'Yes.'
'But won't you accompany me home, now that I have returned?'
'You must excuse me—I do so enjoy a walk in the evening before dinner.'
'I have not seen my mother for seven years,' he said, reproachfully; 'yet, if you will permit me to accompany you to the village, I shall do so, and then escort you home.'
'I cannot trespass on your time so much,' she replied, with a slight soupçon of sarcasm in her tone; 'besides, what would Aunt Aberfeldie think of your being in no haste to see her, after lingering so long at the deer-forest?'
Allan thought rightly that he now detected the true source of her pique and peculiar greeting; but he knew nothing yet of her bitter opposition to the terms of her father's will.
'Aunt and Eveline are anxiously waiting you, so do not let me detain you longer. If an escort back is requisite, I shall doubtless find one with ease,' and, nodding her head smilingly, she tripped down the tree-shaded avenue and left him; thus he had no choice, though looking after her with a sigh, but to remount and ride towards the house, or rather the castle, of Dundargue.
So—so she had so little interest in him, in his return and his society—that she would neither turn back with him nor permit him to escort her, but had left him to pay some trumpery visits which she could do at any other time, day, or hour.
'How was this?' he asked of himself. 'Holcroft has certainly something to do with it. Why the deuce did my father bring the fellow here?'
Allan's hitherto languid interest in her had become quickened by the sight of her undoubted beauty and grace, and he was, perhaps, a little unreasonably piqued by her open indifference as to his return from remote foreign service, and to his views and whole affairs. Thus the breach between these two—if such we may call it—seemed likely to widen.