'But you thought it, all the same.'
She laughed louder at this, for Hew's peculiar love-making, if it annoyed, always excessively amused her at the same time—a fatal element for him.
The morning of the proposed ride proved a beautiful one, clear, bracing, and sunny, and the horses were betimes brought round from the stables to the stately perron in front of the house, where Hew was smoking a cigar, when the girls came forth in their riding-habits, attended by Cecil Falconer.
'And you are resolved not to accompany us, Hew?' asked Mary, coaxingly, desirous to please him.
'Yes,' he replied, bluntly.
'What a pity the season is not summer,' she said to Falconer, 'we could have such pleasant sketching expeditions, picnics, afternoon tea on the lawn, croquet-matches and lawn-tennis; but our picnics are so jolly, and we always use the big omnibus, in which the servants drive on Sundays to the kirk of Eaglescraig.'
'Croquet is only good for one thing,' muttered Hew; 'it enables a fellow to loaf with some girl he is soft upon; otherwise I never could see anything in it,' he added in his growling tone.
Slender and willowy looked the figure of Mary in her tight, well-fitted habit, even more so than that of Miss Erroll, who was undoubtedly a very handsome girl.
Hew, having been in India, had been compelled to learn riding; but he was a timid and indifferent cavalier, afraid of a horse, indeed, and he could never have done what he saw Mary doing, tickling, patting, and kissing the nose of her favourite pad, ere she was swung into her saddle so deftly by Cecil, to whose care and companionship, together with those of Annabelle Erroll, he was now compelled to relinquish her, as the three departed, merrily and laughingly, to visit the ruined castle of Kilbirnie, amid its stately parks and beautiful gardens.
Down the long avenue they went under oaks and elms that had been growing since the field of Pinkecleugh was fought and lost; and between a pair of grand old carved iron gates, surmounted by a coat-of-arms and supported by massive stone pillars covered with grey lichen and green moss, and past the lodge, the occupant of which, an old wooden-legged Cameronian, stood at 'attention' as they issued out upon the roadway, watched by the evil eyes of Hew, to begin a two hours' 'spin' through a rich and pastoral country.