"But that would not vex her so much as the notion that you had waited on her account," said Sheila's husband with a smile; and Mrs. Lorraine was pleased to hear him sometimes speak in a kindly way of the Highland girl whom he had married.
Lavender's guests were going somewhere after luncheon, and he had half promised to go with them, Mrs. Lorraine stipulating that Sheila should be induced to come also. But when luncheon was over and Sheila had not appeared, he changed his intention. He would remain at home. He saw his three friends depart, and went into the study and lit a cigar.
How odd the place seemed! Sheila had left no instructions about the removal of those barbaric decorations she had placed in the chamber; and here, around him, seemed to be the walls of the old fashioned little room at Borvabost, with its big shells, its peacocks' feathers, its skins and stuffed fish, and masses of crimson bell-heather. Was there not, too, an odor of peat-smoke in the air?—and then his eye caught sight of the plate that still stood on the window-sill, with the ashes of the burned peat on it.
"The odd child she is!" he thought with a smile, "to go playing at grotto-making, and trying to fancy she was up in Lewis again! I suppose she would like to let her hair down again, and take off her shoes and stockings, and go wading along the sand in search of shellfish."
And then, somehow, his fancies went back to the old time when he had first seen and admired her wild ways, her fearless occupations by sea and shore, and the delight of active work that shone on her bright face and in her beautiful eyes. How lithe and handsome her figure used to be in that blue dress, when she stood in the middle of the boat, her head bent back, her arms upstretched and pulling at some rope or other, and all the fine color of exertion in the bloom of her cheeks! Then the pride with which she saw her little vessel cutting through the water!—how she tightened her lips with a joyous determination as the sheets were hauled close, and the gunwale of the small boat heeled over so that it almost touched the hissing and gurgling foam!—how she laughed at Duncan's anxiety as she rounded some rocky point, and sent the boat spinning into the clear and smooth waters of the bay! Perhaps, after all, it was too bad to keep the poor child so long shut up in a city. She was evidently longing for a breath of sea-air, and for some brief dash of that brisk, fearless life on the sea-coast that she used to love. It was a happy life, after all; and he had himself enjoyed it when his hands and face got browned by the sun, when he grew to wonder how any human being could wear black garments and drink foreign wines and smoke cigars at eighteenpence apiece, so long as frieze coats, whisky and a brier-root pipe were procurable. How one slept up in that remote island, after all the laughing and drinking and singing of the evening were over! How sharp was the monition of hunger when the keen sea-air blew about your face on issuing out in the morning! and how fresh and cool and sweet was that early breeze, with the scent of Sheila's flowers in it! Then the long, bright day at the river-side, with the black pools rippling in the wind, and in the silence the rapid whistle of the silken line through the air, with now and again the "blob" of a big salmon rising to a fly farther down the pool! Where was there any rest like the rest of the mid-day luncheon, when Duncan had put the big fish, wrapped in rushes, under the shadow of the nearest rock, when you sat down on the warm heather and lit your pipe, and began to inquire where you had been bitten on hands and neck by the ferocious "clegs" while you were too busy in playing a fifteen-pounder to care? Then, perhaps, as you were sitting there in the warm sunlight, with all the fresh scents of the moorland around, you would hear a light footstep on the soft moss; and, turning round, here was Sheila herself, with a bright look in her pretty eyes, and a half blush on her cheek, and a friendly inquiry as to the way the fish had been behaving. Then the beautiful, strange, cool evenings on the shores of Loch Roag, with the wild, clear light still shining in the northern heavens, and the sound of the waves getting to be lonely and distant; or, still later, out in Sheila's boat, with the great yellow moon rising up over Suainabhal and Mealasabhal into a lambent vault of violet sky; a pathway of quivering gold lying across the loch; a mild radiance glittering here and there on the spars of the small vessel, and out there the great Atlantic lying still and distant as in a dream. As he sat in this little room and thought of all these things, he grew to think he had not acted quite fairly to Sheila. She was so fond of that beautiful island-life, and she had not even visited the Lewis since her marriage. She should go now. He would abandon the trip to the Tyrol, and as soon as arrangements could be made they would together start for the North, and some day find themselves going up the steep shore to Sheila's home, with the old King of Borva standing in the porch of the house, and endeavoring to conceal his nervousness by swearing at Duncan's method of carrying the luggage.
Had not Sheila's stratagem succeeded? That pretty trick of hers in decorating the room so as to resemble the house at Borvabost had done all that she could have desired. But where was she?
Lavender rose hastily and looked at his watch. Then he rang the bell, and a servant appeared. "Did not Mrs. Lavender say when she would return?" he asked.
"No, sir."
"You don't know where she went?"
"No, sir. The young lady's luggage was put into the cab, and they drove away without leaving any message."