“Well, madam, it’s just this, that his lordship would be very glad to see ye and Mr. Mellot, for he’s vary ill indeed, and that’s truth; and if he winna tell ye the cause, then I will—­and it’s just a’ for love of this play-acting body here, and more’s the pity.”

“More’s the pity, indeed!”

“And it’s my opeenion the puir laddie will just die, if nobody sees to him; and I’ve taken the liberty of writing to Major Cawmill mysel’, to beg him to come up and see to him, for it’s a pity to see his lordship cast away, for want of an understanding body to advise him.”

“So I am not an understanding body, Bowie?”

“Oh, madam, ye’re young and bonny,” says Bowie, in a tone in which admiration is not unmingled with pity.

“Young indeed!  Mr. Bowie, do you know that I am almost as old as you?”

“Hoot, hut, hut—­” says Bowie, looking at the wax-like complexion and bright hawk-eyes.

“Really I am.  I’m past five-and-thirty this many a day.”

“Weel, then, madam, if you’ll excuse me, ye’re old enough to be wiser than to let his lordship be inveigled with any such play-acting.”

“Really he’s not inveigled,” says Sabina, laughing.  “It is all his own fault, and I have warned him how absurd and impossible it is.  She has refused even to see him; and you know yourself he has not been near our house for these three weeks.”

“Ah, madam, you’ll excuse me:  but that’s the way with that sort of people, just to draw back and draw back, to make a poor young gentleman follow them all the keener, as a trout does a minnow, the faster you spin it.”

“I assure you no.  I can’t let you into ladies’ secrets; but there is no more chance of her listening to him than of me.  And as for me, I have been trying all the spring to marry him to a young lady with eighty thousand pounds; so you can’t complain of me.”

“Eh?  No.  That’s more like and fitting.”

“Well, now.  Tell his lordship that we are coming; and trust us, Mr. Bowie:  we do not look very villainous, do we?”

“Faith, ’deed then, and I suppose not,” said Bowie, using the verb which, in his cautious, Scottish tongue, expresses complete certainty.  The truth is, that Bowie adores both Sabina and her husband, who are, he says, “just fit to be put under a glass case on the sideboard, like twa wee china angels.”

In half an hour they were in Scoutbush’s rooms.  They found the little man lying on his sofa, in his dressing-gown, looking pale and pitiable enough.  He had been trying to read; for the table by him was covered with books; but either gunnery and mathematics had injured his eyes, or he had been crying; Sabina inclined to the latter opinion.

“This is very kind of you both; but I don’t want you, Claude.  I want Mrs. Mellot.  You go to the window with Bowie.”

Bowie and Claude shrugged their shoulders at each other, and departed.