'Hurrah!' responded the latter, springing up; 'thank heaven we are to quit this dull hole! The scenery, of course, is picturesque, and all that sort of thing, but the picturesque, is not in my line. The weekly assemblies and all the gaieties are on just now in 'Scotia's darling seat,' and the regimental ball will soon be coming off, so, with genuine satisfaction, I hail the order to rejoin at last. Well, it is a jolly change, anyway.'
And as such, Cecil welcomed it too, though it increased the distance between himself and Eaglescraig, and he could little foresee the calamities that awaited him in Edinburgh, and the crisis that would come in his affairs.
The departure of the detachment was not so duly chronicled in the local prints as its arrival had been; thus Mary knew nothing of Falconer's movements.
In her own heart she fully conceived herself to be engaged—tacitly engaged—to him, and loved to think she was so. Long engagements are perilous things, even when the pair can see each other at will, or freely correspond, daily or even weekly; tiffs and petty quarrels, even little bitternesses, may come to pass that weaken regard, unless they be like 'lovers' quarrels, love renewed:' but such a tie as that which existed between Falconer and Mary Montgomerie—never hearing of each other, and debarred all correspondence, having only hope for an anchor, was altogether peculiar in its features.
'She is always sad and weary now, Sir Piers,' said Mrs. Garth one day; 'weary at night, and weary at morning, though she tries to conceal it, or deceive us, by occasional bursts of gaiety.'
'Poor little fool! Her mind is still running on that fellow whom I should never have brought to Eaglescraig. But, with all Hew's faults of temper and so forth, she had better think of him and my wishes, Mrs. Garth; so lead her up to it, for that is our point d'appui,' replied the general.
'By Jove!' said the amiable Hew, with one of his ugly grimaces, 'she has no more brains than a hen pheasant, I think, to sit as she does all day long looking like a sick monkey.'
Meanwhile Hew was having no better success with his wooing, a fact which was the more perplexing and even harassing now, as he had resigned his Indian Civil Service appointment, and had no dependence, save upon the purse of Sir Piers, who, as the former grudgingly thought, seemed likely to live for ever; and who hoped, and indeed never doubted, that when Mary got over her girlish fancy for Cecil Falconer all things would come right in the end; and to change the scene, as the Edinburgh season was then in its flush, Sir Piers removed his entire household from Eaglescraig to his town residence at the west end of the grey metropolis of the north, a few days after Falconer's detachment had quitted the castle of Dumbarton.