'Here's a health to the year that's awa'!'
And precisely as the house-clocks struck twelve—midnight—the house-door was unbarred with great formality, and thrown open to let the Old Year out, and the New Year in; and rising from his elbow-chair, Sir Piers kissed his niece Mary, and then old Mrs. Garth in a courtly fashion, an example Hew Montgomerie was not slow to follow on the soft cheek of the former, while Falconer looked laughingly, yet perhaps enviously, on, and dared only press her hand as he did that of Miss Erroll; and then there was a general handshaking with Mr. Balderstone and other old friends who had been invited to join the social circle.
The rubicund Mr. Tunley offered, in the name of all the servants, to drink their old master's good health, and the health of all the family; and Sir Piers, natheless all his pride, cordially shook the old butler's hand, and each wished the other many happy years to come; and he went through the same ceremony with all in the servants' hall.
In all this homely warmth, mutual kindness and goodwill, there was much that charmed Falconer; for though belonging to a Scottish regiment, and one famous in history, educated as he had been far away from his native country, and under peculiar circumstances, he knew little or nothing of the ways and customs of the latter.
He had been much a wanderer, and never knew a home, save such as he had found with his regiment; so there was much in the little circle at Eaglescraig to delight him. Save with Hew, he won golden opinions from all there; his genial manner, spirited good-humour, handsome bearing, and facile mode of adapting himself to those among whom chance threw him—a mode that came, perhaps, of his having been educated abroad—all seemed to make him a prime favourite.
He could speak much, and pleasantly, of what he had seen and where he had been; he was a reader, too, and the fruit of his reading cropped up pleasantly from time to time in the course of conversations that Hew could take little or no part in, greatly to his own wrath.
'What a place this is for gammon and spinach!' thought Hew, who viewed all this with extreme distaste, and still more the intimacy that progressed between this 'interloper,' as he deemed him, and Mary Montgomerie; for they nightly played together the mazurkas of Chopin and selections from the songs of Mendelssohn and the operas of Verdi, while Hew looked darkly and dubiously on, thinking there was in all this far more than met the eye; and Sir Piers thought, with a smile, that a Cameronian of his time would certainly not have shone much as a pianist.
Mary was always so happy in herself, that she usually made all others equally so; thus, in her society, the hours, with Falconer, seemed to fly like minutes.
Hew had—unknown to Sir Piers—become so seriously involved in monetary matters during his sojourn in India, that it was next to impossible for him to return there; and his chief hope for retrieving himself and doing well for the future lay in a marriage with Mary Montgomerie, rather than the prospective succession to the baronetcy and to the acres of Eaglescraig, for Sir Piers was a hale old fellow and might live for twenty years yet. Indeed, everyone said so.
Thus he viewed with extreme bitterness and jealousy the visit of Falconer and some of the details attendant on that visit, and his closely-set and parti-coloured eyes twinkled dangerously as he muttered: