“Come,” he said, “you must not harp forever on this going away. Holloa!” he added immediately, retiring from her side with a sudden impulse as if some hand had pushed him away, “there is a man I know.”
“A man you know!” she cried, startled, not so much by this intimation as by the start it produced in him.
“Not a very creditable acquaintance,” he went on, with a short laugh, dropping Rory’s bridle and keeping, as Lily remarked with a pang, quite apart from her. “I thought he had been at the other end of the world. He is Alick Duff, one of the Duffs of Blackscaur. They were once the great people up here; but the present laird, I believe, is never at home. You might ride on while I say a word to him. He’s not an acquaintance for you.”
Rory, however, at this moment did not show any inclination to quicken his pace, and Lily heard the greeting between the two men. “Holloa, Lumsden, is that you?” and “Duff! I thought you were at the other end of the world!”
“Well, no, here I am—no in such clover as you,” said the new-comer, with a rough laugh. “Present me to the lady, Ronnie—Miss Ramsay, I’m sure.”
“This is Mr. Alick Duff—Miss Ramsay,” Lumsden said with a dark color on his face. “We are going the same way.”
“And I’m going the contrary road—I’m sorry,” said the stranger, who was a heavy man, older and far less well looking than Ronald. “I’m going to have a look at the old place and see if they’ll have any thing to say to me there. Then I’m off again to the ends of the world, as you say; and the further the better,” he added, again with a harsh laugh. Rory by this time had moved on, and Lily, though she heard the men’s voices almost loud on the still air, did not make out what they said. In a few moments Ronald rejoined her almost out of breath.
“That’s the black sheep of the family,” he said; “not likely he’ll get much of a reception at home, even if there’s any body there. The only thing that could be wished, for all belonging to him, is that he should never be heard of more.”
“He is a dreadful-looking man,” said Lily, with a shudder, “and seems to laugh at every thing, and looks as if he might do any terrible thing.”
“You should ask Helen Blythe about that,” Ronald said. He was still keeping at a certain distance, the other wayfarer being still in sight. Ronald did not know that, when at the sudden turn of the next corner he resumed his place at Rory’s bridle, it was almost in the heart of his wife to have pushed him back with her hands. This incident stopped the question about Helen Blythe which was trembling on Lily’s lips. What could he know about Helen Blythe, and what could she have to do with this dreadful man?