His grief had so worked upon him by this time that Nancy was beside herself with fear for him, although she spoke quietly and in as natural a voice as she could summon.

"I'll go with you, Dandie," she said; "I'll go with you. Wait for me,"

reentering her room; "just wait for me!"

It took her but a moment to get some stout walking-boots, a dark skirt, and the scarlet Connemara cloak which she had worn on many of their walks together, and pulling the hood of it over her head, she stepped softly back into the hallway.

"I am ready," she said, slipping her hand into his; "I am ready. Let us go."

There was no further word spoken between them. In silence they walked, hand in hand, along the frozen pa.s.sage and down the twisting stairs, closing the house door noiselessly behind them. Outside it was very dark, save in the far east, where there was a rim of white showing in the sky like a line on a slate. The cold was biting, and a wind which had not reached the ground blew through the tree-tops with a rushing sound and sent a scurry of leaves before them on their path. Danvers had prepared himself by a lantern, and there seemed something significant of the business in hand in his determination to leave it behind; it was in the blackness of midnight, with a silent country stretching away from them in every direction and the stillness of the dead, that the two walked the narrow path and turned into the lane which led by a cut over the rise toward the Dumfries road. At the coming out of the close-way a chill wind struck them, and Nancy, taken suddenly from the warmth of bed, drew back and shivered, at which Danvers put his arm around her, throwing part of his cape over her.

Still in silence, they walked until they came to the brow of the hill, at which place the path divides, one part of it winding across the bridge to the stage road, and the other dropping down by a clump of sailors' homes, west, to the sea. Enough light had come by this time to see the boats lying at anchor in the cove and to distinguish Bigbie's lugger from the rest, as she bobbed up and down, her sails spread and ready to be off. At the sight of this boat Danvers turned suddenly, as if recalled to his senses, and faced Nancy, as they stood at the parting of the ways.

"G.o.d forgive me!" he cried. "Oh, G.o.d forgive me, but I can't do it! I can't take ye. Not though you begged me on your knees; not though I knew you'd die without me. Oh, can you ever forgive the words I've said to you this morning? Will ye think rather that I'd choose to see ye dead than gone with me in the way I've asked? That I'd rather die myself than take ye; and that I love you, love you enough to give you up! And it's I," he went on in a bitter self-scorn, "who have prated of honor, and the conduct of gentlemen, who have made a beast of myself before the best woman who ever lived! Who through selfishness have tried to make her life a blacker ruin than I've made my own! Can you forget it, Nancy? Can you ever forgive me for it?"

"Dandie," she said softly, "ye needn't worry about that. I knew you wouldn't take me! I knew 'twas just that you were carried beyond yourself by your sorrows that made you talk as you did at the bedroom door. Look!" she said, opening the throat of the Connemara cloak and showing him the neck of her thin white dressing blouse, "one doesn't start to the Americas in clothes like that. I knew what you were and understood; knew that, given your way, you would choose the best, as you have done!" she cried, with the tears in her eyes. "Ye've stood before temptation! You've done the thing that's right when it was hard to do! and I'm proud to have seen you as I have this morning."

They were both crying by this time as they stood with hands clasped, on one side the calls of the sailors coming up the slope, on the other the echoes of a horn rolling along the frozen ground from the coach which came to carry Danvers away.

"I may kiss you before I go?" he asked, with a longing in his tone pitiable to hear.

"If ye think it's right," she answered. "If ye think that when ye look back to this time in the years to come you will be happier to remember that ye kissed me, than to think you kept the vows you swore before G.o.d, ye may kiss me if ye choose!"

The choice was made in silence, and he dropped her hands, picked up the valise which had fallen by his feet, and turned to go. At sight of this resolution Nancy burst into tears.

"Oh," she cried, "G.o.d bless you! G.o.d bless you, dear! And give you peace!" as, without touching even her hand, Danvers Carmichael fared forth alone, along the stage road which lay lonesome and frozen in the shadow of the night.

CHAPTER XXIII

A FALSE RUMOR CAUSES TROUBLE

While these events were going forward at Allan-lough I sat in an ignorant complacency at Stair, pleased with the advices of Janet's convalescence, and with no knowledge whatever of Danvers Carmichael's whereabouts save that he was from Arran Towers. My lack of knowledge concerning his movements occurred by reason of a new trouble which broke out at this time between his father and Hugh Pitcairn concerning a watercourse which crossed the adjoining lands of both, somewhere back in the country. The water was of no use to Sandy, and equally valueless to Hugh; but the fact that one of them wanted it heightened its value to the other, and talk went back and forth, with Sandy deaving my ears concerning his rights on Monday, and Hugh going over the same ground, looking the other way, on Tuesday, until I was driven from Stair and avoided both, spending my time at the clubs, the coffee-houses, or with Creech and his queer old books.

Coming down the steps of his shop on the morning of the twelfth of February--I recall the date because it was the beginning of all the troublous times at Stair--I encountered James Gordon, looking both worried and perplexed.

"John," said he, "you are the very man to help me from an embarra.s.sing position. My wife and daughter have been taken with a fever; our town-house is small, and I have invited Borthwicke to stay with us during the meeting of the Lighthouse Commission----"

"Let me have him at Stair," I cried. "Nancy is from home, I am leading a bachelor life, and you will be showing a kindness to send me such good company as John Montrose."

In this entirely unplanned manner the duke became my visitor, and I found him a merry companion, easy, accessible, agreeable; praising my wines, naming my house the most attractive place in Scotland, and my daughter the most wonderful woman in the world; and I wandered abroad no more, but stayed at home, like a cream-fed cat by the fireside, his grace making the time gay with his tales, his wit, and his worldly wisdom. He urged me to accompany the commission to the northern coasts, and one day, when I was debating whether to join in this expedition or to go down to the West and visit Nancy, the girl settled the question for me herself by appearing at Stair, and at the first sight of her my heart sank within me. She had become much thinner, there was the pallor of sickness in her face, and a weakness both in voice and body as she clung to me, telling me her joy at seeing me again and that she would never leave me more. The news of Borthwicke's presence in the house she received with some surprise, which showed neither pleasure nor regret, going immediately to her rooms, however, making her long journey an excuse for dining alone.

It was after luncheon on the following day that old Dr. McMurtrie came into the library and addressed me, with some heat and scant apology.

"John," said he, looking at me over his gla.s.ses, "I am going to make myself disagreeable. I am going to be that d.a.m.ned nuisance, a candid friend; but somebody's got to speak to you, for you're just letting that girl of yours kill herself."

I stared at him in speechless wonderment.

"She's killing herself," he went on, relentlessly. "And when it's too late you'll see the truth of it. No girl's body is equal to the excitement she's had for years, ever since she was a baby, in fact, with her charities and her Burn-folking and her verse-writing. It's all d.a.m.ned nonsense," he summed up, succinctly, "and it's for you to stop it.

"Instead of helping her get out a second edition of poems," he went on, "ye'd show more sense if you put your mind to considering the problem of how much work a woman can do in justice to the race. Every female creature is in all probability the repository of unborn generations, and should be trained to think of that solemn fact as a man is taught to think of his country."

"Some women," I answered, testily, "are forced to work daily at laborious tasks to support families----"

"And others," he interrupted, "squeeze their feet and give each other poison; but they are not my patients, and Nancy Stair is. And I think you'll find that the women who work, as ye say, do most of it with their bodies, not with their heads or their nerves, and it's in work of this kind the trouble of female labor lies. Nancy should save her vitality. She should store it up for wifehood and motherhood. She'll be a spent woman before she has a husband, and your grandchildren puny youngsters as a resulting. Think it over, John," he concluded; "think it over."

He was scarce out of the house when Nancy appeared from the garden, coming over to the place I sat to put her hand on my shoulder.

"I'm thinking of marrying John Montrose, Jock," she said, with no introduction whatever.

"Ye have my own gentle way of breaking news to people, Little Flower,"

I said; and then: "Do you love him, Nancy? Or, what is more to the point, are you in love with him?"

"Neither," she responded; "but I have grown to believe in him, in spite of his past, and love may come," and here she clasped her hands together and her eyes widened with pain as she said: "I have had a great temptation, Daddy. A great temptation, and I want to put away any chance of it ever coming to me again. I could be true to another always when I might not----"

"Nancy," I interrupted, drawing her down on my knee, "there is no greater mistake a woman can make than to think that marrying one man will help her to forget another; for there is just one thing worse than not having the man you want, and that is having the man you don't want.

And if you're not in love with Montrose, you'll never get my consent to the wedding, not if he were the Prince himself."

On the morning following these talks the duke, who was still with us, sent excuses to the breakfast-room that he had pa.s.sed an uneasy night and would rest until noon; and his valet, who brought this message, ended by saying:

"His grace is not well. His grace should have a doctor, for he had the bleeding from the lungs again last night, although it would be worth my place if he knew I mentioned it to your lordship."

In our foggy country a little throat trouble is no great matter, but I ordered my horse for town, meaning to get McMurtrie out, as if by accident, to see what attentions the duke might require; and riding in some haste by the Bridge end, found a group of men, with papers in their hands, discussing some bit of news with much interest. As I drew near them, Dundas waved the journal at me and called out:

"Our congratulations, John."

I reined in my horse, asking the very natural question, upon what I was to be congratulated, when Blake handed me a copy of The Lounger, indicating a certain paragraph for me to read. The notice began:

"We understand that the long-expected betrothal between his Grace of Borthwicke and Mistress Nancy Stair, only daughter of Lord Stair, is announced," the penny-a-liner going on with much wordiness to state the time and place fixed for the coming marriage, and even the shops in London from which the trousseau was to come.

"Gentlemen," I cried, "upon my honor there is not a word of truth in all of this," and, securing a copy of the miserable sheet, turned back to Stair to discover from Nancy whether to deny the announcement by direct statement or let the rumor die in silence.

I entered the house by the side door which leads to the music-room, outside of which I paused, astonished at the sound of angry and excited voices within the apartment. As I listened, wondering if some new trouble was upon us, I recognized Danvers Carmichael's tone, and almost upon the instant of this recognition, heard him cry out:

"I will save you the promising, for I swear he shall never live to marry you!"

His Grace of Borthwicke being within possible earshot of this altercation, I decided to leave Danvers to Nancy's management, and hurried up the winding stairs to hold the duke's attention until Danvers had left the house.

Looking down into the main hall as I ascended the stair I saw Hugh Pitcairn rise from a couch upon which he had been lying and cross to the far window with some suddenness of manner, and knew by instinct that he had realized the talk was not intended for his ears, and had hastily changed his position, like the man of honor that he was.

Finding that the duke had not left his apartment in my absence I crossed to my own room, where I was not alone above five minutes before Nancy joined me.

"Mr. Pitcairn is below, waiting for the duke to affix some signatures,"

she said; and then:

"Danvers Carmichael has been here, too. He saw an announcement in The Lounger that I was betrothed to his Grace of Borthwicke, and came by to tell me--as you did yourself," she ended, with a smile, "that the wedding would have to take place without his approval."