She was a picturesque old lady of great height and commanding mien, her hair and eyes still as black as sloes, her face beautiful still, in spite of its wrinkles--the face that had once been the toast of a county. She was the Drummonds' nearest relative, their mother's sister, in fact, and, though immensely wealthy, she had no fixed habitation of her own, and she had agreed to live at Garrion, at any rate until Neil brought home a wife.
That he had found one now she did not doubt, and she hoped that he had. Isla Mackinnon was a woman after her own heart. Neil had confided to her the nature of the business that had taken him to London, but he had enjoined silence.
"Kitty can't hold her tongue, as you know, Aunt Betty. Besides, she's too thick at Achree at present, and I don't want them to get wind of it. This is a business that has to be done on the quiet."
"Aunt Betty, what took Neil to London?" quoth Kitty with a severe expression on her piquant face. "You and he are keeping me in the dark. It isn't fair."
"Neil has his reasons, my dear, and they are good ones, depend on it."
"But you can't go to London by yourself, auntie! The thing's outrageous! It can't be contemplated for a moment. I must go with you to take care of you."
"No, I'll take Lisbeth, and I must go and arrange matters with her now."
Lady Betty was now seventy-four, but she was as straight and supple as a young birch tree. She carried a stick--not because she needed it, but because it was her whim to do so and because it had been given to her by an old sweetheart for a wager. She had never parted with it. It was her faithful companion by day, and at night it stood in a handy corner by her bed. Lady Betty had never married. But had any married wife a life so full of romance? This is not Lady Betty's story, however.
She sniffed a love story afar off and rose to it with the keen scent of a war-horse for the fray. There she would be in her element--keen, shrewd, sympathetic, and full of common-sense. Neil had made no mistake in sending that telegram. He knew the hour had come, and the woman.
Aunt Betty was as gay as a young girl over her preparations, which were so elaborate that Kitty felt called upon to remonstrate.