'It was a command to me,' he said, in a low voice.
'How far did you walk for them?'
'More than ten miles down Earn side.'
'Ten miles!'
'Near to Strath Allan.'
'Dear me—the Allan Water!' said Sir Redmond. 'Is that the place where the miller's lovely daughter so sadly misconducted herself in the sweet spring time of the year?'
Robert's reply to this question was only a cold and haughty stare, under which even the baronet's insouciance nearly failed him, but from that moment the two men instinctively felt themselves enemies.
'Why did you take so much trouble for a mere trifle, Robert?' asked the girl.
'Because I heard you express a wish to have that particular fern, Ellinor,' replied the young fellow, whose eyes seemed to say that he would have gone ten times the distance ungrudgingly for one of her old smiles, or for the smile she was now according, not to him, but to her strange visitor, whose eyebrows were slightly and inquiringly elevated, as he glanced at the speaker, who seemed so much en famille at Birkwoodbrae, and called Ellinor by her Christian name, and who saw that she placed the fern leaves on the table, and soon—Robert Wodrow thought too soon—forgot all about them apparently.
'You have known Robert long, I presume, Miss Ellinor?' said Sir Redmond, with a twinkle in his cold, china-blue eyes, and as he would have spoken of a boy or a child.