Her straightforward candour abashed him beyond words.
"I'm sorry," he said at last, so humbly that her heart melted within her. Then he added, with a sudden influx of joyousness, "But I'm really going to turn over a new leaf. I'm going to cut and run before long and let my father stew in his own juice."
She caught him up instantly.
"Your father's your father, Mr. Duke, and you're the heir to the old barony. You mustn't forget that. It's laid on you, and it's not to be put aside."
He paused as he was going, vexedly.
"I'm not going to put it aside, Marmie. I am only going to make the best of a bad bargain. If the old lord won't give me the money for my majority, I'm not going to stick on here getting drunk to please him."
There was distinct virtue in the last phrase, and Marmie smiled. And as she looked in the old clothes drawer for some black silk-frilled aprons which her mother had worn when she was maid to the first Lady Drummuir, she told herself that Duke was nothing but--as he had said--a big baby, and that, no matter what the dancing-woman might be like, she, Marrion, was glad to be in a position where she could see for herself what was going on.
She looked very demure, very uncompromising and upright, therefore, when that same afternoon, attired after a little coloured sketch of her mother as maid, she stood waiting for Fantine Le Grand to come up and dress for dinner. Yet, even so, the latter's instant and quite unpremeditated remark was--
"Captain Muir did not tell me you were so good-looking."
It was a revelation to Marrion's quick wits, but she was ready in reply.