He shook hands once more, and left the room, Max thoroughly grasping the gentlemanly feeling which had prompted him to behave with so much delicacy.
“There, Max, you will stay now?” cried Kenneth.
“Yes, I will stay now,” he replied.
“Then that’s all right. We’ll have some fishing and shooting—for the last few times,” he said to himself, as he turned away to see his father before he left the place.
Max rose and dressed as soon as he was alone, but he was not long in finding that he was not in a fit condition to take a journey; and during the rest of his stay at Dunroe there were no more pleasure-trips, for the zest for them was in the case of both lads gone.
And yet those last days were not unpleasant, for there was a peculiar anxiety on the part of both to make up for the past. Kenneth was eager in the extreme to render Max’s last days there such as should give him agreeable memories of their intercourse. While, on the other side, Max felt deeply what Kenneth’s position must be, and he too tried hard to soften the pain of his lot.
Max had had a business-like letter from his father, telling him that he had been compelled, by The Mackhai’s failure to keep his engagements, to foreclose certain mortgages and take possession of the estates. Under these circumstances, he wished his son to remain there and supervise the proceedings of the bailiffs, writing to him in town every night as to how matters stood.
It was a cool, matter-of-fact, legal letter, written by a clerk, probably from dictation, and signed by the old lawyer. But at the bottom there was a postscript in his own crabbed hand, as follows:—
“You will be able to watch over all with more pleasure, when I tell you that Dunroe is yours. I mean it to be your estate, and you can see now why I sent you down there to learn how to be a Scottish gentleman.”
Max flushed as he read this, and he exclaimed aloud— “A Scottish gentleman could not bear to be placed in such a position!” and he sat down and wrote at once to say that he had been seriously unwell, and must return to town on a certain day.