"No, no," said Hugo, hastily. "Dear Aunt Margaret, you are too kind. No, if she is happy, it is all I ask. I will go to Strathleckie this afternoon; perhaps I can then judge better."
"I don't want you to do anything dishonourable," said his aunt, "but, if Elizabeth likes you best, Hugo, I could speak to Mr. Heron—the father, I mean—and ascertain whether the engagement is absolutely irrevocable. I should like to see you happy as well as Elizabeth Murray."
Hugo sighed, kissed his aunt's hand, and departed—not to see Elizabeth, but Kitty Heron. He felt that if his money difficulties could only be settled, he was well out of that proposed marriage with Elizabeth; but then money difficulties were not easily settled when one had no money. In the meantime, he was free to make love to Kitty.
Percival spent two or three busy weeks in London, and found that hard work was the best specific for the low spirits from which he had suffered during his stay in Scotland. He heard regularly from Elizabeth, and her letters, though not long, and somewhat coldly expressed, gave him complete satisfaction. He noticed with some surprise that she spoke a good deal of Hugo Luttrell; he seemed to be always with them, and the distant cousinship existing between him and Elizabeth had been made the pretext for a good deal of apparent familiarity. He was "Hugo" now to the whole family; he had been "Mr. Luttrell" only when Percival left Strathleckie.
He was sitting alone in his "den," as he nicknamed it, late in the afternoon of a November day, when a low knock at the door made itself faintly heard. Percival was smoking; having come in cold and tired, he had wheeled an arm-chair in front of the fire, and was sitting with his feet on the bars of the grate, whereby a faint odour of singed leather was gradually mingling with the fumes of the very strong tobacco that he loved. His green shaded lamp stood on a small table beside him, throwing its light full upon the pages of the French novel that he had taken up to read (it was "Spiridion" and he was reading it for about the twentieth time); books and newspapers, as usual, strewed the floor, the tables, and the chairs; well-filled book-shelves lined three of the walls; the only ornaments were the photographs of two or three actors and actresses, some political caricatures pinned to the walls, a couple of foils and boxing-gloves, and on the mantelpiece a choice collection of pipes. The atmosphere was thick, the aspect of the furniture dusty: Percival Heron's own appearance was not at that moment calculated to insure admiration. His hair was absolutely dishevelled; truth compels us to admit that he had not shaved that day, and that his chin was consequently of a blue-black colour and bristly surface, which could not be called attractive: his clothes were shabby to the last degree, frayed at the cuffs, and very shiny on the shoulders. Heron was a poor man, and had a good deal of the Bohemian in his constitution: hence came a certain contempt for appearances, which sometimes offended his friend Vivian, as well as a real inability to spend money on clothes and furniture without getting into debt. And Percival, extravagant as he sometimes seemed, was never in debt: he had seen too much of it in his father's house not to be alive to its inconveniences, and he had had the moral courage to keep a resolution made in early boyhood, that he would never owe money to any man. Hence came the shabbiness—and also, perhaps, some of the arrogance—of which his friends complained.
Owing partly therefore to the shabbiness, partly to the untidiness, partly to the very comfort of the slightly overheated room, the visitor who entered it did not form a very high opinion of its occupant. Percival's frown, and momentary stare of astonishment, were, perhaps, enough to disconcert a person not already very sure of his reception.
"Am I dreaming?" muttered Heron to himself, as he cast the book to the ground, and rose to his feet. "One would think that George Sand's visionary young monk had walked straight out of the book into my room. Begging, I suppose. Good evening. You have called on behalf of some charity, I suppose? Come nearer to the fire; it is a cold night."
The stranger—a young man in a black cassock—bowed courteously, and seated himself in the chair that Percival pointed out. He then spoke in English, but with a foreign accent, which did not sound unpleasantly in Heron's ears.
"I have not come on behalf of any charity," he said, "but I come in the interests of justice."
"The same thing, I suppose, in the long run," Percival remarked to himself. "But what a fine face the beggar has! He's been ill lately, or else he is half-starved—shall I give him some whisky and a pipe? I suppose he would feel insulted!"