Lady Bude put forth her hand and laid it on his. ‘Has this gone on long?’ she asked.
‘Rather an old story,’ said Merton. ‘I am a fool. That is the chief reason why I was praying for rain. She fishes, very keen on it. I would have been on the loch or the river with her. Blake does not fish, and hates getting wet.’
‘You might have more of her company, if you would not torment the poet so. The green-eyed monster, jealousy, is on your back.’
Merton groaned. ‘I bar the fellow, anyhow,’ he said. ‘But, in any case, now that I know you have found me out, I must be going. If only she were as poor as I am!’
‘You can’t go to-morrow, to-morrow is Sunday,’ said Lady Bude. ‘Oh, I am sorry for you. Can’t we think of something? Cannot you find an opening? Do something great! Get her upset on the loch, and save her from drowning! Mr. Macrae dotes on her; he would be grateful.’
‘Yes, I might take the pin out of the bottom of the boat,’ said Merton. ‘It is an idea! But she swims at least as well as I do. Besides—hardly sportsmanlike.’
Lady Bude tried to comfort him; it is the mission of young matrons. He must not be in such a hurry to go away. As to Mr. Blake, she could entirely reassure him. It was a beautiful evening, the lady was fair and friendly; Nature, fragrant of heather and of the sea, was hushed in a golden repose. The two
talked long, and the glow of sunset was fading; the eyes of Lady Bude were a little moist, and Merton was feeling rather consoled when they rose and walked back towards Skrae Castle. It had been an ancient seat of the Macraes, a clan in relatively modern times, say 1745, rather wild, impoverished, and dirty; but Mr. Macrae, the great Canadian millionaire, had bought the old place, with many thousands of acres ‘where victual never grew.’
Though a landlord in the Highlands he was beloved, for he was the friend of crofters, as rent was no object to him, and he did not particularly care for sport. He accepted the argument, dear to the Celt, that salmon are ground game, and free to all, while the natives were allowed to use ancient flint-locked fusils on his black cocks. Mr. Macrae was a thoroughly generous man, and a tall, clean-shaved, graceful personage. His public gifts were large. He had just given 500,000l. to Oxford to endow chairs and students of Psychical Research, while the rest of the million was bestowed on Cambridge, to supply teaching in Elementary Logic. His way of life was comfortable, but simple, except where the comforts of science and modern improvements were concerned. There were lifts, or elevators, now in the castle of Skrae, though Blake always went by the old black corkscrew staircases, holding on by the guiding rope, after the poetical manner of our ancestors.
On a knowe which commanded the castle, in a manner that would have pained Sir Dugald Dalgetty, Mr. Macrae had erected, not a ‘sconce,’ but an observatory, with a telescope that ‘licked the Lick