"Put them away in lavender as keepsakes, of course."
"My dear Paul," put in his sister, hurriedly, recognising his unsafe mood. "We do things differently in England. We do not set on young men; we do not have----"
"A superfluity of penwipers," interrupted her brother, becoming utterly exasperated; but as he looked out of the window he saw something which made him sit down again beside Alice Woodward, and devote himself to her amusement. Yet it was a sight which with most men would have had exactly the opposite effect, for it was a glimpse of a well-known figure battling with the wind and the rain along the ferry road. But Paul Macleod had made up his mind; besides, rather to his own surprise, the past few days had brought him very little of the restless desire to be with Marjory, which he had expected from his previous experiences in love. It was evidently a sentimental attack, unreal, fanciful, Arcadian, like the episode in which it had arisen. And yet a remark of his sister's at afternoon tea set him suddenly in arms.
"Mr. Gillespie told me there was a girl staying at the Camerons', Paul, who was a sort of governess, or going to be one. And I thought--if she hadn't a dreadful accent, or anything of that sort, you know, of having her in the mornings for the children."
"Miss Carmichael, Blanche," he broke in, at a white heat, "is a very charming girl, and I was going to ask you to call upon her, as soon as the weather allowed of it. I have seen a good deal of her during the last few weeks, and should like you to know her."
Really, in his present mood, Paul was almost as bad as a dynamite bomb, or a high-pressure boiler in the back kitchen! Still, mindful of her sisterly devotion, Lady George covered his indiscretion gracefully.
"Oh, she is that sort of person, is she? I must have misunderstood Mr. Gillespie, and I will call at once, for it is so pleasant, isn't it, Alice dear, for girls to have companions."
And yet, as she spoke, she told herself that this was an explanation of her brother's patience in solitude, and that it would be far safer, considering what Paul was, to keep an eye on this possible flirtation. Meanwhile, the offender felt a kind of shock at the possibilities her easy acquiescence opened up. He had been telling himself, with a certain satisfaction, that the idyll was over, leaving both him and her little the worse for it; and now, apparently, he was to have an opportunity of comparing the girl he fancied, and the girl he meant to marry, side by side. It was scarcely a pleasing prospect, and the knowledge of this made him once more return to his set purpose of fostering some kind of sentiment towards Alice Woodward. But the fates were against him. Lord George, coming in wet, but lively, from a constitutional, began enthusiastically, between his drainings of the teapot, in search of something to drink, on the charms of a girl he had met on the road. "A real Highland girl," continued the amiable idiot, regardless of his wife's storm signals, "with a lot of jolly curly hair: not exactly pretty, you know, but fresh as a daisy, bright as a bee. I couldn't help thinking, you know, how much better you would all feel, Blanche, if you went out for a blow instead of sticking at home."
"We should not come into the drawing-room with dirty boots if we did, should we, Alice dear? Just look at him, Mrs. Woodward! He isn't fit for ladies' society, is he?"
Lord George gave a hasty glance at his boots, swallowed his tepid washings of the teapot with a muttered apology, and retired, leaving his wife to breathe freely.