gusts with the wind, had ceased for a moment. She drew the hood of her cloak over her head and ran swiftly past the lighted windows of the bar, thinking she had escaped; but a moment after she heard swift steps following her own and, turning to look, saw Marmaduke, hatless, coatless, in pursuit.

The instinct of the chase awoke in her in a second; she doubled off the white road behind the shelter of a low beech copse.

"Marmie, Marmie, stop, I tell you! Don't be a little fool!"

Easy to say that. But it was he was the fool, not she. If she kept in such cover as there was she might reach the boat before him--she must! In the old days she had run as quick as he; and she knew where the boat was and he didn't.

She tucked her petticoats high above the knee like any Leezie Lindsay and ran as for dear life. If she had failed in her mission--and had she?--she would not fail here. That last double had been successful. His cry of "Marmie, Marmie, don't be so foolish, dear!" sounded quite far off--like the wail of a plover.

Now it came nearer. Perhaps he had seen the lantern she had left to guide her own steps to the boat. If so, she had no time to lose, as he would make straight for it, and so must she, forsaking the bend to avoid a peat bog, and braving the moss hags even in the dark. Anyhow, she was lighter than he, and would not sink so deep; though, after the long spell of fine weather, the bog could not be very bad. And this was the worst part of it. With the ease of long practice she jumped lightly from hag to hag, sparing no time to look round for the figure behind her, though she knew it must be perilously near; for that instinct of the chase was as strong in him, perhaps stronger, than it was in her. Her cheeks were flushed, her eye was bright, her heart beat high, despite her breathlessness, and she knew that his did so also. Briefly they had both forgotten everything save their determination to have their own way.

"Marmie, you little devil, stop, I tell you!" came his voice close behind her. Then a splash, a loud "damnation," told her that he had missed his hag.

That would give her time. She redoubled her speed, raced to the shore, and, not pausing to unfasten the boat, waded through the water, almost swimming the last bit, to where it rode at anchor on the outgoing tide. Clambering over the side she set to work at once to unknot the rope from the bow-ring. Not a second too soon, for Marmaduke, after a minute's delay, due to his flounder and an unavailing search for the shore ring, had found it.

"Got you!" he cried joyfully, but he spoke too soon. The rope, undone, gave easy way to his strong pull, and the boat, with Marrion laughing in the bows, drifted slowly out from the shore.

He stood looking at her, the useless rope in his hand. By the light of the moon, now riding serene overhead (for the brief summer storm had passed the zenith and now lay to the south, a dense bank of black quivering every now and again with throbs of summer lightning), he could see her tall and white, for her cloak had long since been flung aside, and heart-whole admiration possessed him.

"Marmie," he cried, "hold up--or, by God, I'll swim after you. I want to speak to you."

She took an oar, stopped her way by holding on to one of the submerged seaweed-covered rocks of the boat-pier and waited.

"Why did you run away? Why wouldn't you stop?"

She gave him the truth squarely and fairly.

"Because I should have passed as your wife, and if I had chosen I might----" She hesitated, and he relieved her by a low whistle.

"By Jove!" he said slowly, almost absently. "I didn't think of that, but"--he hesitated, in his turn--"but I thought, Marmie, you said you--you loved me!"

His voice lingered and lowered in altogether distracting fashion.

She turned hastily to the other oar, and let the blade drop into the water with a splash.

"Aye," she said, "that's why! For see, you--you've got to be Lord Drummuir!"

Her words silenced him. He watched her scull away, a dark shadow in the darkling water. Then his voice rang out to her as it were from very far off.

"Flash the light to me, Marmie, dear, when you get to the other side. I'll wait till I see you're safe."

[CHAPTER X]

Broad sunlight showed through the chinks of the drawn curtains when Fantine Le Grand awoke. She lay yawning for a minute or two, content to be still drowsy. Then memory returned, and she was out of bed in a second and at the window. The lawns lay dewy, a late blackbird was tugging away at an inadvertent worm, and shrill on the morning air rose the sound of Davie Sim's pipes playing "Hey! Johnnie Cope, are ye waukin' yet?" as he came up from the keep to strut through the corridors of the castle. It must be eight o'clock! And--what had happened? How had she come to sleep so long? She passed swiftly, being quick of thought, to the dressing-table and took up the bottle of sleeping drops. It was half empty.

Almost before she had time to realise this, and what it might possibly mean, a knock came to the door, and Marrion Paul, opening it, came into the room with a can of hot water.

She had been there at the earliest possible moment to satisfy herself that all was right, so she was not surprised to see Fantine Le Grand on foot. The look on the latter's face, however, the bottle in her hand, gave warning of what was to come, and it came instantly short and sharp, for Fantine had plenty of wit.

"Why did you give me what you did?" she asked imperiously.

Marrion Paul set down the water-can and faced her.

"Because I wanted to prevent you from joining Captain Muir at the Cross-keys," she replied quietly. It was waste of time, she felt, to beat about the bush with this woman, the solid truth was her best weapon.

It proved so for the moment. Fantine utterly taken aback retired into personal injury.

"You might have killed me," she began, almost whimperingly.

"Maybe," interrupted Marrion, "but I had to risk it--an' it's no hurt you----"

A sense of outrage came to her victim.

"Not hurt me, indeed! And why had you to risk it? Are you Captain Muir's keeper? His mistress you are, of course; but if you think you've succeeded you're very much mistaken. I shall join him by the coach to-morrow instead of to-day. And you may thank your stars that, as I don't want any fuss just now, you'll get scot free of your attempt to murder me. Now go! I never want to see your face again. Josephine will manage somehow, I've no doubt."

She pointed to the door, and Marrion, going down the wide stairs, felt relieved that that, at least, was over. The interview also had given her a clue as to what must be her next step. Mdlle. Le Grand had said that fuss would be inconvenient; for that reason, therefore, a fuss must be made. Hitherto she had hesitated between taking a further and still more active part in stopping the intrigue, or leaving the matter to Marmaduke's own good sense, which, removed from Fantine's personal influence, might surely be trusted. He could not want to marry the woman. It was the two thousand pounds he wanted. Marrion on her way to the keep-house made up her mind to risk everything by an appeal to the old lord; it would, at any rate, put a spoke in the woman's wheel for a time, and prevent her getting away to Marmaduke at once; it would, at any rate, make a fuss.

As a matter of fact, more fuss was facing Marrion than she had bargained for, since the first thing she saw on entering the keep-house was her step-grandmother seated at the table sipping a cup of tea she had just made for herself.

It was an unpleasant surprise, as she had not been expected home so soon, and Marrion bit her lip with vexation at the sight of her. After laying elaborate plans to avoid even the sight of one she despised and detested, it was bitter to find her established as mistress in the house. So anger kept her silent and Mrs. Sim, whilom Penelope of the castle, said no word either. She simply rose theatrically and stretched a dramatic finger across the table. So standing she showed like a wide extinguisher, the knob of which was formed by her head. This was still small and, so far as the upper part of the face was concerned, unmarred by fat, but obesity began on the double chin and went on increasing from shoulder to waist, from waist to hip, till the flounce of a wide petticoat completed the base of the triangle. Her hair of bright orange-red was untouched by grey, and the china-blue of her hard eyes startled you by the intensity of their colour in a face otherwise somewhat tallowy.

"Ye hizzie!" she said at last, in a deep contralto voice. "I wonder ye have the face to stan' there disgracin' the honest hearth o' an honest man! Awa wi' you, ye baggage, afore yer faither comes to beat you frae the door."

Marrion had stood with open mouth before this sudden onslaught; now she recovered herself and said haughtily--

"I do not understand." In her heart of hearts, however, she told herself that this woman knew of last night's happenings.

Penelope Sim gave a snort and sat down again to sipping her tea.

"Div' ye no understand?" she asked scornfully. "Then I'll tell ye. A lassie that goes tae spend the night wi' a man in a strange hottle is no ane to share an honest woman's home. An' so I'll tell yer faither. Shame upon ye, Marrion Paul!"

"Perhaps you'll oblige me, Mrs. Sim, by holding your tongue," retorted Marrion superbly. "I did not spend the night with any man, and if you say I did, you lie!"

"My certy!" cried Penelope, her face flaming. "So I'm a liar, am I? I tell you I saw you wi' my own eyes at the Cross-keys----"

"And what might you be doing there?" put in Marrion. "No good, likely."

Mrs. Penelope's voice began to rise.

"I'm no goin' to bandy words wi' you, Marrion Paul, ye're no worth it. But here comes your gran'faither; give your lip to him, if ye like. Ye sall no give it to me, a decent, married woman!"

"Decent!" echoed Marrion scornfully, and would have gone on to heaven knows what of indignant criticism had not the entry of her grandfather tied her tongue for she was fond of him, with all his faults, and he represented to her the only family life she had ever known.

So she stood defiant as Penelope of the castle, gloating over her own newly acquired propriety, held forth on what she had seen from the bar-parlour of the Cross-keys.

"Grandfather," she said at last, "you know me better than she does. Do you think I would do such a thing?"

"Ask her," broke in the shrilled contralto voice, "ask her, gudeman, if she was at the Cross-keys last night. I tell you she was, dressed up fine like a lady--an' the things lyin' yet in her room, for I went to see. Aye, ask her if she was there wi' a young spark--they tell't me it was Captain Duke, but that I'll never believe----"

"You may believe what you like!" put in Marrion fiercely. "But I'll tell you the truth, grandfather. I was at the Cross-keys last night, and I did see Captain Duke, but it was no harm I was after."

"Hark to her!" shrilled Penelope. "She was there, and for no harm! Out o' the house with her, Davie Sim, or your wedded wife will find her way out hersel'."

Here Davie who, man-like, had looked from one to the other of the two women, uncertain of approbation or reprobation, shook his head and began mumblingly--

"I never thocht, Marrion, to praise God your poor mother is in her grave, but if she'd lived to see this day----"

"Leave my mother alone, please grandfather," said Marrion, passion in voice and manner. "If you choose to judge me by that cast-off creature, do so! But there's no need to quarrel about it. You know I would not sleep under the same roof with her----"

"Hark to her, hark to her, an' me as gude a wife as ever stepped. Are ye goin' tae put up wi' that, Davie Sim?" whimpered Penelope.

Once more the master of the house looked as though he would speak, but a wave of Marrion's hand stopped him.

"So I shall leave this evening, and if what I've done is a disgrace to you, you have the remedy in your own hands--you can hold your tongues. So that ends it!"

She made her way past them and up the stairs, feeling a trifle dazed. This unlooked-for recognition complicated matters for herself; but did not alter her determination to risk all in order to get Marmaduke out of the hands of Fantine Le Grand.

So she packed up her things, leaving all the treasures of her childhood and her mother's, unlocked in drawers and cupboards, and sitting down on her bed by the window took her last look out over the rugged coast she had watched so often by storm and shine, by night and by day. And as she looked with lack-lustre, preoccupied eyes her thoughts were busy, not with the past but with the new life that was opening out before her; since, come what might, she realised that never again would she be simple Marrion Paul, old Davie Sim's granddaughter. To begin with, if she knew aught of Penelope, reputation was gone. Women of that sort were pitiless, and, in addition, her grandfather's wife desired nothing more than to make Drummuir and all belonging to it an impossibility for her step-granddaughter. Then she, Marrion, had definitely set herself the task of defending Marmaduke, and heaven only knew how far that might take her. For one thing, in view of Penelope's curiosity, she must make sure that Marmaduke had not left anything incriminating behind him at the Cross-keys. It would be so like him to write Captain the Honourable Marmaduke Muir and Mrs. Muir in the visitor's book!

The idea made her smile tenderly, even while she took a mental note that it must be seen to.

So, going down, while it was yet early, to order a handcart to take her slight luggage to the coach office, she came upon a castle stable-boy, who was a distant admirer of hers, riding to the Cross-keys with a note.

"It's frae the dancin' woman," said the lad, with a broad grin, "an' she guve me a golden soverin' to take it quick; an' I've to leave anither at the Crow."

"I can deliver that one," said Marrion cheerfully, "for I'm goin' yon way."

So, note in hand, she made her way to the Crow, and by a dexterous question or two elicited the fact that, as on the previous night, a carriage was ordered to be in waiting at half-past nine. If all went well, therefore, she might hope to avail herself of it. She did not, however, anticipate exactly what she meant to do--her plans were fluid, so much depending on the success of her next step. It was an overwhelmingly bold one, and she shivered visibly as she sat waiting for an answer to her request to be allowed an interview with his lordship.

"I'm right sure his lordship wad see me," she pleaded with Dewar, the valet, who in common with all the men-servants at the castle, had an approving eye on her good looks, "did he ken what I cam' about; and"--she added, with a laugh that was a challenge--"I'm no sae ill-looking but he might be blythe to see me forbye business."

"An' that's God's truth, my dear," replied Dewar gallantly, "sae I'll see what I can do."

Fortune favoured him, for Fantine Le Grand being in an evil, reckless temper had just sent to say she had a headache and could not come to amuse his lordship, who, up and dressed to receive her as usual, was cursing and swearing at womankind in the abstract, and therefore, not unwilling to have a concrete specimen on which to vent his ill-humour.

Marrion Paul, consequently, found herself without delay facing the heavy figure in the big padded chair. One foot swathed in flannels lay on a leg-rest, and the large hand that clasped the lion-head knobs of the armchair showed swollen and disfigured by gout; still there was something dignified, almost regal, in the pose of the man; while his face--Marrion, despite her thumping heart, as she looked above the treble chin to the open forehead, felt that here, when all was said and done, was kinship with Marmaduke.

And she for her part pleased the old man's eye also. She had not dressed herself for the occasion, but stood in her usual striped petticoat and bed-gown with a green tartan shoulder shawl of the Muir tartan and a snood of tartan ribbon to match in the red bronze coils of hair.

"So you're Marrion Paul?" he said, his keen clear blue eyes taking in every point of her person. "I haven't seen you to speak to since you were so high. You're a devilish good-looking girl. Come and give me a kiss, my lass."

To his surprise, amusement, and approval she stepped forward instantly and obeyed. The touch of her cool lips on his seemed to stagger him.

"Don't object to kisses--hey?" he said, as she remained standing close beside him.

"Why should I, Drummuir," she replied quietly, "when you've kenned me since I was a baby in arms."

He burst into one of his guffaws of rough laughter.

"Hey? What? One for the old reprobate! Sit down, my dear, and tell me what you want."

"It's about Mr. Marmaduke, sir," she began, her voice shaking a little.

"Hey? What? Has that young devil been--no, I beg your pardon, my dear, you're not that sort. Trust a man who's kicked over the traces a bit to know an honest horse when he sees one. You take my word for it; the best judge of a good woman is a bad man. Well, what of Duke?"

The mere abbreviation of the name was encouraging. She felt that to attempt a bargain, even to beg for patience, would be a mistake. She simply took her courage in both hands and told him all she knew. He sat, his unwieldy body impassive as some carven image, one strong emotion after another sweeping over the mobile face that held so much laughter in every line that Time had graven on it. Only once or twice he interrupted her when, fearing she was too lengthy, she began to cut out details. Then his quick "Let's have it all; don't you know, you're as good as a play. Beat the immortal wizard all to bits! Don't skip"--brought her back to the accessories of her tale. When she had finished he sat and looked at her for a second.

"And you say Duke let you go as you came? Well, he was a d----d young fool; that's all I've got to say! I wouldn't in his place. Even now--my God, what a Lady Drummuir you'd make, if it wasn't for the curse of class! I'll turn Socialist before I die." He paused, and his blue eyes narrowed. "Now, why have you come and told me all this?"

She had her answer ready, and all fear of the old man having vanished she gave him the truth boldly.

"Because I want payment. I've put it into your power to stop Mdlle. Fantine----"

His whole face changed in a second, an expression of sheer devilish anger took possession of it.

"You leave that alone!" he thundered. "I can settle that business for myself."

It was the first mistake she had made, and she became more wary.

"I want payment," she went on, "because I've risked everything for--for Duke. My father's turned me out of his house and Penelope----"

"Damn Penelope!" broke in his lordship complacently. "Having no virtue of her own, she's deuced careful about other people's. And so Duke really contemplated marrying Fantine in order to make two thousand pounds by dancing. Confound the boy! He can dance, I'll allow; but it was a big price to pay. And the idea of my son dancing for money! He must have been hard put to it, even to entertain the idea." He bent those blue eyes of his suddenly on her. "And so you want me to give Duke the two thousand pounds myself, do you? Of course you do! Trust a woman who is in love asking for the moon." He paused a moment and gave a little laugh. "Heaps of women have asked me to be a saint, my dear, but I never could compass virtue. However, you've given me as good a morning's entertainment as ever I had in my life; and what's more you've given me an opportunity of as fine an afternoon's amusement." Here he chuckled wickedly, then added, "Shall I give you the cheque or send it direct?"

She felt staggered at his indifference. She had expected to brave his anger and have perchance to threaten him with what she knew of Fantine's plans for the evening; but, here, with scarce an argument, she found herself successful. In truth she had not gauged accurately the phenomenal malice as well as the almost incredible good nature of the man.

"You must send it, my lord," she said swiftly. "There is no need to say anything about all this."

He frowned in a second.

"Do you mean to dictate to me, my good girl?" he asked fiercely. "You'd better leave the business in my hands. I'll settle it to my own satisfaction. Come back at six o'clock and you shall be made acquainted with my decision."

He rang the hand-bell on the table beside him and when Dewar entered, said carelessly:

"Show the young woman out; and, Dewar, tell Penelope to come and see me at two o'clock. And, Dewar, send a message to the Manse and tell that jackanapes of a parson Bryce that I want to confess my sins or something of that sort. Tell him I'm ill--dying, if you like--anything--and I want him as soon as he can come. Do you understand?"

"Yes, my lord," replied Dewar discreetly, though he was considerably mystified; but everyone in the castle knew there was but one way of receiving Lord Drummuir's orders, acquiescence and obedience.

[CHAPTER XI]

An hour or so afterwards Fantine Le Grand coming in from a ramble on the rocks, whither she had gone despite her pretended headache, in order to quiet her nerves for what she foresaw was to be a stand-up fight between her and Marrion, found old Lord Drummuir in possession of her boudoir. He was in his wheeled-chair, but was looking remarkably spruce in a blue coat with brass buttons, an immaculate white stock and frill, and his gouty foot was swathed in kersey to match the breeches he wore. His ruddy face was all smiles, but there was a vicious look in the blue eyes that reminded her of a horse about to kick.

And kick he did with a force that left her breathless.

"I've come to tell you," he said, "that we are going to be married this evening."

She recoiled as if from a blow.

"Now, don't be foolish and make a fuss," he continued, as she gave a little cry, "or you won't look well in your wedding-dress!" So far he had gone lightly; but now he settled down to a decision of voice and manner that was positively terrifying to the woman in its intensity. "I tell you I won't have any fuss, and I know everything. Marrion Paul told it me from start to finish, and I don't want to hear any more about it, if you please!"

The mock politeness of the last finished her. She was ill-bred, not over brave, and reverting to her early upbringing she burst into a torrent of abuse of the viper, the hussy who was no better than she should be, who, if Penelope at the keep-house was to be believed--and she had seen her but now--had----

So far Lord Drummuir had let her storm; now he stopped her impatiently.

"I know what Penelope says," he snarled, "and I shall be sorry for her when she hears what I have to say. And I know you, Fanny, down to the ground. You're not a bad sort, but you are getting old. Look in the glass, you foolish woman, and you'll see I'm right. But you suit me and I mean to have you. There's an end of it."

She summoned up a little courage.

"And supposing I won't! I am a free woman."

He lowered his brows and his words cut like a knife.

"Don't tell lies! You're not free. You think I paid your debts. I wasn't such a fool till I had you fast. Look here, when I heard all about this midsummer madness with Marmaduke--the d----d impertinence of trying to inveigle my son into posturing at the Courts of Europe for pennies almost made me give you your congé, miss, I can tell you--I sent for Compton. You think I don't know what he is to you; but I do. If he'd known of this business, I'd have kicked you both out. But he didn't, poor devil; he was flabbergasted. So I saw it was all your fault and I determined to punish you, and I'm going to do it my own way. Now, don't look like a frightened hare; I never touched a woman save in the way of kindness all my life, and we'll get on all right once we're married; so the sooner the better."

She sat and looked at him, dabbing her eyes with her handkerchief. The bald truth of it all took words from her, and her one feeling was that she could cheerfully have strangled Marrion Paul for her courage and straightforwardness.

"My wedding-dress isn't ready," she sobbed at last futilely, and the old man leant back in his chair and roared with laughter.

"By Gad, Fan," he bawled, "you're a woman, and no mistake; so don't make those eyes of yours too red with crying. Remember, you're not so young as you were. And as for this little penchant of yours for Marmaduke, why, God bless my soul, my dear, you've had dozens such episodes, and so have I, by Gad, so we'll suit each other down to the ground. Now, if you will please ring the bell for Dewar, I'll leave you to prepare--six o'clock sharp. I've told the gardeners to send you some orange blossoms from the houses and to decorate the hall. My daughters will be your bridesmaids."

When his wheeled-chair had gone the effect of his brutal determination, his colossal masterfulness, did not pass with it. That remained, and Fantine Le Grand gave in to it helplessly. The old man had said very little; on the whole he had been wonderfully polite, but she knew she was trapped, and that she might as well try to fly as to escape from his watchful eye, his unscrupulous power.

And, after all, it was but a return to the old plans; so after a while she followed Lord Drummuir's advice and dried her eyes.

"You ought to think yourself deuced lucky," growled Colonel Compton, when he came in, after a time full of alarm and recriminations. "If anyone had told me the old man would take it so quietly I wouldn't have believed it. I expected he would have kicked us both out into the gutter, and then where should we be? And such a mad idea, too! The Honourable Marmaduke Muir as a public dancer--preposterous!"

"It would only have been for six months and under an assumed name," interrupted Fantine defiantly; but all initiative was passing from her. She felt like clay in the hands of the potter.

"Twaddle!" insisted Colonel Compton. "I can only think you were insane. The fact is, my dear Fanny, you're getting old and your ankles wouldn't stand the hacking about of a dancer's life. That is why we agreed on your becoming Lady Drummuir, and you ought to be very much obliged to the old man for letting you off so easily."

This, combined with the reiterated allusions to her age, was too much for patience. Fantine jumped up and stamped her foot in impotent anger.

"Easily?" she echoed. "Can't you see the malice of the man? He is making us all feel fools. He is doing all the harm he can. I tell you he is enjoying himself thoroughly."

She was perfectly right. Lord Drummuir had not felt so young for years. At that moment, after disposing of Penelope in a way that reached the very marrow of the unseen bones hidden under that extinguisher of fat, he was facing, with a special licence in his hand, the dapper little figure of the Reverend Patrick Bryce, who, called on some pretext of illness, found himself confronted with an order to solemnise a marriage that same evening.

The countenance of the small divine was a study in outraged dignity; that of Lord Drummuir one of supercilious toleration--the toleration of a cat for the unavailing efforts of a mouse to escape its paralysing captor.

"Am I to understand, sir, that you refuse to carry out this special licence at a perfectly appropriate time and place?" said the latter, his voice even but deliberate. "If so, I must ask you for your reasons in writing, that I may forward them with my complaint." He waited a moment, then went on: "You were appointed by the Crown to this charge. A parishioner of yours in possession of a legal licence calls upon you to perform the duties of your office. You refuse, and I refuse to accept your refusal. That, I think, summarises the position between us. But let me remind you, my good sir, that nothing short of reliable information of cause or just impediment can justify a minister of the Church of Scotland in refusing to do the duty for which he is paid by the State. And if, sir, the licence of this house shocks you--as I am told it does--I think this endeavour of a man and a woman to keep within the bounds of so-called respectability should meet your approval. Briefly, my dear sir, you have not a leg to stand upon, and I demand your services at six o'clock this evening."

The little minister rose and made him a courtly bow.

"It shall be as your lordship wishes; but I reserve to myself the right of showing to your lordship that special licences can be used for, as well as against, the Church."

"Wonder where he gets his manners from," commented Lord Drummuir to himself, as the trim figure bowed itself out. "Father must have been someone's valet, I suppose; and that reminds me of Marmaduke's girl. She's true blue, somehow."

So he sat down, filled from top to toe with a wicked elation at his own success in upsetting everybody's plans, and indited the following epistle to his son, as a sort of top note to his manœuvres:

"Dear Boy,--You will be glad to hear that Fantine Le Grand becomes Lady Drummuir this evening at six o'clock. We have agreed that this is better than hunting two thousand pounds through the capitals of Europe, even in company with you. So that is settled. For the rest, I enclose a cheque for two thousand pounds on my bankers. You owe this to Marrion Paul, who is worth the whole batch of you put together. I cannot conceive how you were such a confounded ass as not to see this, but to let her slip through your fingers and leave the poor girl to face the insults of the neighbours, as she is doing; for, of course, her escapade is the talk of the town. My dear Marmaduke, I am ashamed of you!--Your affectionate father, Drummuir.

"Your step-mamma sends you her duty."

He chuckled over the production which he calculated told enough to rouse anger and not enough to satisfy curiosity, and which, while being a regular facer, left the relations between them much as they were.

After which he had himself wheeled to the big hall where the ceremony was to take place, and amused himself vastly by superintending decorations and mystifying Peter, who came in from a day after wild duck, to find the house upside down. It was the sort of situation in which his lordship revelled, and he became almost lachrymose over reminiscences of the past with Jack Jardine, who never moved a muscle, but took the ceremony as a matter of course. Only when Peter, less experienced, asked him what the deuce the old man meant by playing the goat at a moment's notice, he shook his head solemnly, and replied--

"Your father is a very remarkable man, Peter, a very remarkable man indeed."

So at the appointed hour the wheeled-chair took its place, its occupant duly bedecked with the white flower of a blameless life in his buttonhole, before the improvised sort of altar which bore on it a beautiful bunch of late roses; and the Reverend Patrick Bryce with a colour in his usually pale cheeks sailed in very stiff in his starched bands and rustling academical black robes and took his place before it. The bride, composed and cheerful, looking quite virginal in white and orange blossoms, appeared on the arm of Colonel Compton and followed by her bridesmaids, also in white. There were, however, but two of them, for Margaret Muir boldly stalked in separately, attired in a fine new purple gown, and took a place sedately beside Jack Jardine, who stared at her incredulously; for her father's eyes were upon her and scowling disapproval at her disobedience to his commands. She seemed quite indifferent to this, and nodded an encouraging smile to her sisters, who, poor souls, were the only people who showed by their red eyes and general emotion that the occasion was serious and not a mere farce.

So curtly, baldly, shorn of every unnecessary word, every touch of sentiment, the simple formula binding those two sinners in the most holy of bonds went swiftly on, until the Reverend Patrick Bryce closed the register in which Peter, as his father's best man, and Jack Jardine, as family friend, had duly attested the marriage, and stepped down to where Lord Drummuir's chair stood with the new-made Lady Drummuir beside it.

"My part in this pitiable travesty being ended, sir," he said, with a dignified bow, "I take my leave. Before I do so, however, I wish to introduce my wife to you and acquaint you with my marriage--also by special licence--to your daughter. Margaret, my dear!" he added, raising his voice, "oblige me by saying farewell to your father. It is the last time you are likely to see him."

For a second the figure in the purple gown hesitated and gave an agonised glance at her sisters in white; then with her eyes fixed on the small dignified figure of the man to whom she had unreservedly given her whole large heart, her courage returned, she walked forward, her head held high, and faced her father. He was purple with rage, and looked as if he would have a fit.

"Do you mean to tell me," he stuttered, "that you have married that--that jackanapes?"

Her face flushed, her temper was up in a second, and matched his own.

"No, sir; I have married an honourable gentleman of birth equal to my own! It is more than you can say of your bride's----"

"Margaret, Margaret!" came the little parson's warning voice; for, be Lord Drummuir's faults what they may, he was still her father.

But she would have none of it, she was going to have her say for the first and last time of her life; so she went on while the old lord listened, a sort of wicked approval in his eyes. He had not known she was so much his daughter.

"And I married him without asking your consent, because I knew you never would have given it, and I am of age----"

"Yes, my dear, a bit long in the tooth!" broke in the old man viciously.

"Very," she replied; "but not so old a bride as you are a groom. I'm thirty-six, and, as you said yourself, if I choose to get married by special licence, provided there's no cause or just impediment, no one--not even the nearest and dearest--have a right to object. Isn't that what he said?" she added, in appeal.

The Reverend Patrick Bryce looked at his lordship and his lordship looked at him. Then suddenly came one of the rough, rude gaffaws.

"You've caught a tartar, parson!" chuckled the old man. "Take her, and be d----d to you both for a couple of fools. I'll leave you to be angry, if you like; this is my wedding-day and I want to be jolly. Here, Davie--Davie Sim, where the devil are you with your pipes? Skirl up 'Muir's Matching.' Now, my lady."

And as the wheeled-chair moved off accompanied by white satin and orange blossoms he looked round to the purple robe with almost boyish malice in his eye.

"Take the parson's arm and come along, Meg. You may as well get a good send off from the castle and have your share of the family wedding march, since it is little else you'll be getting from the Muirs of Drummuir."

That evening, after the newly made Lady Drummuir had been dismissed to her own rooms with the injunction to remember her new honours, and not to stand any cursed nonsense from any one, and the old man, regardless of gout, sat drinking one glass of port after another on the ground that, having got royally drunk at his three previous weddings, he was not going to treat his fourth with less consideration--Jack Jardine, somewhat breathless after all the disturbing and inexplicable events of the day, shook his head and said once more--

"Your father is a remarkable man--a very remarkable man!"

"Very," assented Peter. "Now I wonder what Marrion Paul had to do with it all!"

[CHAPTER XII]

Marrion Paul herself failed to answer that question. When she had returned at six o'clock to the castle--having spent the intervening time down by the seashore in order to avoid Penelope--she had been completely taken aback by the sudden development of affairs, wondering if she were in any way responsible for what had happened.

But a single look at the old lord's face, as he was wheeled in to take his place at the marriage ceremony, made her realise that the unwieldy body, instinct with malice and controlled by autocratic unassailable will, held every inmate of Drummuir Castle, herself included, as puppets in the hollow of its gouty hand.

A sudden unreasoning desire to get away from that influence, an extreme distaste at the part she had played in the serio-comic tragedy filled her. She envied the Reverend Patrick Bryce his independence, and it was with real relief that, according to her plan, she found herself once more rumbling to the Cross-keys in the chaise from the Crow.

This should be her last departure from the conventional. Now that Duke's safety from the dancing woman's wiles had been secured, she had time to blame for his supineness; and he, of course, when he heard of the marriage, was not likely to forgive her. Thus they were quits!

So be it. She could return to her dressmaking and never see him again. He had his majority, and, born soldier as he was, had his chance.

Not knowing, for certain, under what name Fantine Le Grand had engaged her room for the night, she was wary with the landlady of the Cross-keys and felt relieved when she was shown into a less pretentious room than the one she had been in the night before. Her vigil--and she knew it would be a long one ere the house was quiet enough to allow of her slipping down to the office to see if Marmaduke had written anything in the visitors' book--would have been harder in surroundings so full of keen memory. What a fool she had been! Why had she been so frank with him? The hot blood mounted to her very temples at the thought of it even while she felt angry with herself that it should be so. After all, she was not quite as the other douce country folk; there was something in her blood that was different; something that rebelled against the tyranny of that bloated old man, sitting like a spider in his web, imposing his wicked will upon all by sheer force of character.

Yet he had behaved well to her, and he was terribly, horribly like Duke.

So she sat raging, her head aching, till it was time to do the last bit of trickery, as it seemed to her now. Yet it must be done; for if Marmaduke had been indiscreet, Penelope, in her pryings, which were certain, would be sure to find it out. It was not, however, till between two and three--that time when even the ostlers at an inn sleep--that it was safe for her to steal downstairs to the visitors' book. Even so, Boots lay snoring on a sofa in the office. But her task did not take long. There, as she had foreseen, was Marmaduke's unmistakable writing in the words "Captain the Honourable and Mrs. Marmaduke Muir." Below, as if as witnesses, two commercial travellers had written their name and address. She had brought a sharp penknife with her, so, in less than a minute, the page was removed, the corresponding one in the quire pulled out, and the book closed again without trace of any removal. She gave a sigh of relief when she reached her bedroom again, and, folding up the written sheet, placed it in her purse. Then, after burning the other, she lay down and tried to sleep. But unsuccessfully, though she felt outwearied to an altogether unusual degree. The arrival of the early coach was a relief. She took her seat in it, hoping the fresh air would drive away her malaise; but it did not.

"You're no feelin' just the thing, miss," said a sympathetic bagman as he got out to stretch his legs at a change of horses. "Try just a wee sup of whisky; its awful inspirin'."

Marrion, smiling, shook her head. By this time she was beginning to wonder if, despite her usual hardiness, she had got a chill the night before.

It was past eight in the evening ere Edinburgh was reached, and, anxious to be housed as soon as possible, she left her box at the coach office and made her way giddily to her old lodgings where the landlady had agreed to keep her belongings until her return from her holiday. They were up a common stair that echoed and re-echoed to the slam of the street door and her own wavering steps. The rooms were high up and more than once Marrion had to pause for breath, and when at last she rang she had to lean against the door, to recover herself. There was no answer. She rang again and waited--waited an interminable time, until someone coming down the common stair said briefly--

"Ye're wastin' yer time, mum. Mistress McGillivray's deid."

"Dead!" she echoed feebly.

"Aye, last week, and the polis hae lockit up the place till the heirs be known," replied the man, as he passed on, rousing the echoes again.

Marrion followed him, realising that she must seek another lodging. Easy in a way, yet difficult, since in that quarter of the old town many of the houses were not over-respectable. Still it was only for a night, and bed she must have as soon as possible. So she closed with an exorbitant offer in cash of a fairly clean attic made by a loose-lipped lady who smelt rather of whisky, and five minutes later, having locked herself in, threw herself, still half-dressed, on the truckle bed.

There the landlady next morning, having placidly unlocked the door with a master key, found her, flushed, breathless and delirious--briefly, down with a sharp attack of pneumonia. Infirmaries and district nurses being not as yet, Mother Gilchrist, as her clientèle called her, coolly took possession of her lodger's purse, sent for an apothecary doctor from round the corner, and thereinafter treated the patient with a certain amount of rough kindness, sending some of her other lodgers, girls with haggard faces and loose hair, to sit with her, and going up occasionally with water-gruel and still more watery beef-tea. But Marrion Paul was strong, and so, after a fortnight's struggle in the valley, she came out of it wan and emaciated, and lay looking at a bit of torn paper on the wall, that all through her fever dreams had flapped like a sail in a boat in which she and Duke were drifting out to sea, and wondering how much of what she remembered was true and how much dreams.

"I must get up," she said suddenly, when Mother Gilchrist appeared in company with water-gruel. "And will you give me my purse, please? I put it under my pillow, I think, but it isn't there."

Mother Gilchrist laughed a loose-lipped laugh and produced the purse from her pocket.

"Yon's the purse, my dearie; but there's naethin' in it the now. What wi' rent an' doctors an' physic, forby nursin', what else is to be expectit?"

Marmie stared aghast.

"But there was nigh ten pun' in till't," she protested.

"It's just awfie expensive bein' ill," replied Mother Gilchrist calmly. "Ye can hae the reckonin' later on. Meanwhile, tak yer nourishment like a good lammie."

"What's ten pun' to you one way or another," continued the exemplar of youth, when Marmie, up for the first time, returned to the charge. "You've gotten a paper in yon purse that's worth a guid deal tae you, my lass, if it's written in the man's own write--an' if ye can prove----"

Marrion interrupted her in an angry flash.

"You're making a mistake. It has nothing to do wi' me. An' I wouldn't prove if I could."

She paused, feeling she was contradicting herself.

"Lord sakes," retorted Mother Gilchrist, "ye needna loup down a body's throat! An', anyhow, a lassie wi' such hair as you've gotten needna look for ten pounds."

Marrion, still weakened body and soul by her illness, thought almost regretfully of her hairdresser.

"Aye," she assented languidly, "they'd give me that for it; but I should feel bad if it were cut off, shouldn't I?"

Mother Gilchrist burst into a cackling laugh.

"There's more ways, my lammie, o' makin' money by hair than by shearin' it off like a sheep's fleece," she said meaningly.

But the meaning did not come home to Marmie until one of the rather bedraggled girls in cheap finery let her into the secret of the house. They paid Mother Gilchrist a certain sum for board and lodging, and on the whole she was kind to them. Anyhow, they had to lump it, as most of them were in debt to her. However, there was always the chance of a stroke of luck, especially when one was new to the business and had such hair as Marrion had.

That same afternoon Marrion managed to creep round to the coach office. She intended to get her box and pawn some of her things--even the little brilliant brooch of her father's--so as to keep her in decent lodgings till she could find employment in some dressmaking concern. She would not go back to her old employers, for her address there was known and she wanted to lose herself; for a while at any rate.

But Fate was against her. Failing a claimant the box had been sent back whence it came, as the only address to be found on it was Drummuir Castle, Drum. Nor was her call at her old landlady's more successful. The flat was still locked up; so she came back utterly wearied and disheartened, to be met by a demand for more money from Mother Gilchrist, who looked at her as one looks at a rat caught in a trap. She had miscalculated with Marrion, however; and in an instant the latter made up her mind. She must get out of the present quagmire without delay. Yet she did not wish to make herself known to the friends she had in Edinburgh, because during the past fortnight her desire to lose herself--to get away once and for all from Drummuir and all that Drummuir entailed--aye, even Duke---had been strengthening. But she could sell her hair. Mother Gilchrist, arguing from other girls, was calculating she would not; but she would find she was mistaken. She might think it safe enough to let a girl without a penny in her pocket go out alone, but she would find herself wrong.

That night Marrion slept the sleep of the just, and it was one o'clock--for the gun had just fired from the castle--next day when, with a curiously light heart, she walked out of the most fashionable hairdresser's shop in Prince's Street. She had eschewed her old admirer's for obvious reasons, but she had found no difficulty in her bargain; and if her heart was light, her purse was heavy. She was free, at any rate, of Mother Gilchrist and her kind; she was free also of any necessity for recalling the past. She would make her own future in life.

As she passed through the shop heavily veiled, for she would run no risk of recognition, a group of fashionably dressed young men were daffing over pommade hongroise with an attractive young person behind the counter, but they took no notice of the somewhat shabbily dressed figure which passed out and went westward. With money in her pocket Marrion's plans began to formulate rapidly. She would not stop in Edinburgh; she would go to some place where the fear of recognition would not constantly be with her. So she would go--whither?

She pondered the question idly, heedless of Fate behind her in the shape of one of those fashionably dressed young men, who, two minutes after Marrion had passed through the shop, had burst out after her, leaving his companions still looking with admiration at a great pile of red-brown hair which the proprietor of the shop, hugely delighted with his bargain, had brought in for these privileged customers to see.

So she had not long for freedom. Ere she had reached Frederick Street a detaining hand was on her arm and a joyous voice in her ears--

"Marmie! I knew it must be you! I have been looking for you everywhere."

"Duke," she said feebly as she looked round. And as she did so, the distant Calton Hill blocking the blue slopes of Arthur's Seat, the wonderful blending of town and country which makes Edinburgh seem an epitome of human life, was lost to her eyes; she only saw his face, insouciant, smiling, yet full of affection. The douce commonsensical world in which she had resolved to live was gone; she was among the stars again, in a different existence, herself a different being. Yet even as she realised this she realised that she was alone. He had not found his wings to follow her.

Yet he was prompt; without pause he hailed a passing cab, put her into it unresisting, gave the order Pentland Hotel, and as he seated himself beside her reached out a hand with glad delight in the clasp of its warm fingers to find her own.

"Where are we going, Duke?" she asked, with a sort of sob in her effort to keep herself to normal.

"To have lunch, my dear!" he replied joyously. "You look as if you wanted it. And we haven't much time to spare, for the train starts for Glasgow at 2.30 and we must go by it, for my leave is up and I have to get back to Ayr by to-morrow. I'm in command of the detachment there."

The certitude of his words roused instant resentment.

"I must ask you to excuse me," she said peremptorily. "Will you stop the cab, Captain Muir?"

"But, my dear," he replied, quite pathetically, "I must speak to you somehow, and this is my only chance. Do come, Marmie, at any rate, to lunch."

The simplicity of his plea disarmed her again, and the hotel being reached at that moment she allowed him to take her on his arm up the steps after the fashion of the day. But once in the private sitting-room, which, with lunch for two as quick as possible, he had commanded in a lordly voice as he entered, his manner changed again.

"Take off that veil and bonnet, will you, please," he said abruptly. "I want to see what that brute has dared to do."

Marrion looked at him startled.

"Oh, yes," he continued, "I know! That's how I found you. When the man brought in that pile of hair to show those young cubs--faugh! it makes me sick to think of them fingering it--I knew it must be yours; no one else has hair like it. Marmie! Marmie! why did you let him do it--the grovelling, money-grubbing beast!"

Once again his anger appeased her, and she replied: "I wanted the money."

He groaned.

"And you got me the two thousand pounds! Oh! yes, the old man--curse him!--told me all about it, and how that harridan Penelope---- But never mind that now, though, you see, we have plenty to talk about. When----"

She had removed her bonnet and now stood a trifle defiant.

"It will grow again!"

But he had passed from his vexation.

"Why, Marmie, surely you've been ill? You are so thin, so pale, child--what has been the matter?" he exclaimed, all his innate kindness coming uppermost. "Here, sit down; you look as if you were going to faint"--he rang the bell violently. "I don't believe you've had anything to eat! Here! Tell the housekeeper to send up a cup of soup--beef-tea, if she has got it--at once, and--and some toast," he called out loudly, after the retreating waiter. Then he came to stand by Marrion and say in an almost tragic voice, "I owe you a lot, Marrion Paul, and I'm going to pay it back, by gad! I am!"

She tried to laugh and failed, feeling she would cry if she spoke. So she took her soup when it came and afterwards, as he eat his lunch, they talked and argued.

"Now look here, my dear," he said at last in his old, rather flamboyant, most masterful manner, "you tell me you don't want to stop in Edinburgh, and you tell me you have plenty of money in your purse. But one thing you haven't got at present--strength to work. I can see you haven't, and you have done an immense amount for me, and--well, I'm dashed if I am going to leave you as you are to face things alone. So that settles it. I must get back to Glasgow now. You come with me so far. I promise you, Marmie, I will not--well, annoy you in any way. See a doctor, and--and do as you like. Only I swear to you, my dear, if you won't be reasonable I'll break my leave and stop here, and--and----"

His boyish face broke into mischief; he came towards her with hands outstretched, frank, absolutely devoid of all save pure affection.

In a way, it cut her to the heart as she acquiesced.

The ride to Glasgow, first-class, with all the alacrity of guards and porters consequent on Marmaduke's lordly ways and tips, was rather an agreeable novelty; so also was the obsequiousness of the hotel where he left her, saying he would be round to see her ere he started for Ayr next morning.

Before he came, however, a rather well-known doctor arrived somewhat to her annoyance, the more so because his verdict was startling. A sharp attack of pneumonia, which mercifully had not killed her, had left both lungs enfeebled. At least six weeks' complete rest, care, and good food, and, if possible, sea air would be necessary to make them normal; but given these desiderata perfect recovery was assured.

Six weeks! Marrion, despite her full purse, was aghast, and Marmaduke, coming in with his usual breezy vitality, found her depressed. He was in uniform, and it was the first time she had seen him so, with all the accessories, as it were, of his young manhood about him, from the glitter of his plaid brooch to the pipe-clay on his white gaiters, for Andrew Fraser would have scorned to have aught astray in his master's kit.

"I have had rather bad news," she began dolefully; but he checked her with a comprehending smile.

"I know," he replied, "I was waiting for the pill-doc's verdict downstairs. But it's perfectly easy, my dear. The sea is simply splendid at Ayr. I'm off there in quarter of an hour; but I'm going to leave Andrew Fraser here to bring you down later on. If I can't find you a suitable lodging before you come you can get one for yourself next day. And if you do run short of money, you can always come to me, can't you?"

She shook her head, but the tears were in her eyes.

[CHAPTER XIII]

Andrew Fraser stood at attention watching a couple of figures, a man and a woman, who for the last hour had been dredging a sea-pool with a landing net as if they were boy and girl. He had watched them at it often in the last six weeks, and, honest, straight-forward fellow as he was, had wondered how they managed to treat each other with such perfect unconsciousness that they were man and woman. So far as his master was concerned, that might be, for Andrew was shrewd enough to see the difference between friendship and passion; but, if anyone was ever heart-wholly in love, Marrion Paul was that person. You could see it in her face; yet it never seemed to influence her actions. The perception of this made Andrew vaguely afraid of her; it put a sort of damper on his own passion for her, since such self-control was not natural; it was barely human.

Hour after hour, the simple soul would tell himself, those two would play themselves like a couple of weans. Three or four times a week the major would, after the morning parades were over, drive out in his tilbury--Andrew perched in the tiny back seat--and spend his afternoon at the little inn which was also the ferry-house over the Doon river where Marrion lodged. Sometimes the two would go out sailing together, but more often they amused themselves on the shore, as they were doing now, dredging for sea things or catching miller's thumbs. It was childish, but--Andrew's lean, anxious face puckered with confused thought as he turned to a sound which he knew would bring with it a more commonsensical outlook on the situation than he, with his passionate love for the woman concerned, his passionate affection for the man, could bring to bear on it. It was the click of busy knitting needles, and they belonged to the landlady of the "Plough." She was a thoroughly good, kindly, healthy woman, whose views were strictly conventional on all subjects appertaining to the relations between the sexes; and as these in those days--and even now, for the most part--were that sex was the only possible tie between two spirits if they happened to be living for the time being, one in a male body, the other in a female--they were not likely to approve of the dredgers of sea-treasures.

"When are yon two gaun to be marriet?" she asked firmly. She was a just woman, and having seen no signs of wrong-doing was willing to believe the best.

Andrew hesitated.

"I'm thinkin'," he replied slowly, "that they are no considering marriage."

"Then they aught tae think shame tae themsels," retorted the landlandy severely. "Her week's up the morrow's morn, an' I'll just tell her she canna stop in my house. It's just clean redeeklus."

Andrew flushed up.

"There's no need for you to say aught, ma'am," he protested eagerly. "She's leavin', anyhow. Ye ken she only came for her health and that's re-established. It would only hurt the lassie--and--and do harm, mayhap."

The landlady looked at him and sniffed.

"The lassie, as you ca' her--will take no hairm from what I sall say to her, an' she'd be the better to give up moithering about wi' majors, and tak' up wi' a gude, God-fearin' man like yersel'."

And with that she carried the click of her knitting-pins back into the inn, leaving Andrew Fraser battling with his own heart. Aye, surely, surely, it would be better, more seemly, more discreet.

But there they were coming up from the beach like happy children.

"Then I'll bring a boat along at one to-morrow," said the major, as he climbed into the tilbury. "I can't get away before, and we'll try and get to the Craig. It's eighteen miles south, so if this north-west wind holds good we shall have plenty of time, shan't we?"

"Plenty of time!" echoed Marrion happily.

But she had been happy every day of those six weeks, and even now, though the hair money was running short, and she knew she must be up and doing in a few days, she would not, could not, think of the future. Sufficient to the day was the evil and the good thereof.

Half an hour after Marmaduke's departure, however, she came out of the inn-parlour with a heightened colour. It had been no use attempting to explain the position to the landlady, it was foolish to mind what she had said; the more so as, automatically, that position must end in a day or two; still it was disturbing!

In this early September the twilights were long and the sky was still golden high up to the zenith. She threw a shawl over her head and, taking a boat, sculled herself across the ferry for a calming walk down the coast-line.

"The banks and braes of bonny Doon!"

The song kept echoing in her head. How pinchbeck it all was, that love of which men sung--

"But my false lover stole the rose,
But, ah, he left the thorn wi' me!"

That was a man's view of it. He came, he saw, he conquered. Then he could ride away leaving a thorn behind him. But why? She laughed aloud as she thought of her own passionate love for Duke, a love nothing could touch, a love that was unsoilable, unassailable, untouchable!

It was dark ere she returned and then someone tall and soldierly rose out of the shadows of the little sitting-room of the inn which she used as her own. For an instant her heart leapt. Then she saw it was Andrew Fraser.

"There's nothing wrong, is there?" she asked hastily.

"I'm no that sure," he replied unsteadily, and then his outstretched hands found hers, warm almost compelling in their fierce yet tender clasp.

"Marrion, Marrion, my dear," he said hoarsely, "ye're bringing wae into yure life! Oh, dinna draw away frae me, I'm not come to tell ye I love you; that's sure! You know that, Marrion, if you know anything. But listen! You cou'dna marry me. That's sure, too; d'ye think I can't feel that, too, Marrion? Right through to the very cauld core o' my heart, an' it's cauld, Marrion--it's deathly cauld!" He paused, and the girl in his passionate hold shivered.

"It makes me cauld, too, Andry," she half-sobbed, "deathly cauld. You're meybe worth more than he is, but--but I canna help myself."

Andrew's voice grew firmer.

"An' I canna help it either, my dear. But if ye canna marry me, why sou'd you not marry him?"

She shook her head. "I willna tie him down," she interrupted hoarsely. "I willna do him harm!"

"It's no harm!" he urged. "See you, lassie; would ye rather hae a Lord Drummuir wi' a wife like yersel', or a Lord Drummuir like to the auld man at the Castle now? I'm no sayin', mind you, that he wad be just as his father, but--well, I hae lived wi' the major these eight years, and I ken fine he needs a guide--why, my dear, since ye cam here, he's away to his bed like a lad to sleep like a child; an' there's a play-actin' woman at the theaytre in Glasgi' that had laid hands on him and thocht she'd got him; but he's just escapit the snare like a bird from a fowler. Sae ye might do good, not harm." There was a pause.

"Ye mean well, Andry," she said softly, "but--but he hasn't really asked me to--to marry him."

Andrew turned aside wearily.

"Has he no?" he replied. "Weel, that may be your fault, lassie; ye can keep a man at arm's length wi' a smilin' face, as I know tae my cost."

A sudden realisation of the man's self-sacrificing devotion came to her.

"An' ye've come to tell me this," she almost whispered, "to tell me to your cost! Oh, Andry, Andry, yere love is greater than mine!"

A sort of half sob came from the darkness.

"God bless ye for that, Marrion--God bless ye for that, my dear!"

The scalding tears were in her eyes as she raised them from her hiding hands to look for him; but he had gone. The shadows were empty.

The morning rose still and serene save for the puffing of the westerly wind that ruffled the blue sea with tiny white-crested waves. The Ayrshire coast stretching south lay green and yellow with ripe corn in little bays and promontories--far away like a faint cloud the cliffs of Ailsa Craig showed almost translucent.

An ideal day indeed for a sail!

Marrion, her mind still disturbed by her landlady's half-threatening remonstrances and by Andrew's pathetic appeal to the same conventional outlook, turned with relief to the prospect of her afternoon's holiday; probably the last one she would have, since she had made up her mind to leave for work next day.

It was a good deal past one when Marmaduke, in rather an evil temper, ran the pleasure-boat into the little pier where she was ready waiting. He looked less buoyant than usual and apologised for being late. All the fishing fleet were out, he said, and he had waited in vain to get a man.

"Not that that matters!" he added, recovering himself, as he helped her in. "You are as good as a man any day, Marmie."

And yet, when, after a three hours' sail before the wind, they reached the Craig, and, mooring the boat, climbed to the westering cliffs beneath which the waves set a frill of white lace, he fairly startled her by saying suddenly:

"Marmie, I've made up my mind; I am going to marry you. I've thought over everything from start to finish, and I'm certain it is the best thing for both of us. Now, my dear girl, let me have my say for once; you shall have yours by-and-by. I'm not going to talk of what you did for me with my father. I'm not sure yet, you see, whether I am vexed or grateful. A man doesn't like to be exactly--well--herded; but you did it; and that intolerable vixen Penelope--but I won't talk about her either. Then there's the hair business," he eyed her ruefully, though in truth, now that the ends began to curl, the shearing was no such dis-sight, "that also was my fault; and now"--he paused, and a red flush of anger rose to his brow--"the goody-goodies in Ayr apparently won't let you alone, and one of the youngsters this morning tried to cut a joke; but I won't talk of that either. The long and short of it is, Marmie, that you and I have got to get married. And"--his voice changed to almost affection--"you know, dear, what you stand for with me--for everything that I know to be really worth having--everything that--well--I ought to be and am not. For it's the old story, Marmie, I'm Tristram Shandy and you are the Shorter Catechism, so--so come and help me, won't you?"

With his voice in her ears she sat for a moment looking out westwards. A low bank of cloud had obscured the horizon, the sun just thinking of sinking behind it shone with unearthly brilliance over the sea, over him, over herself. Then she disengaged her hand from his gently, and, rising, stood on the extreme verge of the cliff, looking down into the dazzling, shifting green of the waves. Would it, after all, be so great a plunge downwards? She had often imagined the choice coming to her. Suddenly she spoke:

"There is no need for--for Tristram Shandy to be--to be bound up with the Shorter Catechism, is there? The two could help each other without the binding, couldn't they? And then"--her voice had the break of half-tears, half-laughter in it--"you see Tristram Shandy would be free--free to marry." She had been so intent on her own words, her eyes looking out far beyond that dark horizon that she had not realised he had risen to stand beside her; but now his arm about her waist, his face bent caressingly to hers, quite overset her self-control, she turned with a sob and buried her face on his breast. "Oh, Duke, Duke!" she cried. "I mustn't, I daren't harm you!"

He held her to him and kissed her again and again.

"You won't harm me," he said exultantly. "Of course I shan't be able to noise our marriage abroad just now, so you will have plenty of time to prepare for your future position."

All the glamour, all the glitter seemed gone from the world; she drew herself away from him and smiled at him tenderly, feeling glad that he had failed apparently to realise the magnitude of her offer.

"You must give me time to think, Duke," she said.

He looked a little offended.

"Oh, take it, by all means; only if you won't marry me we must give up being friends, for I'm not such a cad as to let a girl like you lose her character over me--but I expect I shall go to the devil, all the same."

They were very silent when they set sail once more. They had intended to tack along the coast to a village where Andrew had been told to await them with the tilbury; but after one or two attempts to make way against a momentarily increasing wind, Marmaduke, with a rapid glance at that arc of black cloud which had by now overcast the zenith, remarked briefly:--

"We are in for it, I fear, and had better run for Girvan. Wait till I am ready, Marmie, then take her round sharp."

Even as he spoke the gust of a coming squall struck them, the boat heeled over, and but for skill both at tiller and sheet, might have overset.

"It's a mercy you can steer," he said, a minute or two later, as by a deft giving way the boat over-rode a following seventh wave; "but if you keep your head there's no harm done."

So they flew before the rapidly rising gale, which, as it rose, shifted from north-west to nor'-nor'-by-west and threatened to drive them down the coast.

"We shall have to tack to make Girvan," he said sharply, "and it's best to do it before the full fury of the storm touches us. It looks ugly out there."

Marmie nodded.

"I'll take my time from you," she replied, "but don't hurry; we shall get into a slacker bit in a minute or two."

"Now!" came his voice.

The helm went round with all her young strength, but the boat hung for a second, a following wave took her broadside on, there was a crash, and Marmaduke was overboard. For one dreadful second Marrion's heart stood still; the next she realised he had still the sheet-rope in his hand, and, bringing the boat up sideways to him, he had his hand on the gunwale and was clambering in.

"That was a narrow shave," he said, with a brilliant smile. "Now, Marmie, as the yard has gone, there's nothing for it but let the sail fill as it can or can't. It will steady us, anyhow. So I'll tie the sheet and take the tiller. You'd better sit at my feet--see, here's my coat--rubbish, put it on, I tell you! I don't think we shall make Girvan, but I--I think I can run her ashore further down. If not----" He stooped and kissed her.

That was all; but whether the next hour was a nightmare or a heavenly dream Marrion Paul in after years never could decide. The great waves rushing past the little boat, the half-dismasted sail bellying out over the uplifted bows, scarce seen in the gathering darkness, their figures in the stern, close--ah! so close together, she resting against his knees, with upturned face on his, one arm round his waist, the other, round his feet sheltering him as best she could with the coat he had insisted on her taking. And he? He seemed to her as the archangel Michael might have seemed, as he sat courageous, alert, bending down once or twice, after a stiffer struggle, to touch her hair with his lips, and almost laugh his confidence.

"Getting along nicely, Marmie. We may have to swim for it--but it has got to be done!"

At last there came a roar ahead of breakers on a beach.

"It's sand, I think, so off with your boots and everything else you can!" he called above the roar. "No, don't--ah, thank you, now I can kick them off! Be ready, child, and hold on to me. We sink or swim together!"

So she stood beside him for a minute or two, her skirts thrown aside, her bare arms ready for a forward drive. Then came a faint grating, a shock as the boat, heeled round by his strong arm, struck broadside on on the sand and pitched them forward nearer the land into the breakers. There was a terrific back draw, and Marrion felt as if her arms would be torn out of the sockets; but Marmaduke's grip upon her was as iron; then he was on his feet, then, with a cry--

"Run--run for all you're worth!" He half-dragged her beyond the whole awful onslaught of the sea. Another wild struggle, another forward run, and they were safe on the sandy shore, with low moorland around them. Then for the first time he began, manlike, to fuss over discomfort.

"You must get out of this as soon as may be," he exclaimed, as they stood in the full blast of the biting wind. "I see a light over yonder. Let's run for it, it will keep you warm."

He held out his hand and together they ran, the bruised leaves of the bog myrtle as they sped over the moor sending their clean aromatic odour into the night air.

"Better than last time," he said, with a laugh. "By Jove, I did get deep into the bog that time! It's better in couples."

So, once again those two, caught by the glamour of pure life, raced on almost forgetful of past danger and present discomfort.

The light proved to be from a shepherd's hut, where they found warmth and shelter, a sup of porridge, and some milk. It was four good miles to Girvan by a bad road, and that made a retreat thither impossible in the teeth of such a furious gale as was now raging; so the old shepherd, after providing Marrion with a petticoat of his dead wife's and a plaid of his own, proposed to retreat to an outhouse and leave the cottage to his uninvited guests. Marmaduke, however, negatived the proposal. His wife, he said, would be the better of a good sleep, while he must be off at daybreak to Girvan in order to get a conveyance; so she could lie down in the bed-place and he and the shepherd could just snoozle by the fire. Which they did.

Marrion, wide awake at first, her nerves all athrill, listened to their even voices for a time, then watched them asleep in their chairs, the firelight on their placid faces, and finally fell asleep herself, to wake with bright sunlight streaming into the little cottage.

A scribbled note in pencil awaited her from Marmaduke. He might be away some time; she was not to expect him till she saw him.

It was early afternoon when he did return in an open chaise and four with postillions.

"The road is very bad," he explained airily, "and I've brought you some clothes. You'd better go and put them on, as we ought to start at once."

"You ought not----" she began hastily at her first glance at the milliner's box. "You really----"

"My dear girl," he replied, with a charming smile, "mayn't I see you dressed for once as you ought to be dressed!"

There was no alternative with the postillions waiting, and as she put on the things he had brought she was forced into admitting he had good taste.

"You do look nice!" he cried, joyous as a child, as he handed her into the chaise.

The next instant they were off, the grey horses with their red-coated postillions lending quite a bridal appearance to the couple behind them, for Marmaduke was also very spruce, though he was wearing his left hand tucked into the roll collar of his coat. Something in the look of the arm, now she had time for observation, made Marrion say suddenly--

"You hurt yourself?"

He nodded.

"Dislocated my wrist--you see that first wave was an awful jerk. So I had to get back to the regimental surgeon to get it sorted and get my three days' leave."

She looked at him startled.

"What for?" she asked quickly.

"For our honeymoon, dear," he replied, his kindly, handsome affectionate face bent close to hers. "Don't look so alarmed, Marmie, it had to be after what you and I went through together yesterday; we can't get away from each other, even if we would."

"But----" she began.

At that instant the cross road on which they had been merged into a turnpike, and with a swerve the grey horses turned to the right.

"But me no buts!" he cried gaily. "We are on the south road, not the north." Then he suddenly grew grave. "And God bless you, dear, for all you've done for me and will do for me in the years to come!"

That turn south had brought them face to face with the glorious line of coast fading away into a golden mist. Far out on the wide expanse of sea the same soft September mist lay like a veil, hiding--what?

Marrion Paul, sitting hand-in-hand with the one love of her life, did not even ask the question; for all things, everything, seemed swallowed up in a golden glory.

Marmaduke's voice roused her, joyous, confident.

"And I've got a wedding present for you. I wouldn't give it you before. You see you are such a wilful customer, I was afraid you mightn't get into the chaise."

Half-mechanically she opened the case he laid on her lap. It contained two very long, very thick plaits of red-brown hair, each held together by an entwined monogram of M's in brilliants. She looked at him and he looked at her in affectionate raillery.

"Now!" he cried joyously. "You'll be fit to be seen. You didn't think, did you, I was going to let your hair be appraised by those young fools? So that day we left Edinburgh--you remember I nearly missed the train--I raced back to that beast of a hairdresser. I didn't know till then, Marmie, it was so valuable; but it was well worth it. Then I had it set." He paused, aware of some jarring note, and added, "You do like it, dear, don't you?"

Marrion, sitting with her long coils of hair in her lap, felt somehow that the glamour had gone from the gold of earth and sky.

"Of course I like it," she said, making an effort, "but--but why the diamonds?"

He laughed.

"Because I like diamonds and I like you to look well. I--I suppose you couldn't twist 'em up somehow now, could you? The postillions won't see."

She removed her bonnet and deftly coiled the long plaits about her shapely head.

"I'm afraid it's not very neat," she said solidly.

But he was more than satisfied.

"You look divine!" he cried exultantly. "More like other people, you know; and I dare say it is mean of me, but your close crop always made me feel bad, because you know I was really the cause of it. So now we start fair, don't we?"

"Quite fair," she answered, with a smile. He was such a child. Yet some of the glamour had gone.