Closing the garden gate, he found himself face to face with young Wodrow. He had his hat partly on the back of his head, his hands thrust into the back pockets of his morning coat, a cigar in his mouth, and with an insouciant stare, and a species of dry nod that was supremely insolent and infinitely worse than no recognition at all, he passed on his way without speaking. Robert Wodrow, whose heart was already sore enough in more ways than one, felt it swell with passion as he entered the garden, which was still in all the beauty of summer.
He had lately felt in many ways that a change had come over Ellinor, but he had been, as yet, too proud to notice it to herself.
The baronet was shooting now every day, and Wodrow thought that, even if Ellinor was under that person's influence, she might give him a little more of her society, as of old—even twenty minutes; but no, he could seldom or never see her alone; and while love and sorrow made him humble at one time, jealousy and disappointment made him proud and rancorous at others.
The sweetness of his disposition had departed; his studies were becoming confused or neglected; and none saw the change that was coming over him with more pain and anger than his mother.
Of all the men that had seen and admired Ellinor, his instinct told him that this man Sleath would prove the most dangerous; yet to his own sex the manners of the latter seemed far from winning.
And already Elspat Gordon and other old servants, with the keen observance and love of gossip peculiar to their class, had begun to prognosticate a more brilliant future for Ellinor Wellwood than the obscure career of a country doctor's wife, and saw her the lady of 'a real live baronet,' and riding in a chariot to which that of Cinderella was as nothing in comparison; and, as if to make the mischief worse, rumours of their surmises and of their hopes reached somehow—but readily enough in a sequestered district—the ears of Robert Wodrow, and were as gall and wormwood to his soul.
All this might be mere wretched gossip; and though Ellinor might not actually have any regard for Sir Redmond, yet Robert Wodrow feared that somehow she was already in a dumb way yielding to or feeling his influence and power.
The subtle homage, the studied phraseology, and flattering air of gallantry and devotion which Sir Redmond infused into his conversation when alone—but only when alone—with Ellinor, had somewhat turned the girl's little head, and led her to draw comparisons between all that kind of thing and poor Robert Wodrow's 'use and wont' style of attention and 'matter of course' position, as the lover of her maidenhood expanded from the playmate of her childhood.
Mary was away on some of her errands of mercy or work; Ellinor was alone when Robert approached, and found her idling in the garden, with a sunshade over her head; and his heart, of course, foreboded that there she must have been with the obnoxious visitor who had just departed.
Elspat bad been brushing out her long and flowing dark brown hair, that was so rich and heavy as to seem almost a burden to her shapely head and slender neck; and Robert reflected savagely that thus she must have appeared before 'that fellow.'