“I would learn them a lesson,” cried Drumcarro, “there’s none o’ them to be trusted. I would let them know there would be no trafficking with treason. We’ve had enough in Scotland of the thumbscrew and the boot—no but what judeeciously employed,” he added a moment after, “with the ignorant, when ye cannot get at them in any other way—”
“I hope ye don’t advocate torture, Drumcarro; that would be a curious way of opposing Catholic Emancipation,” said Glendochart.
“I’m not saying, sir, that I advocate torture; but I’ve seen cases—when deevilish obstinacy had to be dealt with,” said the old slave-driver, with a gleam of fire from under his shaggy eyebrows.
“Well, well,” said the minister softly, raising a large hand in deprecation of the argument, “that’s perhaps departing from the immediate question. I hear there’s like to be trouble in your parish, Glendochart, about the new presentee. The Duke has been maybe a little hasty—an old tutor, that had to be provided for.”
“If he manages the parish as ill as he managed some of the young lords,” said Glendochart, with a shrug of his shoulders.
“I will not have a word said against the young lords,” cried Mary. “They’re just very pleasant—and as ceevil young men as ye could meet anywhere—there’s Lord John that we know best.”
Miss Eelen shook her head till the black bows fluttered as if in a strong wind. “You’re all just infatuate about Lord John. I would not trust him, not a step out o’ my sight. I have no faith in your Lord Johns. Begging your pardon, Glendochart, they’re not a true race, and Lord John he is the worst of a’.”
“I think you might know better, Aunt Eelen, than to bring up accusations against the head of my husband’s name.”
“Your husband quotha!” cried Miss Eelen. “It was said of them for hundreds of years before your husband was born or thought of.”
The minister again intervened to smooth matters down with instances of the power and value of the race thus called in question. Jeanie was seated at the other end of the table out of reach of the principal personages who kept up the conversation, but she started at the name of Lord John, and her pale face with the faint redness round the eyes, which appealed so powerfully to Kirsteen’s sympathies, grew suddenly crimson. She cast a terrified look at her sister who sat silently by her, and caught Kirsteen’s hand under the table with a clutch as of despair. Lord John! Kirsteen had made no attempt to identify Jeanie’s wooer whom the girl held in such strange terror. Her own heart gave a bound of alarm yet disdain. She asked with her eyes, “Is that the man?” and received from Jeanie an answering look of confusion and trouble. There were no words exchanged between them. Kirsteen shook her head with a gesture which to Jeanie’s eyes expressed not only disapproval but surprise and scorn, and Jeanie let go her hold of her sister’s hand with an impulse of impatience much like that with which she had cried, “I thought you would understand!” This little conversation by pantomime made the heart of the elder sister ache. “Lord John,” she said to herself, “Lord John!” with mingled fear and astonishment. That Jeanie should be in danger from him—that he should dare! that her little sister with that angelic face, who had once been touched as Kirsteen said by true love should feel a temptation in the flattering words of the man from whom she yet desired to escape, conscious that he was not a true man! Kirsteen’s experiences had been of a simple kind hitherto. She was acquainted with no such problems. It cost her a painful effort to bring herself even to the threshold of Jeanie’s confused mind. She could not comprehend the conflict that was going on there. And yet she could not forsake her little sister even though the circumstances were such as she did not understand.