"I have his Grace's instructions to ask you about the advisability of arresting a stranger, seemingly a Frenchman, who is at this moment suspiciously prowling about the policies."

"On whatna charge, Mr. MacTaggart, on whatna charge?" asked the writer, taking a confident, even an insolent, tone, now that he was on his own familiar ground. "Rape, arson, forgery, robbery, thigging, sorning, pickery, murder, or high treason?"

"Clap them all together, Mr. Petullo, and just call it local inconduciveness," cried MacTaggart. "Simply the Duke may not care for his society. That should be enough for the Fiscal and Long Davie the dempster, shouldn't it?"

"H'm!" said Petullo. "It's a bit vague, Mr. MacTaggart, and I don't think it's mentioned in Forbes's 'Inst.i.tutes.' Fifteen Campbell a.s.sessors and the baron bailie might have sent a man to the Plantations on that dittay ten years ago, but we live in different times, Mr.

MacTaggart--different times, Mr. MacTaggart," repeated the writer, tee-heeing till his bent shoulders heaved under his seedy, ink-stained surtout coat.

"Do we?" cried the Chamberlain, with a laugh. "I'm thinking ye forget a small case we had no further gone than yesterday, when a man with the unlucky name of Stewart--" He stopped, meaningly smiled, and made a gesture with his fingers across his neck, at the same time giving an odd sound with his throat.

"Oh! You're an awfu' man," cried Petullo, with the accent of a lout. "I wonder if you're on the same track as myself, for I'm like the Hielan'

soldier--I have a Frenchman of my own. There's one, I mean, up by there in Doom, and coming down here to-morrow or the day after, or as soon as I can order a lodging for him in the town."

"Oh, h.e.l.l!" cried the secretary, amazingly dumfoundered.

"There's nothing underhand about him, so far as I know, to give even his Grace an excuse for confining him, for it seems he's a wine merchant out of Bordeaux, one Montaiglon, come here on business, and stopped at Doom through an attack on his horse by the same Macfarlanes who are of interest to us for another reason, as was spoken of at his Grace's table last night."

"And he's coming here?" asked MacTaggart, incredulous.

"I had a call from the Baron himself to-day to tell me that."

"Ah, well, there's no more to be said of our suspicions," said MacTaggart. "Not in this form, at least." And he was preparing to go.

A skirt rustled within the inner door, and Mrs. Petullo, flushed a little to her great becoming in spite of a curl-paper or two, and clad in a lilac-coloured negligee of the charmingest, came into the office with a well-acted start of surprise to find a client there.

"Oh, good morning! Mr. MacTaggart," she exclaimed, radiantly, while her husband scowled to himself, as he relapsed into the chair at his desk and fumbled with his papers. "Good morning; I hope I have not interrupted business?"

"Mr. MacTaggart was just going, my dear," said Mr. Petullo.

A cracked bell rang within, and the Chamberlain perceived an odour of cooking celery. Inwardly he cursed his forgetfulness, because it was plain that the hour for his call upon the writer was ill-chosen.

"My twelve-hours is unusual sharp to-day," said Petullo, consulting a dumpy horologe out of his fob. "Would ye--would ye do me the honour of joining me?" with a tone that left, but not too rudely, immediate departure as the Chamberlain's only alternative.

"Thank you, thank you," said MacTaggart. "I rose late to-day, and my breakfast's little more than done with." He made for the door, Mrs.

Petullo close in his cry and holding his eye, defying so hurried a departure, while she kept up a chattering about the last night's party.

Her husband hesitated, but his hunger (he had the voracious appet.i.te of such shrivelled atomies) and a wholesome fear of being accused of jealousy made him withdraw, leaving the office to the pair.

All MacTaggart's anger rose against madame for her machination. "You saw me from the window," said he; "it's a half-cooked dinner for the goodman to-day, I'll warrant!"

She laughed a most intoxicating laugh, all charged with some sweet velvety charm, put out her hands, and caught his. "Oh, Lord! I wish it would choke him, Sim," said she, fervently, then lifted up her mouth and dropped a swooning eyelash over her pa.s.sionate orbs.

"Adorable creature," he thought: "she'll have rat-bane in his broth some day." He kissed her with no more fervour than if she had been a wooden figurehead, but she was not thus to be accepted: she put an arm quickly round his neck and pressed her pa.s.sionate lips to his. Back he drew wincing. "Oh, d.a.m.nation!" he cried.

"What's the matter?" she exclaimed in wonder, and turned to a.s.sure herself that it was not that some one spied from the inner door, for Mac-Taggart's face had become exceeding pale.

"Nothing, nothing," he replied; "you are--you are so ferocious."

"Am I, Sim?" said she. "Who taught me? Oh, Sim," she went on, pleadingly, "be good to me. I'm sick, I'm _sick_ of life, and you don't show you care for me a little bit. Do you love me, Sim?"

"Heavens!" he cried, "you would ask the question fifty times a-day if you had the opportunity."

"It would need a hundred times a-day to keep up with your changing moods. Do you love me, Sim?" She was smiling, with the most pathetic appeal in her face.

"You look beautiful in that gown, Kate," said he, irrelevantly, not looking at it at all, but out at the window, where showed the gabbarts tossing in the bay, and the sides of the hill of Dunchuach all splashed with gold and crimson leaf.a.ge.

"Never mind my gown, Sim," said she, stamping her foot, and pulling at the b.u.t.tons of his coat. "Once--oh, Sim, do you love me? Tell me, tell me, tell me! Whether you do or not, say it, you used to be such a splendid liar."

"It was no lie," said he curtly; then to himself: "Oh, Lord, give me patience with this! and I have brought it on myself."

"It _was_ no lie. Oh, Sim!" (And still she was turning wary eyes upon the door that led to her husband's retirement.) "It _was_ no lie; you're left neither love nor courtesy. Oh, never mind! say you love me, Sim, whether it's true or not: that's what it's come to with me."

"Of course I do," said he.

"Of course what?"

"Of course I love you." He smiled, but at heart he grimaced.

"I don't believe you," said she, from custom waiting his protestation.

But the Duke's Chamberlain was in no mood for protestations. He looked at her high temples, made bald by the twisted papilottes, and wondered how he could have thought that bold shoulder beautiful.

"I'm in a great hurry, Kate," said he. "Sorry to go, but there's my horse at the ring to prove the hurry I'm in!"

"I know, I know; you're always in a hurry now with me: it wasn't always so. Do you hear the brute?" Her husband's squeaky voice querulously shouting on a servant came to them from behind.

The servant immediately after came to the door with an intimation that Mr. Petullo desired to know where the spirit-bottle was.

"He knows very well," said Mrs. Petullo. "Here is the key--no, I'll take it to him myself."

"It's not the drink he wants, but me, the pig," said she as the servant withdrew. "Kiss me good afternoon, Sim."

"I wish to G.o.d it was good-bye!" thought he, as he smacked her vulgarly, like a clown at a country fair.

She drew her hand across her mouth, and her eyes flashed indignation.

"There's something between us, Simon," said she, in an altered tone; "it used not to be like that."

"Indeed it did not," he thought bitterly, and not for the first time he missed something in her--some spirit of simplicity, freshness, flower-bloom, and purity that he had sought for, seen in many women, and found elusive, as the frost finds the bloom of flowers he would begem.

Her husband shrieked again, and with mute gestures they parted.

The Chamberlain threw himself upon his horse as 'twere a mortal enemy, dug rowel-deep in the shuddering flesh, and the hoof-beats thundered on the causey-stones. The beast whinnied in its pain, reared, and backed to the breast wall of the bay. He lashed it wildly over the eyes with his whip, and they galloped up the roadway. A storm of fury possessed him; he saw nothing, heard nothing.

CHAPTER XIV -- CLAMOUR

Count Victor came through the woods from Strongara singularly disturbed by the inexplicable sense of familiarity which rose from his meeting with the horseman. It was a dry day and genial, yet with hints of rain on the horizon and white caps to the waves, betokening perhaps a storm not far distant. Children were in the wood of Dunderave--ruddy, shy children, gathering nuts and blackberries, with merriment haunting the landscape as it were in a picture by Watteau or a tale of the cla.s.sics, where such figures happily move for ever and for ever in the right golden glamour. Little elves they seemed to Count Victor as he came upon them over an eminence, and saw them for the first time through the trees under tall oaks and pines, among whose pillars they moved as if in fairy cloisters, the sea behind them shining with a vivid and stinging blue.