And that set me wondering. It might be that Charles and Aileen alone had won my reprieve for me, but I suspected Volney’s fine hand in the matter. Whether he had stirred himself in my affairs or not, I knew that I too owed my life none the less to the leal heart of a girl.
CHAPTER XVI
VOLNEY’S GUEST
Of all the London beaux not one had apartments more elegant than Sir Robert Volney.[3] It was one of the man’s vanities to play the part of a fop, to disguise his restless force and eager brain beneath the vapid punctilios of a man of fashion. There were few suspected that his reckless gayety was but a mask to hide a weary, unsatisfied heart, and that this smiling debonair gentleman with the biting wit was in truth the least happy of men. Long he had played his chosen rôle. Often he doubted whether the game were worth the candle, but he knew that he would play it to the end, and since he had so elected would bear himself so that all men should mark him. If life were not what the boy Robert Volney had conceived it; if failure were inevitable and even the fruit of achievement bitter; if his nature and its enveloping circumstance had proven more strong than his dim, fast-fading, boyish ideals, at least he could cross the stage gracefully and bow himself off with a jest. So much he owed himself and so much he would pay.
Something of all this perhaps was in Sir Robert Volney’s mind as he lay on the couch with dreamy eyes cast back into the yesterdays of life, that dim past which echoed faintly back to him memories of a brave vanished youth. On his lips, no doubt, played the half ironic, half wistful smile which had become habitual to the man.
And while with half-shut eyes his mind drifted lazily back to that golden age forever gone, enter from the inner room, Captain Donald Roy Macdonald, a cocked pistol in his hand, on his head Volney’s hat and wig, on his back Volney’s coat, on his feet Volney’s boots. The baronet eyed the Highlander with mild astonishment, then rose to his feet and offered him a chair.
“Delighted, I’m sure,” he said politely.
“You look it,” drolled Macdonald.