'As—of course—she is.'
'And he dared to speak of her under the slangy name of "cash" to Stratherroch, as I, by chance, overheard.'
Lord Aberfeldie knitted his dark brows, and said,
'I detest slang—it is deuced bad form; but Holcroft belongs, I know, to a horsey set.'
The sun was setting now, and gradually his crimson glory was paling in fire on the hill tops, till it faded out and died away, and the shadows of the September night crept upward step by step from the deep glens below, and one by one the stars came out above the trees—a sea of dark and solemn pines that covered all the mountain slopes—and ere long the red lights from the curtained windows of the luxurious shooting-lodge were seen to cast long lines of wavering radiance across the bosom of the loch, by the margin of which it stood.
Ere this, the great greyhound Shiuloch (whose name means speed) had returned, drenched with water (showing that he had pursued the stag into some distant loch) and bloody with more than one wound inflicted by antlers.
The sharp-set hunters had dined luxuriously, and cigars with brandy and soda had become the order of the night, when the Master said to his father,
'I think I have had enough of deer-stalking—three weeks nearly—and to-morrow I shall start for Dundargue.'
'I think you are wise to do so,' replied Lord Aberfeldie, with a pointed glance.
'Sorry to lose you, Graham,' said Holcroft, concealing under a bright smile his secret annoyance, envy, and alarm, of all which more anon.