Malcolm left her and went to find her father, who, although it was Sunday, was already “oot aboot,” as she had said. He found him strolling in meditation along the cliffs. They had a little talk together, but Joseph knew nothing of the laird.
Malcolm took Lossie House on his way back, for he had not yet seen the marquis, to whom he must report his adventures of the night before. The signs of past revelling were plentifully visible as he approached the house. The marquis was not yet up, but Mrs Courthope undertaking to send him word as soon as his lordship was to be seen, he threw himself on the grass and waited—his mind occupied with strange questions, started by the Sunday coming after such a Saturday—among the rest, how God could permit a creature to be born so distorted and helpless as the laird, and then permit him to be so abused in consequence of his helplessness. The problems of life were beginning to bite. Everywhere things appeared uneven. He was not one to complain of mere external inequalities: if he was inclined to envy Lord Meikleham, it was not because of his social position: he was even now philosopher enough to know that the life of a fisherman was preferable to that of such a marquis as Lord Lossie—that the desirableness of a life is to be measured by the amount of interest and not by the amount of ease in it, for the more ease the more unrest; neither was he inclined to complain of the gulf that yawned so wide between him and Lady Florimel; the difficulty lay deeper: such a gulf existing, by a social law only less inexorable than a natural one, why should he feel the rent invading his individual being? in a word, though Malcolm put it in no such definite shape: Why should a fisher-lad find himself in danger of falling in love with the daughter of a marquis? Why should such a thing, seeing the very constitution of things rendered it an absurdity, be yet a possibility?
The church bell began, rang on, and ceased. The sound of the psalms came, softly mellowed, and sweetly harmonized, across the churchyard through the gray Sabbath air, and he found himself, for the first time, a stray sheep from the fold. The service must have been half through before a lackey, to whom Mrs Courthope had committed the matter when she went to church, brought him the message that the marquis would see him.
“Well, MacPhail, what do you want with me?” said his lordship as he entered.
“It’s my duty to acquant yer lordship wi’ certain proceedin’s ’at took place last nicht,” answered Malcolm.
“Go on,” said the marquis.
Thereupon Malcolm began at the beginning, and told of the men he had watched, and how, in the fancy of following them, he had found himself in the garret, and what he saw and did there.
“Did you recognize either of the women?” asked Lord Lossie.
“Ane o’ them, my lord,” answered Malcolm. “It was Mistress Catanach, the howdie.”
“What sort of a woman is she?”