CHAPTER XXXI
TWICE MARRIED
Now I have never to this day been able to make up my mind whether the Lady Kirkpatrick was really stirred with such anger as she pretended, whether she was only more than a little mad, or if all was done merely to break down Irma’s reserve by playing on her anger and pride.
If the last was the cause of my lady’s strange behaviour to us, it was shiningly successful.
“We will not go a step to find my Lady Frances,” said Irma when we were outside; “if she be so full of all the wisdoms, she would very likely try to separate us.”
And certainly it was noways my business to make any objections. So, hardly crediting my happiness, I went southwards over the Bridges, with Irma by my side, my heart beating so rarely that I declare I could hardly bethink me of a minister to make me sure of Irma before she had time to change her mind. As was usual at that hour at the Surgeon’s Hall, we met Freddy Esquillant coming from the direction of Simon Square. Him I sent off as quickly as he could to Rankeillor Street for Amelia Craven. I felt that this was no less than Amelia’s due, for many a time and oft must she have been wearied with my sighs and complaints—very suitable to the condition of a lover, but mightily wearisome to the listener.
Irma said nothing. She seemed to be walking in a dream, and hardly noticed Freddy—or yet the errand upon which I sent him.
It came to me that, as the matter was of the suddenest, Amelia Craven might help us to find a small house of our own where we might set up our household gods—that is, when we got any.
An unexpected encounter preceded the one expected. I was marching along to our rendezvous with Freddy and Amelia at the crossing from Archers’ Hall to the Sciennes, when all of a sudden whom should we meet right in the face but my rosy-cheeked, bunchy little employer—my Lord Advocate in person, all shining as if he had been polished, his face smiling and smirking like a newly-oiled picture, and on his arm, but towering above him, a thin, dusky-skinned woman, plainly dressed, and with an enormous bonnet on her head, obviously of her own manufacture—a sort of tangle of black, brown and green which really had to be seen to be believed.
“Aha!” cried my Lord Advocate; “whither away, young sir? Shirking the proofs, eh, my lad? And may I have the honour to be presented to your sister from the country—for so, by her fresh looks, I divine the young lady to be.”