“If, as you say, I were in London now, where my banker or some business friend would take up a bill for me; but that is impossible!”
“Nay—why say that you have friends only in London?” replied Alison, with a gentle smile. “That is rather too unjust, Angus Rothesay. Our Highland clanship is not so clean forgotten, I hope. Come, old friend, it will be hard if I cannot do something for you. And Harold, who loves Flora Rothesay almost as much as he loves me, would gladly aid her kinsman.”
“How—how! Nay, but I will never consent,” cried Angus, with a resoluteness through which his first eager sense of relief was clearly discernible. Truly, there was coming upon him, with this mania of speculation, the same desperation which causes the gambler to clutch money from the starving hands of those who even yet are passionately dear.
“You shall consent, friend,” answered Mrs. Gwynne, composedly. “Why should you not? It is a mere form—an obligation of a week, at most. You will accept that for the sake of Alison Balfour.”
He clasped her hand with as much emotion as was in his nature to show.
She continued—“Well, we will talk of this again when Harold comes in to dinner. But, positively, I see him returning. There he is, dashing up the hill. I hope nothing is the matter.”
Yet she did not quit the room to meet him, but sat apparently quiet, though her hands were slightly trembling, until her son came in. In answer to her question, he said—
“No, no; nothing amiss. Only Mr. Fludyer would have me go to the Hall to see his new horses; and there I found”——
“Sara!” interrupted the mother. “Well, perhaps she thought it would be a pleasant change from the dulness of Waterton during your absence; so never mind.”
He did mind. He restlessly paced the room, angry with his mother, himself—with the whole world. Mrs. Gwynne might well notice how this sudden passion had changed his nature. A moralist, looking on the knotted brow, would have smiled to see—not for the first time—a wise man making of himself a slave, nay, a very fool, for the enchantments of a beautiful woman.