'Oh, by-the-bye, young Hammersley, from London, will arrive here to-morrow for a few weeks' grouse-shooting before he leaves for his regiment in Africa. You will do your best to be attentive to him, Shafto.'
'Of course,' said the latter, rather sulkily, however, all the more so that he was quick enough to detect that, at the mention of the visitor's name, a flush like a wave of colour crossed the cheek of Finella.
Something in his tone attracted the attention of Lord Fettercairn, who said,
'After the 12th I hope you will find a legitimate use for your gun—you know what I mean.'
Shafto coloured deeply with annoyance, as his grandfather referred to a mischievous act of his, which was deemed a kind of outrage in the neighbourhood.
In the ruins of Finella's Castle at Fettercairn a pair of majestic osprey had built their nest, guarded by the morass around them, and there they bred and reared a pair of beautiful eaglets. No one had been allowed to approach them, so that nothing should occur to break the confidence of safety which the pair of osprey acquired in their lonely summer haunt, till soon after Shafto came to Craigengowan, and by four rounds from his breech-loader he contrived to shoot them all, to the indignation of the neighbourhood and even of my Lord Fettercairn.
Not that the latter cared a straw about these eagles as objects of natural history; but the fact of their existence formed the subject of newspaper paragraphs, and his vanity was wounded on finding that one of his family had acted thus.
So on the morrow, at luncheon, the family circle at Craigengowan had two or three accessions to its number—friends invited for the 12th of August—among others Mr. Kippilaw the younger, a spruce and dapper Edinburgh Writer to the Signet, 'who,' Shafto said, 'thought no small beer of himself;' and Vivian Hammersley, a captain of the Warwickshire regiment, a very attractive and, to one who was present, most decided addition to their society.
His regular features were well tanned by the sun in Natal; his dark hair was shorn short; his moustaches were pointed well out; and his dark eyes had a bright and merry yet firm and steady expression, as those of a man born to command men, who had more than once faced danger, and was ready to face it again.
He was in his twenty-seventh year, and was every way a courteous and finished English gentleman, though Shafto, in his secret heart, and more than once in the stables, pronounced him to be 'a conceited beast.'