“Hang it, Lilla,” broke in Ivie, “can’t you give a man credit for having a heart in his body even though he has been in the habit of handing it about in small portions? I tell you that girl, as you call her—”
“Will be your wife before the end of the season if you play your cards properly and secure her before she has had time to find you out,” interrupted Lilla; “but if you allow society to rub off the rough edges of her rusticity or simplicity—whichever you like to call it—then she’ll throw you over as the others have done.”
After that identical ball there was heavy and prolonged consultation in the Misses Tremarten’s dressing-room as they too discussed the events of the evening and Miss Lettice’s deportment.
“It is not to be allowed,” said Aunt Rosamond with decision as she laid aside her lace lappets and jewelled pins for the nightcap of common life. “I know she is utterly ignorant of les convenances, but we are not, and her stupidity or wilfulness will be laid to our charge. Three round dances (the only three she danced) with Captain McCormack this evening, and when Lord Lochiel comes up for one quadrille she is ‘too tired,’ and that in spite of my frowns.”
“And I too frowned as hard as you did,” echoed Aunt Judith, “and I told her when I said good night just now that we should have much to say to her in the morning.”
“I don’t know that saying is much good, she is so heedless and self-willed. We must just bring all this flirtation and folly to an end, and make our flitting as soon as ever we can. It has this moment occurred to me we may as well accept Mrs. Rosneath’s invitation to Perth. Her estate joins Lord Lochiel’s, and he will soon be running down for the shooting. No doubt the McCormacks and the other undesirables will be off to Baden or Rome or Venice, and in this way we shall get clear of the whole objectionable clique.”
And while her aunts are thus plotting and contriving her future, Lettice stands barefooted in her long white nightdress at her bedroom window above. Her brown hair has fallen all tangled and wavy over her forehead and down to her waist, and in spite of the lateness of the hour her eyes are bright and her cheeks flushed. She has put out her lights and thrown open her window to say good night to the clear golden moon and myriads of silver stars shining out in the summer’s sky, and is drinking in the fresh sweet air which comes to her redolent of the plants in the balcony below.
“Now over there is the west,” she is saying to herself, “and down there somewhere are the dear old Welsh hills, and here is a great big kiss going to dear papa.” She gathers one off her lips and throws it into the silent night air. “And here is another for Lilla McCormack,” she says, throwing a second as far as her arm will reach; “and here is a third for—” But the rest of the sentence she whispers to herself.
III
Still Among Crows
The London season has ended, another act in life’s drama has been played out, and the actors, wearied with failure or dazzled with success, as the case may be, have one and all taken flight to hide their disappointment or freshen their laurels by Scottish hillsides or Swiss lakes, or any other of Nature’s strongholds that wealth or fashion may dictate.
Lettice and her aunts are ensconced for a long visit at Mrs. Rosneath’s wide, ugly, yet, beyond everything else, comfortable mansion in Perthshire, and Captain and Miss McCormack have suddenly discovered that there is a charming little shooting-box to let at Ingleside, not ten miles distant from Rosneath.
“The very place beyond any other,” Lilla said to her brother as she signed and sealed her letter accepting the agent’s offer of the house. “What consternation there will be in the camp when we put in our first appearance at Rosneath, and those wise old ladies find themselves out-generalled by a young tactician like me! By the by, they nearly put a stop to your running with their absurd surveillance of that girl the last few weeks.”
Captain Ivie fidgeted. Bent as he was upon marrying Lettice, he could as yet scarcely bring his mind to the planning and scheming which Lilla conceived to be the only way of winning her.
He took up Lilla’s letter.
“It’s a cursed country for riding,” he said—“hard, flinty, and rough. I know it well—”
“Of course you know it well,” interrupted Lilla with a short laugh which grated unpleasantly on her brother’s ear. “Isn’t that delightful Scotch manse where you spent six weeks flirting with the minister’s daughter somewhere near? What was the name of the girl—Miss Maggie Forbes or Ford? However, she’ll not be likely to trouble us, so it doesn’t much matter.”
Captain Ivie winced again.
“ ’Pon my life, Lilla,” he said, “I’d back you against any woman living in the art of making disagreeable speeches; you know well enough that thing has been over and done with long ago as far as I’m concerned.” Then he lit a cigar and went out.
“Over and done with long ago,” was it? No doubt as far as he was concerned it might be, but would the old Scotch pastor tell the same tale as he watched his pretty little daughter’s rosy cheeks grow pale and her bright eyes become heavy and tear-dimmed while she waited day after day for the letter which the handsome and
