‘It is a high one, very well hung, and painted yellow. I drive my iron-gray mare in it.’
‘That will have a fine appearance, Gilbert.’
‘It would please me very much to take you out, ma’am,’ said he, ‘but the step is so high that I am afraid you would find it inconvenient.’
‘I am too old, my dear,’ said Miss Hersey, looking delighted; ‘but some day I will come to the head of the close and see you drive away.’
Gilbert’s ears were straining towards Fullarton and his companion, who, regardless of the reticence of his answers, was cross-examining him minutely.
‘I suppose that Lady Eliza would be well satisfied,’ she was saying, ‘and I am sure she should, too. Of course, it would be a grand chance for Miss Raeburn if Mr. Fordyce were to think seriously of her; she has no fortune. I happen to know that. For my part, I never can admire those pale girls.’
The speaker, who had the kind of face that makes one think of domestic economy, looked haughtily from under her plumed Leghorn bonnet.
Fullarton grew rather uncomfortable, for he suspected the state of Gilbert’s mind, and the lady, whom social importance rather than friendship with Miss Robertson had placed on the red chintz sofa, was a person whose tongue knew no bridle. He rose to escape. Gilbert rose also, in response to a nameless impulse, and a newcomer appropriating his chair, he went and stood at the window.
Though close to the lady who had spoken, he turned from her, unable to look in her direction, and feeling out of joint with the world. His brows were drawn together and the scar on his cheek, now a white seam, showed strong as he faced the light. It was more than three months’ since Cecilia had doctored it, and he had watched her fingers in the looking-glass. He had met her many times after that night, for Lady Eliza had felt it behoved her to show him some attention, and had, at last, almost begun to like him. Had her feelings been unbiassed by the past, there is little doubt that she would have become heartily fond of him, for, like Granny Stirk, she loved youth; and her stormy explanation with Fullarton constantly in the back of her mind, she strove with herself to accept the young man’s presence naturally.
To Fullarton, Gilbert was scarcely sympathetic, even laying aside the initial fact that he was the living cause of the loss whose bitterness he would carry to the grave. A cynicism which had grown with the years was almost as high as his heart, like the rising shroud supposed to have been seen by witches round the bodies of doomed persons. In spite of his wideness of outlook in most matters, there was a certain insularity in him, which made him resent, as a consequence of foreign up-bringing, the very sensitive poise of Gilbert’s temperament. And, in the young man’s face, there was little likeness to his mother to rouse any feeling in Robert’s breast.