"Why were you in such a hurry this morning, Isla, and what were you doing in the purlieus of the Edgeware Road? Don't you know that's the wrong side of the Park altogether?" he said teasingly.
"I might say the same to you," she answered a trifle tartly, and her eyes, which seemed to have acquired a distaste for his face, did not meet his gaze.
"I was doing my duty--and a beastly fagging bit of duty it was too, a little commission for a pal in India--and, as I'd made up my mind to go north with you to-morrow if you really are bent on going, this was my only opportunity."
It sounded a perfectly plausible explanation, and Isla suffered her somewhat unwilling eyes to dwell for a moment on his smiling face. Never did man look more innocent and ingenuous. There was not the flicker of a lid or a tinge of colour to condemn him. Knowing perfectly well that her scrutiny was judicial, he met it without flinching.
"I did not like the look of the woman, Malcolm," was all she said. "But please, I don't want to hear any more about it."
It can hardly be said that she was convinced, but only that she realized the utter futility of trying to get to the bottom of Malcolm's mind or of ever reaching his real self. What that self would be like when she reached it she did not ask.
But a little later, watching his matchless manner with his aunt's guests and the way in which he held his little court of admiring womenkind about him, she marvelled at his powers. So long as he possessed such faculties of pleasing and could attract those with whom he came into contact, nobody need wonder at his gay aplomb. Nothing could greatly matter, for whoever might suffer or go under, it would not be Malcolm. He would sail--a little unsteadily perhaps, but still successfully--on the crest of the wave, and only those who knew him intimately and who had suffered through him would ever probe the depths of his colossal selfishness.
This was the estimate of her brother at which Isla had now arrived. The trials and hardships of the last three years had wrought a great change in her outlook upon men and things and had made her judgment a little merciless. In fact this was a very critical moment in the history of Isla Mackinnon, and but for the timely introduction of some fresh forces into her life she might have become a really hard woman.
Malcolm airily declined his aunt's rather pressing invitation to stay a week.
"I'll return, dearest aunt, a little later, when the Glen begins to pall," he whispered with that little air of personal devotion and interest which even old women found so charming. "Behold the gloom on Isla's face! She represents my duty. I shall take her home to-morrow, Pay my humble respects to the old man, and syne, if you will have me, I'll be only too glad to come back."