The Ladies Lindores

and Bauby’s highest effort of toilette was to tie a clean apron round her ample waist. She had to wear a silk gown now, and endeavour to be happy in it. Rolls’s importance, however, was now publicly acknowledged both out of doors and in. He was looked upon with a kind of admiring awe by the population generally, as a man who had been, as it were, like Dante, in hell, and came out unsinged⁠—or in prison, which was nearly as bad, issuing forth in a sort of halo of innocence and suffering. It might have been possible that John Erskine or any of the gentlemen of the countryside had quarrelled with Tinto and meant mischief; but Rolls could not have meant anything. The very moment that the eyes of the rural world were directed to him, it was established that accident only could be the cause of death, and everybody felt it necessary to testify their sympathy to the unwilling instrument of such an event. The greatest people in the county would stop to speak to him when occasion offered, to show him that they thought no worse of him. Even Lord Lindores would do this; but there was one exception. Rintoul was the one man who had never offered any sympathy. He turned his head the other way when Rolls approached him⁠—would not look at him when they were, perforce, brought into contact. While Rolls, for his part, regarded Lord Rintoul with a cool and cynical air of observation that was infinitely galling to the object of it. “Yon lord!” he said, when he spoke of him, contemptuous, with a scoff always in his tone. And Rolls had grown to be a great authority in legal matters, the only person in the neighbourhood, as was supposed, that knew the mysteries of judicial procedure. But his elevation, as we have said, was modified by domestic drawbacks. Instead of giving forth his sentiments in native freedom as he went and came with the dishes, direct from one table to another, it was necessary to wait until the other servants of the household were disposed of before the butler and the housekeeper could express confidentially their feelings to each other. And Bauby, seated in her silk gown, doing the honours to the Marquis’s man, of whom she stood in great awe, and the Marchioness’s woman, whom she thought a “cutty,” was not half so happy as Bauby, glowing and proud in the praises of a successful dinner, with her clean white apron folded over her arms.

“This is the lord that my leddy would have been married upon, had all gone as was intended,” Rolls said. “He’s my Lord Marquis at present, and will be my Lord Duke in time.”

“Such a bit creature for a’ thae grand titles,” said Bauby, yawning freely over the stocking which she was supposed to be knitting. “Eh, Tammas, my man, do ye hear that clatter? We’ll no’ have an ashet left in the house.”

“It’s a peety she didna take him⁠—it would have pleased a’ pairties,” said Rolls. “I had other views mysel’, as is well known, for our maister here, poor lad. Woman, cannot ye bide still when a person is speaking to ye? The ashets are no’ your concern.”

“Eh, and wha’s concern should they be?” cried Bauby; “would I let the family suffer and me sit still? My lady’s just a sweet young thing, and I’m more fond of her every day. She may not just be very clever about ordering the dinner, but what does that maitter as lang as I’m to the fore? And she’s an awfu’ comfort to my mind in respect to Mr. John. It takes off the responsibility. Me that was always thinking what would I say to his mammaw!”

“I have nothing to say against my lady,” said Rolls, “but just that I had ither views. It’s a credit to the house that she should have refused a grand match for our sake. But it will be a fine ploy for an observer like me that kens human nature to see them a’ about my table at their dinner the morn. There will be the Earl himsel’, just girning with spite and politeness⁠—and her that would have been my ain choice, maybe beginning to see, poor thing, the mistake she’s made. Poor thing! Marriages, in my opinion, is what most shakes your faith in Providence. It’s just the devil that’s at the bottom o’ them, so far as I can see.”

“Hoot, Tammas⁠—it’s true love that’s at the bottom o’ them,” Bauby said.

“Love!” Rolls cried with contempt: and then he added with a grin of malice⁠—“I’m awfu’ entertained to see yon lord at our table-end. He will not look the side I’m on. It’s like poison to him to hear my voice. And I take great pains to serve him mysel’,” he said with a chuckle. “I’m just extraordinar attentive to him. There’s no person that I take half as much charge of. I’m thinking his dinner will choke him some day, for he canna bide the sight o’ me.”

“Him that should go upon his knees to ye every day of his life!” cried Bauby indignant.

“We’ll say nothing about that; but I get my diversion out o’ him,” said Rolls grimly, “though he’s a lord, and I’m but a common man!”

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The marriage of Lady Car took place a little more than a year after Torrance’s death. It was accomplished in London, whither she had gone some time before, with scarcely anyone to witness the ceremony but her mother. She preferred it so. She was happy and she was miserable, with the strangest mingling of emotions. Lady Lindores made vain efforts to penetrate into the mind which was no longer open to her as her own. Carry had gone far away from her mother, who knew none of the passions which had swept her soul, yet could divine that the love in which she was so absorbed, the postponed and interrupted happiness