How the young fellow laughed and joked as the party drove away again from the Butt, down the long coast-road to Barvas! He was tenderly respectful and a little moderate in tone when he addressed Sheila, but with the others he gave way to a wild exuberance of spirits that delighted Mackenzie beyond measure. He told stories of the odd old gentlemen of his club, of their opinions, their ways, their dress. He sang the song of the Arethusa, and the wilds of Lewis echoed with a chorus which was not just as harmonious as it might have been. He sang the "Jug of Punch," and Mackenzie said that was a teffle of a good song. He gave imitations of some of Ingram's companions at the Board of Trade, and showed Sheila what the inside of a government office was like. He paid Mackenzie the compliment of asking him for a drop of something out of his flask, and in return he insisted on the King smoking a cigar which, in point of age and sweetness and fragrance, was really the sort of cigar you would naturally give to the man whose only daughter you wanted to marry.
Ingram understood all this, and, was pleased to see the happy look that Sheila wore. He talked to her with even a greater assumption than usual of fatherly fondness; and if she was a little shy, was it not because she was conscious of so great a secret? He was even unusually complaisant to Lavender, and lost no opportunity of paying him indirect compliments that Sheila could overhear.
"You poor young things!" he seemed to be saying to himself, "you've got all your troubles before you; but in the mean time you may make yourselves as happy as you can."
Was the weather at last about to break? As the afternoon wore on the heavens became overcast, for the wind had gone back from the course of the sun, and had brought up great masses of cloud from the rainy south-west.
"Are we going to have a storm?" said Lavender, looking along the southern sky, where the Barvas hills were momentarily growing blacker under the gathering darkness overhead.
"A storm?" said Mackenzie, whose notions on what constituted a storm were probably different from those of his guest. "No, there will be no storm. But it is no bad thing if we get back to Barvas very soon."
Duncan sent the horses on, and Ingram looked out Sheila's waterproof and the rugs. The southern sky certainly looked ominous. There was a strange intensity of color in the dark landscape, from the deep purple of the Barvas hills, coming forward to the deep green of the pasture-land around them, and the rich reds and browns of the heath and the peat-cuttings. At one point of the clouded and hurrying sky, however, there was a soft and vaporous line of yellow in the gray; and under that, miles away in the west, a great dash of silver light struck upon the sea, and glowed there so that the eye could scarcely bear it. Was it the damp that brought the perfumes of the moorland so distinctly toward them—the bog-myrtle, the water-mint and wild thyme? There were no birds to be heard. The crimson masses of heather on the gray rocks seemed to have grown richer and deeper in color, and the Barvas hills had become large and weird in the gloom.
"Are you afraid of thunder?" said Lavender to Sheila.
"No," said the girl, looking frankly toward him with her glad eyes, as though he had pleased her by asking that not very striking question. And then she looked round at the sea and the sky in the south, and said quietly, "But there will be no thunder: it is too much wind."
Ingram, with a smile which he could scarcely conceal, hereupon remarked, "You're sorry, Lavender, I know. Wouldn't you like to shelter somebody in danger or attempt a rescue, or do something heroic?"