of his,” interrupted Craven with his usual insolence. “Now out with the lie!”
“’Pon honour, Craven, ’tis gospel truth,” gasped Pink-and-White.
“Better send for a doctor then. If he tries to tell the truth for once he’ll strangle,” suggested Selwyn whimsically to March.
“Spit it out then!” bullied Craven coarsely.
“Oh, Lard! Your roughness gives me the flutters, Sir James. I’m all of a tremble. Split me, I can’t abide to be scolded! Er— Well, then, ’twas a Welsh widow they fought about—name of Gwynne and rich as Crœsus—old enough to be a grandmother of either of ’em, begad! Volney had first claim and Montagu cut in; swore he’d marry her if she went off the hooks next minute. They fought and Montagu fell at the first shot. Next day the old Begum ran off with her footman. That’s the story, you may depend on’t. Lud, yes!”
“You may depend on its being wrong in every particular,” agreed Lady Di coolly. “You’d better tell the story, ’Toinette. They’ll have it a hundred times worse.”
“Oh Lard! Gossip about my future husband. Not I!” giggled that lively young woman.
“Don’t be a prude, miss!” commanded the Dowager Countess sharply. “’Tis to stifle false reports you tell it.”
“Slidikins! An you put it as a duty,” simpered the young beauty. “’Twould seem that—it would appear—the story goes that— Do I blush?—that Sir Robert— Oh, let Lady Di tell it!”
Lady Di came to scratch with the best will in the world.
“To correct a false impression then; for no other reason I tell it save to kill worse rumours. Everybody knows I hate scandal.”
“’Slife, yes! Everybody knows that,” agreed Craven, leering over at March.
“Sir Robert Volney then was much taken with a Scotch girl who was visiting in London, and of course she dreamed air castles and fell in love with him. ’Twas Joan and Darby all the livelong day, but alack! the maid discovered, as maids will, that Sir Robert’s intentions were—not of the best, and straightway the blushing rose becomes a frigid icicle. Well, this Northern icicle was not to be melted, and Sir Robert was for trying the effect of a Surrey hothouse. In her brother’s absence he had the maid abducted and carried to a house of his in town.”
“’Slife! A story for a play. And what then?” cried Pink-and-White.
“Why then—enter Mr. Montagu with a ‘Stay, villain!’ It chanced that young Don Quixote was walking through the streets for the cooling of his blood mayhap, much overheated by reason of deep play. He saw, he followed, at a fitting time he broke into the apartment of the lady. Here Sir Robert discovered them——”
“The lady all unready, alackaday!” put in the Honourable Isabel, from behind a fan to hide imaginary blushes.
“Well, something easy of attire to say the least,” admitted Lady Di placidly.
“I’ faith then, Montagu must make a better lover than Sir Robert,” cried March.
“Every lady to her taste. And later they fought on the way to Surrey. Both wounded, no graves needed. The girl nursed Montagu back to health, and they fled to France together,” concluded the narrator.
“And the lady—is she such a beauty?” queried Beauclerc.
“Slidikins! I don’t know. She must have points. No Scotch mawkin would draw Sir Robert’s eye.”
You are to imagine with what a burning face I sat listening to this devil’s brew of small talk. What their eyes said to each other of innuendo, what their lifted brows implied, and what they whispered behind white elegant hands, was more maddening than the open speech. For myself, I did not value the talk of the cats at one jack straw, but for this young girl sitting so still beside me— By Heaven, I dared not look at her. Nor did I know what to do, how to stop them without making the matter worse for her, and I continued to sit in an agony grizzling on the gridiron of their calumnies. Had they been talking lies outright it might have been easily borne, but there was enough of truth mixed in the gossip to burn the girl with the fires of shame.
At the touch of a hand I turned to look into a face grown white and chill, all the joy of life struck out of it. The girl’s timorous eyes implored me to spare her more of this scene.
“Oh Kenneth, get me away from here. I will be dying of shame. Let us be going at once,” she asked in a low cry.
“There is no way out except through the crowd of them. Will you dare make the attempt? Should I be recognized it may be worse for you.”
“I am not fearing if you go with me. And at all events anything iss better than this.”
There was a chance that we might pass through unobserved, and I took it; but I was white-hot with rage and I dare say my aggressive bearing bewrayed me. In threading our way to the door I brushed accidentally against Mistress Westerleigh. She drew aside haughtily, then gave a little scream of recognition.
“Kenn Montagu, of all men in the world—and turned Quaker, too. Gog’s life, ’tis mine, ’tis mine! The hundred guineas are mine. I call you all to witness I have taken the desperate highwayman. ‘Tall, strong, and extremely well-looking; carries himself like a gentleman.’ This way, sir,” she cried merrily, and laying hold of my coat-tails began to drag me toward the men.
There was a roar of laughter at this, and the pink-white youth lounged forward to offer me a hand of welcome I took pains not to see.
“Faith, the lady has the right of it, Montagu. That big body of yours is worth a hundred guineas now if it never was before,” laughed Selwyn.
“Sorry to disappoint the lady, but unfortunately my business carries me in another direction,” I said stiffly.
“But Lud! ’Tis not fair. You’re mine. I took you, and I want the reward,” cries the little lady with the sparkling eyes.
Aileen stood by my side like a queen cut out of marble, turning neither to the right nor to the left, her head poised regally on her fine shoulders as if she saw none in the room worthy a look.
“This must be the baggage about which they fought. Faith, as fine a piece as I have seen,” said Craven to March in an audible aside, his bold eyes fixed insolently on the Highland girl.
Aileen heard him, and her face flamed. I set my teeth and swore to pay him for that some day, but I knew this to be no fitting time for a brawl. Despite me the fellow forced my hand. He planted himself squarely in our way and ogled my charge with impudent effrontery. Me he quite ignored, while his insulting eyes raked her fore and aft. My anger seethed, boiled over. Forward slid my foot behind his heel, my forearm under his chin. I threw my weight forward in a push. His head went back as though shot from a catapult, and next moment Sir James Craven measured his length on the ground. With the girl on my arm I pushed through the company to the door. They cackled after me like solan-geese, but I shut and locked the door in their faces and led Aileen to her room. She marched up the stairs like a goddess, beautiful in her anger as one could desire. The Gaelic heart is a good hater, and ’twas quite plain that Miss Macleod had inherited a capacity for anger.
“How dare they? How dare they? What have I done that they should talk so? There are three hundred claymores would be leaping from the scabbard for this. My grief! That they would talk so of my father’s daughter.”
She was superbly beautiful in her wrath. It was the black fury of the Highland loch in storm that leaped now from her eyes. Like a caged and wounded tigress she strode up and down the room, her hands clenched and her breast heaving, an impetuous flood of Gaelic pouring from her mouth.
For most strange logic commend me to a woman’s reasoning, I had been in no way responsible for the scene down-stairs, but somehow she lumped me blindly with the others in her mind, at least so far as to punish me because I had seen and heard. Apparently ’twas enough that I was of their race and