“Yes, Sir Patrick. Lady Lundie has kindly ordered the gig to take me to the station, in time for the next train.”
“When are you to be ready?”
Arnold looked at his watch. “In a quarter of an hour.”
“Very good. Mind you are ready. Stop a minute! you will have plenty of time to speak to Blanche when I have done with you. You don’t appear to me to be sufficiently anxious about seeing your own property.”
“I am not very anxious to leave Blanche, Sir—that’s the truth of it.”
“Never mind Blanche. Blanche is not business. They both begin with a B—and that’s the only connection between them. I hear you have got one of the finest houses in this part of Scotland. How long are you going to stay in Scotland? How long are you going to stay in it?”
“I have arranged (as I have already told you, Sir) to return to Windygates the day after to-morrow.”
“What! Here is a man with a palace waiting to receive him—and he is only going to stop one clear day in it!”
“I am not going to stop in it at all, Sir Patrick—I am going to stay with the steward. I’m only wanted to be present to-morrow at a dinner to my tenants—and, when that’s over, there’s nothing in the world to prevent my coming back here. The steward himself told me so in his last letter.”
“Oh, if the steward told you so, of course there is nothing more to be said!”