"That yaw-hawing donkey, Berkeley, is doing all he can to take the wind out of your sails."
"Uncle, I have indeed felt a dread of this. He has, you know, a handsome fortune."
"I would not let a fellow like that go neck and neck with me," said Sir Nigel. "I'd cut in and win at a hand gallop. It is your talking, pushing, forward men—seeming always confident of what they say, never acknowledging an error or confessing a defeat, that are too often allowed to take the lead in life. With average ability, and ten times the average amount of assurance, they often reach the goal that bashful merit never gets a sight of. So cut in, I say, and win, if you want her."
While he was running on thus, I could not but admire, at his years, the hale, sturdy figure, and bluff, hearty bearing of Sir Nigel, in his old shooting toggery. He was always a crack shot, and in youth and middle life had been one of the keenest curlers and golfers between the West and East Neuks of Fife.
It was his great boast that he could yet, if he chose, strike a golf ball from the street over each of the tallest spires of St. Andrew's. A fair hand, too, with the pistol, he had, as I have stated, winged more than one political antagonist, in squabbles about the old Reform Bill, in the days of Brougham, Grey, and Russell. Throw your glove in the air, and he would shoot any finger off it you named; and he would hit a cricket ball, were it cast ever so high, with a single rifle bullet. Thus in his hands I was sent to join the lancers somewhat of a master-of-arms, and certainly a complete horseman.
Sir Nigel, withal, had much the air of a Scotch man-about-town; in Edinburgh a different style of man from he of the same genus in London—he of the glazed boots and carefully-trimmed whiskers, exquisitely solemn and unimpressionable, as if he had seen all the world, and found there was nothing in it.
The "dandy" who hovers about the New Club in Princes-street is usually a six-foot man, bronzed and sunburnt (he has served somewhere—in India generally), and heavily moustached. He carries a huge stick; he wears rough Tweed suits, and double-soled brogues, with toe-pieces and rows of hobnails, as if ever ready for facing the hills and the frozen heather. He may be a snob, like his English brother Dundreary; but he has something rough and service-like in his bearing that is suggestive of climbing rocks, fishing, hunting, and shooting.
But now Sir Nigel's warning, Cora's sharp discovery of my secret, and the knowledge that Berkeley remained behind in full possession of the field, filled me with anxiety and annoyance. The shooting excursion bored me, and I looked for the end before we had well begun.
What might those hours of absence from her cost me?
We reached the gamekeeper's cottage, which was situated amid a dense copsewood, beside a wimpling burn, and near King James's Well. Moss of emerald hue covered all the thatched roof, and in summer green trailers and scarlet-runners made all the white-washed walls and little windows gay.