The fire threw bright flickerings into the darkness of the room as Lady Eliza sat and drank her tea. The servant who had brought it would have brought in lights, too, but she refused to have them, saying that she was tired and that the dusk soothed her head, and she withdrew into the furthest corner of a high-backed settee, with the little dish beside her on a spindle-legged table.
Fullarton sat at the other end of the hearth, his elbows on his knees and his hands spread to the blaze. They were large hands, nervous and well formed. His face, on which the firelight played, had a look of preoccupation, and the horizontal lines of his forehead seemed deeper than usual—at least, so his companion thought. It was easily seen that they were very intimate, from the silence in which they sat.
‘Surely you must be rather wet,’ said he again, after a few minutes. ‘I think it would be wise if you were to change your habit for dry clothes.’
‘No; I will sit here.’
‘You have always been a self-willed woman, my lady.’
She made no reply, merely turning her cane round and round in her hand. A loud crash came from the fire, and a large piece of wood fell into the fender with a sputter of blue fireworks. He picked it up with the tongs and set it back in its place. She watched him silently. It was too dark to read the expression in her eyes.
‘I have seen young Whanland,’ she said suddenly.
‘Indeed,’ said Fullarton.
‘He caught the mare and brought her to me at Granny Stirk’s house.’
‘What is he like?’ he asked, after a pause.