At sound of their approach Maud Duggan turned hurriedly and waved a hand toward Cleek.
"Father," said she in her low, level-toned voice, "this is Mr. Deland of whom I told you last night. Mr. Deland is engaged to Ailsa Lorne, my old school friend at the convent in Paris—and he has come down for the fishing, and did me the honour to call upon me the very first thing. I have asked him to stay and lunch with us."
Sir Andrew bowed stiffly and then extended a blue-veined and tremulous hand. Cleek took it and bent over it like a courtier.
"Very pleased indeed to see you, Mr. Deland," said Sir Andrew, in a deep, full-throated voice that spoke more of the man he had been than of the man he was now. "You are welcome to our hospitality now and at any other time."
"I am deeply grateful, sir, and during my short stay in these parts I shall hope to make fuller acquaintance of you and your family—your wife? How do you do, Lady Paula? I am enamoured of your charming surroundings and your glorious home. May I be permitted to congratulate you upon both?"
A fleet look flashed from her eyes, a swift warmth of friendship for this stranger who made her so much one of them who had never yet been made one by the family themselves.
"It is beautiful, isn't it?" Smooth as velvet her voice, warm, subtle, alluring as the country that gave her birth. "I love it—how I love it! Even though I am not of the Scotch blood, yet have I that birthright of my nation—home-love. Maud, dear, take Mr. Deland round, won't you? I have still some matters to arrange with your father, so you must do the honours in my stead. And when Sir Andrew and I have finished with our little personal matters"—she smiled suddenly, showing a flash of snowy teeth between the warm red lips which Time had not yet cooled to the more even tenor of England's blood—"then we will join you upon the terrace. And be sure and show Mr. Deland the electric-lighting plant, dear. He will be interested."
Maud Duggan flashed her a look of absolute hatred at this, for she saw the darkening shade upon her father's face, and noted the sudden clenching of the hand upon his stick.
"Cursed modernism and all its extravagant ways!" said the old gentleman in a bitter voice. "Spending that which he should have saved, sir, upon a ridiculous experiment which has ruined the atmosphere of the place entirely. Wayward fool!"
"But it has improved your reading faculties, anyhow, Father," put in Miss Duggan in a quiet, resolute voice. "Paula is not nearly so busy nowadays, when you can read your own papers——"