'Devil take me if I don't bowl that fellow out yet!'
If Hew had been tender and true, less brusque and coarse—had really loved Mary with a loving heart—she might have felt some compunction for her laughing indifference to his suit; but she knew well his avarice, his monetary hopes, and suspected some of his vices; and, more than all, her proud spirit revolted at the idea of being made by her father's will the mere puppet of a family compact, and compelled to marry any man.
'I heard you arranging a riding-party to-morrow, Mary,' said he, during a pause (or while Falconer was being accompanied in an Italian song by Miss Erroll), and bending over Mary till his moustache nearly touched the white and close division in her rich dark-brown hair, while she idled over an album of Indian photographs.
'Yes—you will go, of course, Hew?' said she, looking up at him with her sunny hazel eyes bright with a smile.
'I would rather be excused,' he replied, sulkily.
'Why?'
'Why? because I should be only in the way.'
'Please yourself, Hew; but I do not understand you,' said Mary, colouring with annoyance; 'what do you mean?'
'I mean,' said he bluntly, and in a low, concentrated voice, 'that before this Cameronian fellow came, you and I were—were——'
'Were what?' asked Mary, sharply.