"That will she, I'm sure," answered Mrs. M'Kissock. "Her ladyship has a heart of gold, as it were, and a very kindly way with her. I'll send in word that her folk are here—she'll have finished dinner by now."
She turned and left him, closing the postern behind her so that only the red torch-light illumined the high portcullis and level drawbridge until, presently, the massive main-doors of the castle swung slowly back on their well-oiled hinges and in the heart of the glow from within appeared Sallie, with that young-old man whom Justin Carthew so disliked at her side in very correct evening clothes. But he stayed a little behind as she stepped forward and stopped under the portcullis, the flare of the torches full on her face, a very dazzling vision indeed. For she also was dressed for the evening, and in a creation from Paris.
Carthew's heart was thumping as he drew farther aside into the shadows. She had not noticed him in his plaid, holding the old man's horse.
CHAPTER XIX
THE WINNER
Even during the bewildering whirl of those days which had passed so swiftly since she had escaped from the Olive Branch, Sallie had thought very often of Justin Carthew and the strange situation in which circumstances had all conspired to place them toward each other.
Since she had found out what her rehabilitation, as Lady Josceline Justice, was going to cost him, she had been very anxious to see him again and make everything clear between him and her. But she could scarcely disclose to the others that she had met him before. Neither Captain Dove nor Jasper Slyne knew anything about him beyond what they had heard from Mr. Jobling. And Mr. Jobling could or would tell her nothing, in reply to a timid question or two she had put to him, beyond the bare fact that she had nothing to fear from the young American's ill-founded claim to her rightful place in the world.
She had been very anxious to see him again. But it had startled and confused her at first to find him, so evidently at home, on the Warder's Tower of Loquhariot. For she could not then, before the others, say anything at all of what was in her mind; and she was afraid that he might unguardedly, on the spur of the moment, reveal their unavoidable joint secret.
She could see that he had recognised her at last and that he was no less at a loss than herself. Mr. Jobling's gratuitous rudeness to him vexed her very much. The old housekeeper's half-hysterical outbreak surprised her beyond expression. And then he was gone, before she could make up her mind that it was her own proper part to have bidden him stay till something could have been settled.