This was why his pleasure in seeing his people was shadowed by so much anxiety. His smile was only on the lower part of his face—all the rest was clouded with an almost fretful disquietude. He did not even know whether he could make them understand the importance of the crisis. They would receive him, he felt sure, with levity, with minds directed to things of no consequence whatever; and it was natural that this sense, that he was the only person who understood the gravity of the situation, should make Rintoul’s countenance serious. As he kissed his mother and sister, he looked them all over, taking in every detail of their appearance, and uttered a mental thanksgiving, and felt an enormous relief to find that there was little to remark upon. “They would not look amiss anywhere,” he said to himself. But this gleam of contentment was soon dimmed by the reflection that you never can know how a woman will look till you have seen her in her outdoor costume. The bonnet is such a test! Most likely they wore impossible bonnets. So the contraction returned to his forehead once more.
“So here you are,” he said. “I am mighty glad to see you. I thought everything worth while would be over before you came.”
“And what is there that is worth while that is not over?” said his mother. “We defer to your superior knowledge. We in our ignorance were thinking of the concerts, and the pictures, and the new play.”
“Ah, that’s all very well. They’re not over, of course, nor will be so long as the season lasts,” said Rintoul, carelessly. “I was thinking of more important things. I think I’ve got you cards for the next Chiswick fête. It wanted diplomacy. I got Lady Reston, who is au mieux with Archy Chaunter, to get them for you; but you must have very nice toilets for that. The new Irish beauty went to the last a perfect fright in poplin and Limerick lace, all native product, and was the talk of the town. Thank heaven there’s nothing but tartan indigenous to Scotland!”
“Let us go in tartan, mamma,” said Edith. “It would be a graceful way of showing our nationality, and please the people who are going to elect Robin for the county.”
“If you think it would please the county,” said the Countess, with much gravity, which almost paralysed Rintoul; but she added, shaking her head, “Alas! the county is not Highland at all, and scoffs at the tartan. We must try some other way.”
“I wish you wouldn’t speak nonsense to aggravate me,” cried the young man. “How am I to know when you’re in earnest, and when you are laughing? But one thing I can tell you: unless you are well dressed, you need never think of going at all. Old-fashioned gowns that do well enough for the country—though even in the country I don’t think you ought ever to be careless of your dress—”
“You seem to be an authority,” said Edith, laughing. “You will have to tell us if our gowns are old-fashioned.”
“Well, I don’t suppose I am an authority: I don’t understand details; but I can tell on the whole, as well as another, whether a woman looks as she ought when she’s got up.”
“Comme il faut. I thought the phrase was untranslatable, but Robin has mastered it,” said Lady Lindores.
“You need not laugh at me, mother; and I wish you wouldn’t, all of you, call me by that absurd name. I feel like a shepherd boy in a pastoral—the hero, you know—like Fidelio or Cherubino. Oh, I don’t say you are to call me Rintoul—that if you like; but I don’t mind Bob—”
“Bob!” the mother and sister cried in one breath. They had all been secretly proud of that pet name of Robin, which he had borne from a child.
“It’s not worth talking of,” he said carelessly, feeling something of ridicule involved; for though he was not clever, he was sufficiently sympathetic to be conscious of the sentiment in the minds of the others. “The real question is, what you are going to do while you are in town. I have told everybody you were coming; but, mamma, I hope you won’t balk everything by going on about theatres and pictures, and so forth. Society is a hundred times more important. It is not only amusing ourselves we have got to think of. It is all very well to laugh,” he said, with the most solemn air of offended dignity, “but anybody who knew the world would tell you the same thing.”
“My dear boy, I thought I knew a little about the world; but I daresay I am mistaken. I hope, however, you will permit us to amuse ourselves a little now and then. Edith wants to see something and hear something while she is in London. She has not had your advantages—”
“My advantages don’t count for very much,” said Rintoul, half irritated, half flattered, “and it’s just Edith I’m thinking of. There is more to be taken into consideration for her than either amusement or what you call improving her mind. Edith is the entire question. It is to do her justice that is my whole thought.”
Edith, on hearing this, laughed out, yet flamed crimson, with mingled ridicule and suspicion. “In what respect am I to have justice?” she said.
“You needn’t fire up. All that I want is your good. You ought to be seen: you ought to have your chance like the rest. How are you ever to have that if my mother and you fly about skylarking in all sorts of unlikely places, and keep out of the way of—every opportunity?”
Rintoul, though carried away by his feelings to the point of making this plain statement, was rather alarmed when he had said it, and stopped somewhat breathless. It was alarming
