“A quarter of an hour ago, sir. She went out with the—the young lady who came this morning.”
“Very well. Let me know when luncheon is ready.”
Lavender turned to his guests, feeling a little awkward, but appearing to treat the matter in a light and humorous way. He imagined that Sheila, resenting what he had said, had resolved to take Mairi away and find her lodgings elsewhere. Perhaps that might be done in time to let Sheila come back to receive his guests.
Sheila did not appear, however, and luncheon was announced.
“I suppose we may as well go down,” said Lavender, with a shrug of his shoulders. “It is impossible to say when she may come back. She is such a good-hearted creature that she would never think of herself or her own affairs in looking after this girl from Lewis.”
They went down stairs and took their places at the table.
“For my part,” said Mrs. Lorraine, “I think it is very unkind not to wait for poor Mrs. Lavender. She may come in dreadfully tired and hungry.”
“But that would not vex her so much as the notion that you had waited on her account,” said Sheila’s husband, with a smile; and Mrs. Lorraine was pleased to hear him sometimes speak in a kindly way of the Highland girl whom he had married.
Lavender’s guests were going somewhere after luncheon, and he had half-promised to go with them, Mrs. Lorraine stipulating that Sheila should be induced to come also. But when luncheon was over and Sheila had not appeared, he changed his intention. He would remain at home. He saw his three friends depart, and went into the study and lit a cigar.
How odd the place seemed. Sheila had left no instructions about the removal of those barbaric decorations she had placed in the chamber; and here around him seemed to be the walls of the old-fashioned little room at Borvapost, with its big shells, its peacocks’ feathers, its skins and stuffed fish, and masses of crimson bell-heather. Was there not, too, an odor of peat-smoke in the air?—and then his eyes caught sight of the plate that still stood on the windowsill, with the ashes of the burned peat on it.