"Wouldn't it be better, Vincent?" she said, simply.
"Why?"
"Why?" she repeated, in an absent kind of way. "Well, you know nothing about us, Vincent."
"I have been told a good deal of late, then!" he said, in careless scorn.
And the next instant he wished he had bitten his tongue out ere making that haphazard speech. The girl looked up at him with a curious quick scrutiny—as if she were afraid.
"What have you been told, Vincent?" she demanded, in quite an altered tone.
"Oh, nothing!" he said, with disdain. "A lot of rubbish! Every one has good-natured friends, I suppose, who won't be satisfied with minding their own business. And although you may laugh at the moment, at the mere ridiculousness of the thing, still, if it should happen that just at the same time you should see some one you are very fond of—in—in a position that you can't explain to yourself—well, then—— But what is the use of talking, Maisrie! I confess that I was jealous out of all reason, jealous to the verge of madness; but then I paid the penalty, in hours and hours of misery; and now you come along and heap coals of fire on my head, until I am so ashamed of myself that I don't think I am fit to live. And that's all about it; and my only excuse is that you had not told me then what your eyes told me this morning."
She remained silent and thoughtful for a little while; but as she made no further reference to his inadvertent admission that he had heard certain things of herself and her grandfather, he inwardly hoped that that unlucky speech had gone from her memory. Moreover, they were come to the Chain Pier; and as those two in front waited for them, so that they should go through the turnstile one after the other, there was just then no opportunity for further confidential talking. But once on the Pier, old George Bethune, who was eagerly discoursing on some subject or another (with magnificent emphasis of arm and stick) drew ahead again, taking his companion with him. And Vin Harris, regarding the picturesque figure of the old man, and his fine enthusiastic manner, which at all events seemed so sincere, began to wonder whether there could be any grains of truth in the story that had been told him, or whether it was a complete and malevolent fabrication. His appearance and demeanour, certainly, were not those of a professional impostor: it was hard to understand how a man of his proud and blunt self-assertion could manage to wheedle wine merchants and tailors. Had he really called himself Lord Bethune; or was it not far more likely that some ignorant colonial folk, impressed by his talk of high lineage and by his personal dignity, had bestowed on him that title? The young man—guessing and wondering—began to recall the various counts of that sinister indictment; and at last he said to his companion, in a musing kind of way——
"Maisrie, you know that motto your grandfather is so proud of: 'Stand Fast, Craig-Royston!' Have you any idea where Craig-Royston is?"
"I? No, not at all," she said simply.