'It expresses a great deal anyway, grand-mamma,' said Finella, who was somewhat of an enthusiast; and added, 'There is something very pathetic at times in her dark blue eyes—something that seems almost to look beyond this world.'
'What an absurd idea!'
'She has evidently undergone great sorrow, poor thing.'
'All these folks who go out as companions and governesses, and so forth, have undergone all that sort of thing, if you believe them; but they must forget their sorrows, be lively, and make themselves useful. What else are they paid for?'
Lady Fettercairn had been quite aware at one time that Shafto had been in the employment of a Mr. Carlyon in Devonshire, and Dulcie wondered that no questions were asked her on the subject; but doubtless the distasteful idea had passed from the aristocratic mind of the matron, and Shafto (save to Dulcie in private) had no desire to revive Devonshire memories, so he never referred to it either.
Dulcie, her grief partially over and her fear of Shafto nearly so, revelled at first in the freedom and beauty of her surroundings. Craigengowan House (or Castle, as it was sometimes called, from its turrets and whilom moat) was situated, she saw, among some of the most beautiful mountain scenery of the Mearns; and, as she had spent all her life (save when at school) in Devonshire, the lovely and fertile surface of which can only be described as being billowy to a Scottish eye, she took in the sense of a complete change with wonder, and regarded the vast shadowy mountains with a little awe.
In the first few weeks after her arrival at Craigengowan she had plenty of occupation, but of a kind that only pleased her to a certain extent.
She had Lady Fettercairn's correspondence to attend to; her numerous invitations to issue and respond to; her lap-dog to wash with scented soaps—but Dulcie always doted dearly on pets; and she had to play and sing to order, and comprehensively to make herself 'useful;' yet she had the delight of Finella's companionship, friendship, and—she was certain—regard. But she was imaginative and excitable; and when night came, and she found herself alone in one of the panelled rooms near the old Scoto-French turrets, with their vanes creaking overhead, and she had to listen to the boisterous Scottish gales that swept through the bleak and leafless woods and howled about the old house, as a warning that winter had not yet departed, poor little English Dulcie felt eerie, and sobbed on her pillow for the dead and the absent; for the days that would return no more; for her parents lying at Revelstoke, and Florian—who was she knew not where!