"Was it a pleasant feeling?" enquired Helmsley, jocosely.
"Yes—it was!" replied Angus, clenching his right hand and bringing it down on his knee with emphasis; "whether they were goose wings or eagle wings didn't matter—the pricking of the budding quills was an alive sensation! The mountains, the burns, the glens, all had something to say to me—or I thought they had—something new, vital and urgent. God Himself seemed to have some great command to impose upon me—and I was ready to hear and obey. I began to write—first verse—then prose—and by and by I got one or two things accepted here and there—not very much, but still enough to fire me to further endeavours. Then one summer, when I was taking a holiday at a little village near Loch Lomond, I got the final dig of the spur of fate—I fell in love."
Mary raised her eyes again and looked at him. A slow smile parted her lips.
"And did the girl fall in love with you?" she asked.
"For a time I believe she did,"—said Reay, and there was an under-tone of whimsical amusement in his voice as he spoke—"She was spending the summer in Scotland with her mother and father, and there wasn't anything for her to do. She didn't care for scenery very much—and I just came in as a sort of handy man to amuse her. She was a lovely creature in her teens,—I thought she was an angel—till—till I found her out."
"And then?" queried Helmsley.
"Oh well, then of course I was disillusioned. When I told her that I loved her more than anything else in the world, she laughed ever so sweetly, and said, 'I'm sure you do!' But when I asked her if she loved me, she laughed again, and said she didn't know what I was talking about—she didn't believe in love. 'What do you believe in?' I asked her. And she looked at me in the prettiest and most innocent way possible, and said quite calmly and slowly—'A rich marriage.' And my heart gave a great dunt in my side, for I knew it was all over. 'Then you won't marry me?'—I said—'for I'm only a poor journalist. But I mean to be famous some day!' 'Do you?' she said, and again that little laugh of hers rippled out like the tinkle of cold water—'Don't you think famous men are very tiresome? And they're always dreadfully poor!' Then I took hold of her hands, like the desperate fool I was, and kissed them, and said, 'Lucy, wait for me just a few years! Wait for me! You're so young'—for she was only seventeen, and still at school in Brighton somewhere—'You can afford to wait,—give me a chance!' And she looked down at the water—we were 'on the bonnie banks of Loch Lomond,' as the song says—in quite a picturesque little attitude of reflection, and sighed ever so prettily, and said—'I can't, Angus! You're very nice and kind!—and I like you very much!—but I am going to marry a millionaire!' Now you know why I hate millionaires."
"Did you say her name was Lucy?" asked Helmsley.
"Yes. Lucy Sorrel."
A bright flame leaped up in the fire and showed all three faces to one another—Mary's face, with its quietly absorbed expression of attentive interest—Reay's strongly moulded features, just now somewhat sternly shadowed by bitter memories—and Helmsley's thin, worn, delicately intellectual countenance, which in the brilliant rosy light flung upon it by the fire-glow, was like a fine waxen mask, impenetrable in its unmoved austerity and calm. Not so much as the faintest flicker of emotion crossed it at the mention of the name of the woman he knew so well,—the surprise he felt inwardly was not apparent outwardly, and he heard the remainder of Reay's narration with the most perfectly controlled imperturbability of demeanour.