“Stay a moment,” said Major Hardwicke to Captain Anson Anstruther, when Nadine had fled away to prepare for her flitting from the unloved granite fortress.
“When do you go over to London, Anstruther?” said Major Hardwicke, for he now nourished a scheme of “social employment” for the brilliant staff officers. He was short only a groomsman.
“Not till after I am married,” remarked the relative of the great Viceroy. “I have done my duty to Her Majesty,” he laughed, “and now, I am going to do my duty to myself!” Whereat Harry Hardwicke was suddenly aware that Cupid carries a double-barreled gun, sometimes. In her own apartment, Nadine Johnstone listened to Janet Fairbarn’s sobbing plaint, as the heart-happy Mattie Jones flew around the rooms making her young mistress’s boxes. Nadine was still in an entrancing dream of freedom, life, and love, and the cunning Scotswoman’s plaint was all unheeded. Major Hardwicke was announced, “upon urgent business.”
“I cannot tell you yet, darling, just how we vanquished the old ogre,” said he. “Be brave, and remember that a feast of long-deferred love-tidings awaits you to-night. I have already sent away all my own luggage. A horse and a well-mounted orderly will be here at four, and so I shall not lose you from sight even a moment until you are safe in General Wragge’s home at Edgemere. Let the maid return alone here to-morrow and remove all your effects we may overlook. I will dispatch the luggage and ride after your carriage.”
“The proprieties, you know,” he laughed, as he vanished, after stealing a kiss.
“The master’s in a woeful way,” mourned Janet. “To think of your father’s only bairn leaving her ain house so! The master’s half daft with his troubles, for they’ve scattered and lost the bit bookie—the work of years!
“Though there’s the braw American scholar, tho’, to aid him now. He hates you, my poor bairn, for your poor dead mother’s sake! It’s afearfu’ hard heart these Frasers carried. I know them of old!”
“Do you mean to tell me that the ‘Banker’s Folly’ is really my own house?” said Nadine, her cheek flushing crimson at the insult to the memory of her beloved dream mother.
“In truth, it’s yer very ain, my leddy. Old Hugh bought it for his last home,” whimpered the housekeeper.
“Then you may tell Andrew Fraser,” the spirited girl cried, “that I will never cross the threshold again, where I have been kept under a jailer’s lock under my own roof tree! Let him write his wishes to Douglas—Douglas is a gentleman. I will keep silent for the sake of the man who was a kindly brother to me on my voyage. But to Andrew Fraser, I am dead for evermore! My life of the future has no place for a half-crazed tyrant—the man who tried to bruise the broken heart of an orphan of his own blood. We are strangers forevermore. And I will leave old Simpson here as my agent to keep the possession of this place in my name. I will write Douglas, so that his old father may live out his days here in peace!”