"Yes—'wherever they may be,'" Vincent repeated, absently.
"Oh, don't be downhearted!" his lion-maned friend said, with cheerful good humour. "If that self-willed old deevil has taken away the lassie, thinking to make some grand heiress of her, he'll find it's easier to talk about royal blood than to keep a comfortable house over her head; and some day he may be glad enough to bring her back and see her safely provided with a husband well-to-do and able to take care of her. Royal blood?—I'm not sure that I haven't heard him maintain that the Bethunes were a more ancient race than the Stewarts. I shouldn't wonder if he claimed to be descended from Macbeth, King of Scotland. Oh, he holds his head high, the old scoundrel that has 'stole bonny Glenlyon away.' But you'll be even with him yet; you'll be even with him yet. Why, if he comes in to-night, and finds ye sitting here, he'll be as astonished as Maclean of Duart was at Inverary, when he looked up from the banquet and saw his wife at the door."
So Vincent had perforce to wait in vague expectancy; but nevertheless the proceedings of the evening interested him not a little, and all the more that he happened to know two of the principal speakers. For to Mr. Tom MacVittie was entrusted the toast of the evening—"The Immortal Memory of Robert Burns"—and very eloquently indeed did the big merchant deal with that well-worn theme. What the subject lacked in novelty was amply made up by the splendid enthusiasm of his audience: the most familiar quotations—rolled out with MacVittie's breadth of accent and strong north-country burr—were welcome as the songs of Zion sung in a strange land; this was the magic speech that could stir their hearts, and raise visions of their far-off and beloved native home. Nor were they at all laudatores temporis acti—these perfervid and kindly Scots. When the Croupier rose to propose the toast that had been allotted to him—"The Living Bards of Scotland"—cheer after cheer greeted names of which Vincent, in his southern ignorance, had never even heard. Indeed, to this stranger, it seemed as if the Scotland of our own day must be simply alive with poets; and not of the kind that proclaimed at Paisley "They sterve us while we're leevin, and raise moniments to us when we're deed;" but of a quiet and modest character, their subjects chiefly domestic, occasionally humorous, more frequently exhibiting a sincere and effective pathos. For, of course, the Croupier justified himself with numerous excerpts; and there was no stint to the applause of this warm-blooded audience; insomuch that Vincent's idle fancies went wandering away to those (to him) little known minstrels in the old land, with a kind of wish that they could be made aware how they were regarded by their countrymen across the sea. Nay, when the Croupier concluded his speech, "coupling with this toast" a whole string of names, the young man, carried away by the prevailing ardour, said—
"Mr. Anstruther, surely nothing will do justice to this toast but a drop of whiskey!"
—and the Croupier, passing him the decanter, said in reply——
"Surely—surely—on an evening like this; and yet I'm bound to say that if it had not been for the whiskey, my list of living Scotch poets would have been longer."
The evening passed; and Vincent's hopes, that had been too lightly and easily raised, were slowly dwindling. Had George Bethune been in New York, or within any reasonable distance of it, he would almost certainly have come to this celebration, at which several of his old friends were assembled. As Vincent walked home that night to his hotel, the world seemed dark and wide; and he felt strangely alone. He knew not which way to turn now. For one thing, he was not at all convinced, as Hugh Anstruther appeared to be, that it was Mr. Bethune who had taken his granddaughter away, and that, sooner or later, he would turn up at one or other of those trans-Atlantic gatherings of his Scotch friends. Vincent could not forget Maisrie's last farewell; and if this separation were of her planning and executing, then there was far less chance of his encountering them in any such haphazard fashion. 'It is good-bye for ever between you and me,' she had written. And of what avail now were her wild words, 'Vincent, I love you!—I love you!—you are my dearest in all the world! You will remember, always and always, whenever you think of me, that that is so: you will not forget: remember that I love you always, and am thinking of you!' Idle phrases, that the winds had blown away! Of what use were they now? Nay, why should he believe them, any more than the pretty professions that Mrs. de Lara had made on board the steamer? Were they not both women, those two? And then he drew back with scorn of himself; and rebuked the lying Satan that seemed to walk by his side. Solitariness—wounded pride—disappointment—almost despair—might drive him to say or imagine mad things at the moment; but never—never once—in his heart of hearts had he really doubted Maisrie's faith and honour. All other things might be; not that.
He resolved to leave New York and go out west; it was just possible that Maisrie had taken some fancy for revisiting the place of her birth; he guessed they might have certain friends there also. Hugh Anstruther came to the railway station to see him off.
"Yes," he said, "you may hear something about them in Omaha; but it is hardly probable; for those western cities grow at a prodigious pace, and the traces of people who leave them get very soon obliterated. Besides, the population is more or less shifting; there are ups and downs; and you must remember it is a considerable time since Mr. Bethune and his granddaughter left Omaha. However, in case you don't learn anything of them there, I have brought you a letter of introduction to Daniel Thompson of Toronto—the well-known banker—you may have heard of him—and he is as likely as any one to know anything that can be known of George Bethune. They are old friends."
Vincent was very grateful.