Click! went the window shut again, and from the inside she saw him looking up at the casement with eyes full of triumph and mischief. He was metamorphosed in some way. Yesterday he had been serious and earnest, returning from his hill trip with something like despondency, and now—
She remembered her last sight of him the night before, as he smiled at her from the stairway. Ah, yes, yes! all just because he had felt jubilant over outwitting her, or rather over seeing a chance do the work for another. Was it for that he was still singing? Had her instincts then told her truly when she had connected his presence with the memory of that older man's sombre eyes and dogged exile? Well, the exile was his own business, not that of anyone else—least of all that of this debonair individual, with his varying emotions.
And she went down the stairs with a resentful feeling against the light-hearted melody of "Acushla Mavourneen."
"Be my champion, Mrs. Hardy," he begged at the breakfast-table, "or I am tabooed forever by Miss Rachel."
"How so?"
"By what I intended as an act of homage, giving her a serenade at sunrise in the love-songs of my forefathers."
"Nonsense!" laughed Rachel. "He never knew what his forefathers were until Davy MacDougall brushed up his history; and you have not thought much of the songs you were trying to sing, else you would know they belong to the people of the present and future as well as the past.
"Trying to sing!" was all the comment Mr. Stuart made, turning with an injured air to Tillie.
"Learn some Indian songs," advised that little conspirator impressively; "in the Kootenai country you must sing Chinook if you want to be appreciated."
"There speaks one who knows," chimed in Hardy lugubriously. "A year ago I had a wife and an undivided affection; but I couldn't sing Chinook, and the other fellow could, and for many consecutive days I had to take a back seat."