Mungo scanned the garment curiously.
“It's gey like ane I've seen on a bigger man,” he answered.
“And a better, perhaps, thought my worthy Mungo. I remember me that our peacock was a diplomatist and had huge interest in your delightful stories.”
A movement of Mungo's made him turn to see the Baron standing behind him a little bewildered at this apparition.
“Failte!” said the Baron, “and I fancy you would be none the waur, as we say, of the fireside.”
He went before him into the salle, taking Mungo's candle. Mungo was despatched for Annapla, and speedily the silent abigail of visions was engaged upon that truly Gaelic courtesy, the bathing of the traveller's feet. The Baron considerately made no inquiries; if it was a caprice of Count Victor's to venture in dancing shoes and a borrowed jacket through dark snow-swept roads, it was his own affair. And the Count was so much interested in the new cheerfulness of his host (once so saturnine and melancholy) that he left his own affairs unmentioned for a while as the woman worked. It was quite a light-hearted recluse this, compared with that he had left a week ago.
“I am not surprised you found yon place dull,” at the last hazarded the Baron.
“Comment?”
“Down-by, I mean. I'm glad myself always to get home out of it at this season. When the fishers are there it's all my fancy, but when it does not smell of herring, the stench of lawyers' sheepskins gets on the top and is mighty offensive to any man that has had muckle to do with them.”
“Dull!” repeated Count Victor, now comprehending; “I have crowded more experience into the past four-and-twenty hours than I might meet in a month anywhere east of Calais. I have danced with a duchess, fought a stupid duel, with a town looking on for all the world as if it were a performance in a circus with lathen weapons, moped in a dungeon, broken through the same, stolen a coat, tramped through miles of snow in a pair of pantoufles, forgotten to pay the bill at the inn, and lost my baggage and my reputation—which latter I swear no one in these parts will be glad to pick up for his own use. Baron, I'll be shot if your country is not bewitched. My faith! what happenings since I came here expecting to be killed with ennui! I protest I shall buy a Scots estate and ask all my friends over here to see real life. Only they must have good constitutions; I shall insist on them having good constitutions. And there's another thing—it necessitates that they must have so kind a friend as Monsieur le Baron and so hospitable a house as Doom to fall back on when their sport comes to a laughable termination, as mine has done to-night.”