"Oh," protested Juliet. "I'm sure he didn't mean to. I think his expression is naturally rather stern."
"Stern nothing," said Miss Tarver. "When I came up he was looking at you as if he reckoned he could eat you, shooting-stick and all. Oh, there aren't any flies on me! I know just what myself and dollars are worth to Sir David Southern, and I'm beginning to do some calculating on my own account as to what Sir David Southern is worth to me."
"Oh, surely you are wrong," cried Juliet. "I am certain Sir David has never thought about your money. Oh, I feel sure you misjudge him; and you mustn't talk like that, even in fun!"
"I don't know," said Miss Tarver doubtfully. "His cousin says David's really vurry attached to me, but it's the sort of thing one ought to be able to see for oneself, and I don't seem to feel a really strong conviction on the subject. As for his thinking of my dollars, I fail to see how he can help that when he's over head and ears in debt, the way he is. He told me so himself when he proposed. He put it as a business proposition. Said his ancient name was up for auction, and did I reckon it worth my while to make a bid, or words to that effect. There's a romantic love-story for you. He was the only titled man I'd ever struck up till a month ago, and I always did think it would be stunning to marry into an aristocratic British family, so I was pleased to death at the idea of putting his on its legs again with my dollars. What else could I do with them anyway? But I believe if I'd met your friend, Lord Ashiel, before I'd taken the fatal step, I'd have waited to see if he didn't fancy an Amurrican wife. But of course he doesn't care a hill of beans whether I'm rich or not. He's got plenty himself, I'm told, and I guess he'd never have looked at me while you were around, any old way. All the same I call him a real striking-looking man."
"Oh, don't talk so loud," implored Juliet. "He'll hear you. He's quite close."
"Not he," said Miss Tarver. "He's back of the butt still. And I will say he is a real high-toned gentleman, and it's my opinion the girl who gets him will be able to give points to the man who took a piece of waste land for a bad debt, and struck the richest vein of gold in Colorado on it."
She looked at Juliet with an insinuating eye.
"Come along," said Lord Ashiel, as he strolled up to them with a bird he had been looking for, "we're going on now to the next drive," and they started off down the hillside, wading deep through the heather to the track.
Juliet had been nearly a week at Inverashiel. A week of wet weather which had sadly interfered with the shooting, but which had thrown the house party on its own resources and given her plenty of chances to get well acquainted with the other guests at the castle. They were most of them related to Lord Ashiel and already well known to each other. The American, David Southern's fiancée, the half Russian girl, Julia Romaninov, who had arrived on the same day as Juliet, and Juliet herself, were the only strangers. Mrs. Haviland, Lord Ashiel's sister, had been there when she arrived, but had left a day or two later as her husband, who was in the south, had fallen ill and needed her presence. Her place as hostess had been taken by Lady Ruth Worsfold, a distant cousin of the McConachans, who lived in a little house a mile down the loch, which was given her rent free by Lord Ashiel. Another cousin of his, Mrs. Clutsam, a young widow, he had also provided this year with a small house on the estate which was sometimes let to fishing tenants, and she, too, was at present staying at Inverashiel.
The guns consisted of Col. Spicer and Sir George Hatch, both well-known soldiers of between forty and fifty years of age, and Lord Ashiel's two nephews, David Southern, the son of a widowed sister, and Mark McConachan, whose father, now dead, had been Lord Ashiel's only brother. Both were tall, good-looking young men, though there was not even a family resemblance between the grey-eyed and fairhaired David, with his smooth-shaven face and slender well-proportioned figure, and his loose-limbed, rather ungainly cousin, whose appearance of great strength made up for his lack of grace, and whose large melting brown eyes made one forget the faults which the hypercritical might have found in the rest of his face: the rather large nose, and the mouth which was apt too often to be open except when it closed on the cigarette he was always smoking. He had been, so Juliet had heard some one say, one of the most popular men in the cavalry regiment he had lately left on account of its being ordered to India.