“Certainly not!” said Lady Lundie. “I felt a passing curiosity about her—nothing more.”
Mrs. Inchbare looked relieved. “To tell ye truth, my leddy, there was nae love lost between us. She had a maisterfu’ temper o’ her ain—and I was weel pleased when I’d seen the last of her.”
“I can quite understand that, Mrs. Inchbare—I know something of her temper myself. Did I understand you to say that she came to your hotel alone, and that her husband joined her shortly afterward?”
“E’en sae, yer leddyship. I was no’ free to gi’ her house-room in the hottle till her husband daidled in at her heels and answered for her.”
“I fancy I must have seen her husband,” said Lady Lundie. “What sort of a man was he?”
Mrs. Inchbare replied in much the same words which she had used in answering the similar question put by Sir Patrick.
“Eh! he was ower young for the like o’ her. A pratty man, my leddy—betwixt tall and short; wi’ bonny brown eyes and cheeks, and fine coal-blaik hair. A nice douce-spoken lad. I hae naething to say against him—except that he cam’ late one day, and took leg-bail betimes the next morning, and left madam behind, a load on my hands.”
The answer produced precisely the same effect on Lady Lundie which it had produced on Sir Patrick. She, also, felt that it was too vaguely like too many young men of no uncommon humor and complexion to be relied on. But her ladyship possessed one immense advantage over her brother-in-law in attempting to arrive at the truth. She suspected Arnold—and it was possible, in her case, to assist Mrs. Inchbare’s memory by hints contributed from her own superior resources of experience and observation.
“Had he any thing about him of the look and way of a sailor?” she asked. “And did you notice, when you spoke to him, that he had a habit of playing with a locket on his watch-chain?”
“There he is, het aff to a T!” cried Mrs. Inchbare. “Yer leddyship’s weel acquented wi’ him—there’s nae doot o’ that.”