“Yes, papa,” Lady Florimel answered; “only
he kept us waiting too long for the end of it.”
“Some fowk, my leddy,” said Malcolm, “wad
aye be at the hin’er en’ o’ a’thing.
But for mysel’, the mair pleased I was to be
gaein’ ony gait, the mair I wad spin oot the
ro’d till ’t.”
“How much of the story may be your own invention
now?” said the marquis.
“Ow, nae that muckle, my lord; jist a feow extras
an’ partic’lars ‘at micht weel hae
been, wi’ an adjective, or an adverb, or sic
like, here an’ there. I made ae mistak’
though; gien ’t was you hole yonner, they bude
till hae gane doon an’ no up the stair to their
chaumer.”
His lordship laughed, and, again commending the tale,
rose: it was time to re-embark—an
operation less arduous than before, for in the present
state of the tide it was easy to bring the cutter so
close to a low rock that even Lady Florimel could step
on board.
As they had now to beat to windward, Malcolm kept
the tiller in his own hand. But indeed, Lady
Florimel did not want to steer; she was so much occupied
with her thoughts that her hands must remain idle.
Partly to turn them away from the more terrible portion
of her adventure, she began to reflect upon her interview
with Mrs Catanach —if interview it could
be called, where she had seen no one. At first
she was sorry that she had not told her father of it,
and had the ruin searched; but when she thought of
the communication the woman had made to her, she came
to the conclusion that it was, for various reasons—not
to mention the probability that he would have set
it all down to the workings of an unavoidably excited
nervous condition—better that she should
mention it to no one but Duncan MacPhail.
When they arrived at the harbour quay, they found
the carriage waiting, but neither the marquis nor
Lady Florimel thought of Malcolm’s foot, and
he was left to limp painfully home. As he passed
Mrs Catanach’s cottage, he looked up: there
were the blinds still drawn down; the door was shut,
and the place was silent as the grave. By the
time he reached Lossie House, his foot was very much
swollen. When Mrs Courthope saw it, she sent him
to bed at once, and applied a poultice.
The night long Malcolm kept dreaming of his fall;
and his dreams were worse than the reality, inasmuch
as they invariably sent him sliding out of the breach,
to receive the cut on the rocks below. Very oddly
this catastrophe was always occasioned by the grasp
of a hand on his ankle. Invariably also, just
as he slipped, the face of the Prince appeared in
the breach, but it was at the same time the face of
Mrs Catanach.
The next morning, Mrs Courthope found him feverish,
and insisted on his remaining in bed—no
small trial to one who had never been an hour ill
in his life; but he was suffering so much that he made
little resistance.
