“Glendochart,” said Mary when the ladies had retired to the parlour leaving the gentlemen to consume their toddy, “has had a letter from Major Gordon that we first met in London, Kirsteen. I cannot call to mind where my husband met him, if it was at the Duke’s or where. But we had him down for the shooting, and two or three times he just went and came—and admired Jeanie—but that’s no wonder, for there’s nobody but what admires Jeanie. He’s wanting to come again if we’ll ask him. But I doubt if I’ll do it—for Jeanie—where is she? I hope she cannot hear me—is on the way to something far grander or I’m much mistaken—and I’m not one that makes mistakes in that way.”
“If ye paid any attention to me,” said Miss Eelen, “I would say ye were making the greatest mistake ye ever made in your life.”
“That’s because it’s not one of your Douglas allies—and you’re full of auld world freats and proverbs about names, but I would like to hear in our family who had anything to say against my husband’s name.”
“If you mean Lord John—do you know he has not a good reputation? Very ill things are said of him.”
“In London,” said the Lady of Glendochart with a superior smile. “My experience is that there’s just nothing but scandal in London. But in his own country he’s the Duke’s son and one of the first of his name.”
“There are some things that one learns in London,” said Kirsteen with a little of that quick growing identification of one’s self with one’s habitation which changes the point of view; “and Mary, if you will let me say it, this is one. The Duke’s son does not match with a country laird’s daughter however bonny she may be, unless he may be one of the romanticks that will make a sacrifice—but Lord John, he is not one.”
“I would hope not,” cried Mary. “The romanticks you are meaning are just fools and fantastic persons like—“ she was about to have said like yourself, but forebore.
“He would need to be fantastic that went to the Duke his father, and said I am going to be married to Jeanie Douglas of Drumcarro.”
“Ye go a little too far, Kirsteen,” said Miss Eelen. “The Douglases might match with princes so far as blood goes. But I’m not saying (for I know their ways) that there is not reason in it. He will just get up a talk about the lassie and then he will go away.”
“Ye are two ravens,” said Mary; “he will do nothing of the kind.”