They reached the house at last. There was a dim orange-colored light shining in the passage. Lavender went on and threw open the door of the small room which Sheila had adorned, asking Ingram to follow him. How wild and strange this chamber looked, with the wan glare of the dawn shining in on its barbaric decorations from the sea-coast—on the shells and skins and feathers that Sheila had placed around! That white light of the morning was now shining everywhere into the silent and desolate house. Lavender found Ingram a bedroom, and then he turned away, not knowing what to do. He looked into Sheila's room: there were dresses, bits of finery and what not that he knew so well, but there was no light breathing audible in the silent and empty chamber. He shut the door as reverently as though he were shutting it on the dead, and went down stairs and threw himself almost fainting with despair and fatigue on a sofa, while the world outside awoke to a new day with all its countless and joyous activities and duties.
CHAPTER XX.
A SURPRISE.
There was no letter from Sheila in the morning; and Lavender, so soon as the post had come and gone, went up to Ingram's room and woke him. "I am sorry to disturb you, Ingram," he said, "but I am going to Lewis. I shall catch the train to Glasgow at ten."
"And what do you want to get to Lewis for?" said Ingram, starting up. "Do you think Sheila would go straight back to her own people with all this humiliation upon her? And supposing she is not there, how do you propose to meet old Mackenzie?"
"I am not afraid of meeting any man," said Lavender: "I want to know where Sheila is. And if I see Mackenzie, I can only tell him frankly everything that has happened. He is not likely to say anything of me half as bad as what I think of myself."
"Now listen," said Ingram, sitting up in bed, with his brown beard and grayish hair in a considerably disheveled condition: "Sheila may have gone home, but it isn't likely. If she has not, your taking the story up there and spreading it abroad would prepare a great deal of pain for her when she might go back at some future time. But suppose you want to make sure that she has not gone to her father's house. She could not have got down to Glasgow sooner than this morning by last night's train, you know. It is to-morrow morning, not this morning, that the Stornoway steamer starts; and she would be certain to go direct to it at the Glasgow Broomielaw, and go round the Mull of Cantyre, instead of catching it up at Oban, because she knows the people in the boat, and she and Mairi would be among friends. If you really want to know whether she has gone north, perhaps you could do no better than run down to Glasgow to-day, and have a look at the boat that starts to-morrow morning. I would go with you myself, but I can't escape the office to-day."
Lavender agreed to do this, and was about to go. But before he bade his friend good-bye he lingered for a second or two in a hesitating way, and then he said, "Ingram, you were speaking the other night of your going up to Borva. If you should go—"
"Of course I sha'n't go," said the other promptly. "How could I face Mackenzie when he began to ask me about Sheila? No, I cannot go to Borva while this affair remains in its present condition; and, indeed, Lavender, I mean to stop in London till I see you out of your trouble somehow."
"You are heaping coals of fire on my head."