“Because I fought a duel with the man that Isobel preferred, and—and—killed him!”
She shuddered with a little sucking in of air at her teeth and drew up her shoulders as if chilled with cold.
“Ah, then,” said she, “the best thing's to forget. Are you a Jacobite, Master Greig?”
She had set aside my love affair and taken to politics with no more than a sigh of sympathy, whether for the victim of my jealousy, or Isobel Fortune, or for me, I could not say.
“I'm neither one thing nor another,” said I. “My father is a staunch enough royalist, and so, I daresay, I would be too if I had not got a gliff of bonnie Prince Charlie at the Tontine of Glasgow ten years ago.”
“Ten years ago!” she repeated, staring abstracted out at the window. “Ten years ago! So it was; I thought it was a lifetime since. And what did you think of him?”
Whatever my answer might have been it never got the air, for here Clancarty, who had had a message come to the door for him, joined us at the window, and she turned to him with some phrase about the trampling of troops that passed along the streets.
“Yes,” he said, “the affair marches quickly. Have you heard that England has declared war? And our counter declaration is already on its way across. Pardieu! there shall be matters toward in a month or two and the Fox will squeal. Braddock's affair in America has been the best thing that has happened us in many years.”
Thus he went on with singular elation that did not escape me, though my wits were also occupied by some curious calculations as to what disturbed the minds of Hamilton and of the lady. I felt that I was in the presence of some machinating influences probably at variance, for while Clancarty and Roscommon and Thurot were elate, the priest made only a pretence at it, and was looking all abstracted as if weightier matters occupied his mind, his large fat hand, heavy-ringed, buttressing his dewlap, and Miss Walkinshaw was stealing glances of inquiry at him—glances of inquiry and also of distrust. All this I saw in a mirror over the mantelpiece of the room.
“Sure there's but one thing to regret in it,” cried Clancarty suddenly, stopping and turning to me, “it must mean that we lose Monsieur des Souliers Rouges. Peste! There is always something to worry one about a war!”