"Perhaps I do," she replied stiffly, realising how he had played upon her for the first time. The knowledge, rather to her own surprise, brought tears to her eyes.
"I don't wonder that you regret having helped me," he said with a sudden change of manner. "If you will tell me where to leave the fish I will no longer trouble you. I am sorry for having given you so much already."
There was no mistaking the hidden depth of his apology. As he stood there in the sunlight, looking at her gravely, Marjory felt to the full the charm of his gracious presence. Who could really be angry with him for such a trifle? For it was a trifle after all.
"My name is Marjory Carmichael," she said briefly, "and I live at the Lodge with the Camerons. But I don't want the fish. I don't indeed."
"Then you shall not have it. I owe you some obedience, do I not?--and thanks beyond measure."
He stood there with his cap off smiling at her, and she, feeling apologetic in her turn, hesitated. After all, if he was going her way it would be foolishness itself to tramp that mile and a half with an interval of fifty yards or so between them.
"And now I must emulate your skill," he said cheerfully, "though I can't expect your luck." And as she moved away she saw his flies settle softly as thistledown in the right place. Well! that was better than keeping up the pretence.
As for him, though he continued to fish conscientiously, his thoughts were with the figure of the retreating girl. She had amused him and interested him greatly. A relation, he supposed, of Dr. Carmichael's; in fact, he had a dim recollection of a curly-haired child scampering about on a Sheltie ten years before; though he had never known the doctor, who had lived as a recluse. But how came she here still, and with the Camerons? A cut above them surely! By Jove! how she had hung on to that grilse, and how nearly she had cried over it afterwards. Maudlin sentimentality, of course, and yet he had felt the same a hundred times over a wounded deer. The look in her eyes had been like that, somehow; uncommonly pretty eyes they were, too, into the bargain!
[CHAPTER V.]
Paul Macleod sate in the business-room, where so many lairds of Gleneira had received rents and signed cheques, playing his part with great propriety, much to Will Cameron's delight and astonishment. Captain Macleod was, undoubtedly, the laird, and as such bound to a semi-parental interest in every living thing, to say nothing of every stick and stone about the old place. On the other hand, he had been away in a perfectly different environment for nearly ten years, and it seemed nothing short of marvellous to the factor that he should remember every farmer and cottier, nay, more, their wives, and sons, and daughters, by name. And so, perhaps it was; though, to tell truth, the mental qualities it represented were small, being no more nor less than a quick responsiveness to the renewal of past sensation; that very responsiveness which ten years before had made Paul shrink from giving an unpleasant memory a place in his life. Moralists are apt to sneer at the popularity which the possessor of this faculty enjoys; and, of course, it is easy to cheapen the sympathy of the man, who when he sees you, is instantly reminded of all the past connected with you in detail, and proceeds to inquire eagerly about your ox and ass, your manservant and your maidservant, and everything that is within your gate. Yet, when all is said and done, and though he certainly gives the false impression that these things have never been out of his mind, the gift is not only an enviable one, but in itself argues a quicker sensibility than that possessed by his more stolid, if more honest, neighbours.