Ever your worshipper,
ALLAN DUNLOP."
He ended with a strange feeling of the incongruity of this declaration of passion with his surroundings, the stuffy unhomelike chambers on King Street, and the rather severe presence of a man, whose existence emphasized all the hated social distinction that never weighed so heavily on him as at present. This rigorous representative of his class took the message delivered to him, and stood for a moment hesitatingly in the doorway.
"Your people are quite well, I hope, Tredway," said Allan.
"Yes, sir, thank you. Quite well, with the exception of Miss Rose. She is looking badly."
"I am very sorry. I made no inquiries about her, because, since her accident last summer, she has never been otherwise than well. I wish," and his tones were sad and sincere as his meaning, "that I could do something for her."
"Thank you, sir. It is taking a great liberty to say so, but your visits are so infrequent that I believe Miss Rose is under the impression that you did not greatly care."
"Oh, I care enough, quite enough," he added mentally. "The fact is there is danger of my caring too much, and nobody knows better than you, Tredway, that that would be the greatest piece of folly I could perpetrate. Miss Rose is vastly my social superior."
The old man bowed his head as though this were too obvious a truth to need comment. Then he said encouragingly:
"Ah, there is nothing but the remains of their former greatness left to the Macleods. They are growing more and more bourgeois since coming to this degenerate country.