"How do you mean?" asked Blair, by an effort controlling himself to speak quietly.
"Oh, too many gentlemen coming and going; I must arrange for our marriage at once."
"You are honored by a promise from her to marry you, then?"
"Yes; but by more than a promise; by an oath," he said, flightily; "and she is not the only woman who is infatuated with me," he added, chuckling at his companion's discomfiture.
"You are fortunate," said the canny Scotchman, hating him for his words; but aware that there is some mystery in the case, knowing Mrs. Gower to shrink from fulfilling her engagement; having recognized the face of the woman at the vestibule as the woman he has seen prowling about Holmnest at night-fall, he affects a friendly air to draw his companion out, trusting that his intense vanity will lead him to commit himself insomuch as to give him a hold upon him, which he will use as a means of freeing Mrs. Gower.
Hearing steps behind them, he looks, and lo! the light of the street lamp shows the face of the woman of the vestibule.
"By George, you are a lucky fellow; here is this poor little woman at your heels; you are too gallant to allow her to walk alone; step back and introduce me," he said, with the vague hope that he might in this way find the hold she has on Cobbe; but l'homme propose, Dieu dispose, for he said importantly:
"So she is; between you and I, the more faithless I am, the tighter she hugs;" and, turning on his heel, the woman with him, they go at a run down Major Street, leaving Blair, in blank dismay, standing in the cold of the snow-mantled night.
After seeing talented Modjeska at the Grand, in "Faust," Mrs. Gower, having wished her friends a warm good-night, as she sleeps, dreams of a manly, handsome face bending over her, while the light in his eyes give point to his words of "Better lo'ed ye canna be."