The memory of those parting words stung her to the quick. What a fool she had been I Why had she not gone at once to Lord Drummuir and told him the truth? She had meant to do so, but she had been too late--too late! Well, there was no use crying over spilt milk.
So she sat going over and over the whole thing again, and yet again, until late in the evening the little lassie of the lodgings brought her a message that a man who was lying at Mistress McMurdo's was feelin' ill and would like to see her just for a little. The child being asleep she slipped over to the cottage to find Andrew Fraser once more a prey to his old enemy, tropical fever--a quaint, insistent enemy which, after lying low for years, will seize advantage of any disturbance of mind or body to reassert itself.
So there he was, as she had seen him before, trembling and shaking, with a glitter in his eyes and a flush on his face, lying huddled up under his military cloak on the sofa. Once again he slipped his feet apologetically to the ground as he saw her and essayed to stand straight--a pathetic sight, his body weak, his mind strong--so strong!
"I'm sorry, ma'am," he said, with studied ceremony, "if I, was over-heated the day, for you're my master's wife. But it's no oorsels, ye see. It's just Providence, an' we daurna play Providence. It's dangerous work. Sae I couldna help it, ma'am. The wean's Drummuir o' Drummuir----"
And there he was going over the old ground again and again.
She could but try to soothe him and leave him, knowing in her heart of hearts that nothing she could say would ever move him one hair's-breadth from what he thought right.
She spent a restless night; she could scarcely do otherwise.
"Are you gaun to steal the very name frae the puir bairn?" was sufficient to keep her awake. Once more she found herself in a maelstrom of doubt. Wearied out, the first blink of dawn rising clear and lucent over the dark sea seemed to her a godsend. She crept out of her bed leaving the child asleep, and, dressing herself, wrapped a cloak about her, and so seating herself on a rock at the very edge of the cliff within earshot of the cottage where she lodged, set herself once more to watch the peaceful coming of light, which had so often brought her wisdom.
So had it looked that dawning when she and Duke--ah! always, always she and Duke! How curiously Fate had joined them. Yet she had disregarded Fate's handiwork even while she had told herself she had been aiding it.
Far over in the east the light was growing. So it had grown that morning when she and Duke swam----