"Will you be telling me that you do not know?" she said. "For what did Simon MacTaggart hara.s.s our household?"

"I have been bold enough to flatter myself; I had dared to think--"

She stopped him quickly, blushing. "You know he was Drimdarroch, Count Victor," said she, with some conviction.

He jumped to his feet and bent to stare at her, his face all wrought with astonishment.

"_Mon Dieu!_ Mademoiselle, you do not say the two were one? And yet--and yet--yes, _par dieu!_ how blind I have been; there is every possibility."

"I thought you knew it," said Olivia, much relieved, "and felt anything but pleased at your seeming readiness in the circ.u.mstances to let me be the victim of my ignorance. I had too much trust in the wretch."

"Women distrust men too much in the general and too little in particular. And you knew?" asked Count Victor. .

"I learned to-day," said Olivia, "and this was my bitter schooling."

She pa.s.sed him the letter. He took it and read aloud:

"I have learned now," said the writer, "the reason for your black looks at Monsher the wine merchant that has a n.o.bleman's Crest upon his belongings. It is because he has come to look for Drimdarroch. And the stupid body cannot find him! _We_ know who Drimdarroch is, do we not, Sim? Monsher may have sharp eyes, but they do not see much further than a woman's face if the same comes in his way. And Simon MacTaggart (they're telling me) has been paying late visits to Doom Castle that were not for the love of Miss Milk-and-Water. Sim! Sim! I gave you credit for being less o' a Gomeral. To fetch the Frenchman to my house of all places! You might be sure he would not be long among our Indwellers here without his true business being discovered. Drimdarroch, indeed! Now I will hate the name, though I looked with a difference on it when I wrote it scores of times to your direction in the Rue Dauphine of Paris, and loved to dwell upon a picture of the place there that I had never seen, because my Sim (just fancy it!) was there. You were just a Wee Soon with the t.i.tle, my dear Traitour, my bonny Spy. It might have been yours indeed, and more if you had patience, yes perhaps and Doom forby, as that is like to be my good-man's very speedily. What if I make trouble, Sim, and open the eyes of Monsher and the mim-mou'ed Madame at the same moment by telling them who is really Drimdarroch?

Will it no' gar them Grue, think ye?"

Count Victor stood amazed when he had read this. A confusion of feelings were in his breast. He had blundered blindly into his long-studied reprisals whose inadequate execution he was now scarce willing to regret, and Olivia had thought him capable of throwing her to this colossal rogue! The doc.u.ment shook in his hand.

"Well?" said Olivia at last. "Is it a much blacker man that is there than the one you thought? I can tell you I will count it a disgrace to my father's daughter that she ever looked twice the road he was on."

"And yet I can find it in me to forgive him the balance of his punishment," cried the Count.

"And what for might that be?" said she.

"Because, Mademoiselle Olivia, he led me to Scotland and to your father's door."

She saw a rapture in his manner, a kindling in his eye, and drew herself together with some pride.

"You were welcome to my father's door; I am sure of that of it, whatever," said she, "but it was a poor reward for so long a travelling.

And now, my grief! We must steep the withies and go ourselves to the start of fortune like any beggars."

"No! no!" said he, and caught her hand that trembled in his like a bird.

"Olivia!--oh, G.o.d, the name is like a song--_je t'aime! je t'aime!_ Olivia, I love you!"

She plucked her hand away and threw her shoulders back, haughty, yet trembling and on the brink of tears.

"It is not kind--it is not kind," she stammered, almost sobbing. "The lady that is in France."

"_Pet.i.te imbecile!_" he cried, "there is no lady in France worthy to hold thy scarf; 'twas thyself, _mignonne_, I spoke of all the time; only the more I love the less I can express."

He drew her to him, crushing the jasmine till it breathed in a fragrant dissolution, bruising her breast with the topaz.

CHAPTER x.x.xVII -- THE FUTILE FLAGEOLET

But Simon MacTaggart did not pipe wholly in vain. If Olivia was unresponsive, there was one at least in Doom who was his, whole-heartedly, and Mungo, when the flageolet made its vain appeal, felt a personal injury that the girl should subject his esteemed impersonation of all the manly graces and virtues--so to call them--to the insult of indifference.

As the melodies succeeded each other without a sign of response from overhead, he groaned, and swore with vexation and anger.

"Ye can be b.u.mmin' awa' wi' your chanter," he said as he stood listening in the kitchen. "Her leddyship wodnae hae ye playin' there lang your lane a saison syne, but thae days is done wi'; there's nae lugs for a tirlin' at the winnock whaur there's nae love--at least wi' Mistress Leevie."

Annapla heard the music with a superst.i.tious terror; her eyes threatened to leap out of her head, and she clutched the arm of her adorer.

"Gae 'wa!" he told her, shaking her off with a contempt for her fears.

"Are ye still i' the daft Hielan' notion that it's a ghaist that's playin' there? That was a story he made up himsel', and the need for 't's done. There's naethin' waur nor Sim MacTaggart oot there i' the gairden, wastin' his wund on a wumman that's owre muckle ta'en up i' the noo wi' the whillywhaes o' a French sneckdrawer that haesnae the smeddum to gi'e her a toozlin' at the 'oor she needs it maist. Ay, ay! caw awa'

wi' yer chanter, Sim, ye'll play hooly and fairly ere ever ye play 't i'

the lug o' Leevie Lamond, and her heid against your shoulder again."

When it seemed at last the player's patience was at an end, the little servitor took a lamp and went to the door. He drew the bolts softly, prepared to make a cautious emergence, with a recollection of his warm reception before. He was to have a great surprise, for there stood Simon Mac-Taggart leaning against the jamb--a figure of dejection!

"Dod!" cried Mungo, "ye fair started me there, wi' your chafts like clay and yer ee'n luntin'. If I hadnae been tauld when I was doon wi' yer coat the day that ye was oot and aboot again, I wad hae taen 't for your wraith."

The Chamberlain said nothing. There was something inexpressibly solemn in his aspect as he leaned wearily against the side of the door, his face like clay, as Mungo had truly said, and his eyes flaming in the light of the lantern. The flageolet was in his hand; he was shivering with cold. And he was silent. The silence of him was the most staggering fact for the little domestic, who would have been relieved to hear an oath or even have given his coat-collar to a vigorous shaking rather than be compelled to look on misery inarticulate. Simon looked past him into the shadows of the hall as a beggar looks into a garden where is no admission for him or his kind. A fancy seized Mungo that perhaps this dumb man had been drinking. "He's gey like a man on the randan," he said to himself, peering cautiously, "but he never had a name for the gla.s.s though namely for the la.s.s."

"Is she in?" said the Chamberlain, suddenly, without changing his att.i.tude, and with scanty interest in his eyes.

"Oh ay! She's in, sure enough," said Mungo. "Whaur else wad she be but in?"

"And she'll have heard me?" continued the Chamberlain.

"I'll warrant ye!" said Mungo.

"What's wrong?"

Mungo pursed out his lips and shook his lantern. "Ye can be askin'

that," said he. "Gude kens!"

The Chamberlain still leaned wearily against the door jamb, mentally whelmed by dejection, bodily weak as water. His ride on a horse along the coast had manifestly not been the most fitting exercise for a man new out of bed and the hands of his physician.

"What about the foreigner?" said he at length, and glowered the more into the interior as if he might espy him.

Mungo was cautious. This was the sort of person who on an impulse would rush the guard and create a commotion in the garrison; he temporised.

"The foreigner?" said he, as if there were so many in his experience that some discrimination was called for. "Oh ay, the c.o.o.nt. A gey queer birkie yon! He's no' awa yet. He's sittin' on his dowp yet, waitin' a dispensation o' Providence that'll gie him a heeze somewhere else."

"Is--he--is he with her?" said Simon.

"Oh, thereaboots, thereaboots," admitted Mungo, cautiously. "There's nae doot they're gey and chief got sin! he cam' back, and she foun' oot wha created the collieshangie."

"Ay, man, and she kens that?" said the Chamberlain with unnatural calm.

"'Deed does she, brawly! though hoo she kens is mair nor I can guess.

Monsher thrieps it wasnae him, and I'll gie my oath it wasnae me."