"Well, and where is she? I must see her and, if possible, take her back with me to the Glen."
"When the fog lifted she gaed oot for a walk in the Park. She hasna been gane twenty minutes or so. Ye can easy follow her. Do ye ken London, sir?"
"Not this part of it, I am afraid."
"But ye canna go wrang. Gang oot into the Edgeware Road, and turn to your left, and gang on till ye come to the Marble Arch. Syne you're in the Park. She's very fond o' walkin' roond by the Serpentine. Ony bobby will tell ye which wey to tak' when you're inside the gates."
Drummond departed without further parley, and Agnes, with a big sigh of relief, returned to her polishing.
She had given the entire story away without ever having paused to inquire whether the Laird of Garrion had the right to hear it. He had certainly assumed some such right, and, anyhow, the time had come when something had to be done.
The desperate look in Isla's eyes that morning had haunted and terrified her. Each week Isla had insisted on scrupulously paying the full amount for "The Picture Gallery" and for such food as she ate in the house, and now her little store was well-nigh exhausted.
It was a very searching and cruel experience for Isla, the memory of which never afterwards wholly faded from her remembrance, though she always said she could never regret the period of "Sturm und Drang" which had given her such insight into the lives of thousands of women battling with adverse circumstances from the cradle to the grave.
Garrion's temper worked itself into fever-heat as his great, swinging stride took him through the swirl of the traffic at the Marble Arch and into the cool, wide spaces of the Park. Against Malcolm Mackinnon his anger burned with an unholy fire. He would never forgive him for this--for his callous indifference to his sister's fate, for his absolute failure to make the smallest inquiry on her behalf. In future she should be removed from her brother's jurisdiction altogether, and he would have to answer to him.
Such was Neil's mighty resolve as he strode along, his restless eyes, sweeping from side to side in search of the dear, slim figure of the woman he loved. There was very little alloy of self in his thoughts that winter morning as he swept round by the windy Serpentine in search of Isla. It was all of her he thought with a vast, encompassing tenderness which equalled Rosmead's, and was less cautious and deliberate in its operations.