'Where to?'
'God knows where to,' was the absent response.
'Back to Essilmont, maybe?'
'In time, perhaps, Archie; in time, but not now,' said Sir Ranald, with a bitter sigh.
'Tak' tent, Sir Ranald; for gudesake gang hooly. Dinna wade if ye canna see the bottom,' resumed Archie, in a low and confidential voice; 'and beware ye o' that Lord Cadbury. I ken a spune frae a stot's horn as weel as maist men, and I distrust him sairly.'
'That I do not. He has just been a good friend to me, Archie; and now a word in your ear—when I want advice from you concerning my friends or my affairs, I shall condescend to ask it.'
The old servitor looked abashed and crushed. He bowed very low, and withdrew in silence.
At last the hour of departure came, and Lord Cadbury's carriage and a light luggage-van were at the door; and, ere Alison was assisted into the former, she shook old Archie's hand, and then with a sudden impulse kissed his cheek, for she had known Archie from her infancy. Thus he seemed to her as a part and parcel of Essilmont; and, when the carriage rolled away with her in it, the old man lifted up his hands and voice and wept as only the aged and the hopeless weep.
'Poor girl!' thought Cadbury, with a grimace, when after a time there came a distant view of Aldershot, with its camp of huts, its church spire, and Twesildown Hill, 'she'll hold, I suppose, for a time, to her little rag of fidelity—her promise to that fellow Goring in the infantry lines; but, faute de mieux, we shall cure her of that. We shall see what we shall see, when an hour on board the Firefly.'
Well did Alison know where Aldershot lay, but, conscious that her tormentor's keen eyes were upon her, she turned hers away and gazed steadily in the opposite direction.