The two played a very evenly matched game. As they walked side by side after their balls, Julian wondered from time to time whether the subject of Miss von Schwarzenberg had been introduced to prevent his reverting to that vision of his—all the clearer since his tour round the world—of a reconstituted society in which vested privilege should no longer have a leg to stand on. Or could it be that Gavan was seriously intrigued by the Rhine maiden who, more or less as a special favor, had consented to superintend the studies and to share the recreations of "that handful," Madge McIntyre, aged sixteen? This girl, with the boyish face and boyish tastes and boyish clothes (whose mane of flaming hair had helped to fasten on her the nickname of Wildfire McIntyre), Julian already knew slightly as the only and much-spoiled daughter of Napier's chief. Sir William McIntyre, K. C. B., adviser to the Admiralty and laird of Kirklamont, had been the notable chairman of endless shipping companies and prime promoter of numberless commercial enterprises, until he accepted a seat in the cabinet, a man of vigor and some originality of mind, in contrast to his wife—a brainless butterfly of a woman who complained bitterly that she had less trouble with her four sons than with her one daughter. The one daughter, by ill luck, had an inconvenient share of her father's force of character. She had ruled the house of McIntyre till the advent of the lady in question.
That lady's predecessor had been a Miss Gayne. Miss Gayne had been in possession till a fateful morning last summer when Madge, driving along the coast road, came in sight of Glenfallon Castle, and pulled up her pony with a jerk that nearly precipitated poor Miss Gayne out of the cart. "My goodness gracious, the Duke is back!"
Glenfallon, on its cliff above the Firth, commanded a view north and south over the many-bayed and channeled mainland, out over rocky islets—shining jewels of jacinth and jasper and azurite, spilled haphazard into the sea—clear away to that great gray expanse miscalled by the new governess the German Ocean. Nobody had lived at Glenfallon as long as Madge could remember, so that she might perhaps be pardoned for emitting that excited scream at sight of two young men in tennis flannels busying themselves about the net.
"We mustn't sit here staring at them," Miss Gayne remonstrated.
Miss Gayne picked up the reins which Madge had let fall. Madge seized them with an impatient "Don't!" and flung them round the whip.
"It isn't proper to sit like this, staring into a stranger's tennis court. At two strange young men, too!"
"I'm only staring at one. You can have the other."
Presently a tennis ball came over the wall and bounced into the road. Before Miss Gayne could remonstrate, Madge was out of the cart and had sent the ball hurtling back.
The younger man caught it, and the elder advanced to the wall to thank the young lady. He was a very good specimen of fair, broad-shouldered, blunt-featured manhood, but when he opened his mouth he spoke with a foreign accent.
"When are you expecting him?" demanded Madge.