Lady Bude tried to comfort him; it is the mission of young matrons.  He must not be in such a hurry to go away.  As to Mr. Blake, she could entirely reassure him.  It was a beautiful evening, the lady was fair and friendly; Nature, fragrant of heather and of the sea, was hushed in a golden repose.  The two talked long, and the glow of sunset was fading; the eyes of Lady Bude were a little moist, and Merton was feeling rather consoled when they rose and walked back towards Skrae Castle.  It had been an ancient seat of the Macraes, a clan in relatively modern times, say 1745, rather wild, impoverished, and dirty; but Mr. Macrae, the great Canadian millionaire, had bought the old place, with many thousands of acres ‘where victual never grew.’

Though a landlord in the Highlands he was beloved, for he was the friend of crofters, as rent was no object to him, and he did not particularly care for sport.  He accepted the argument, dear to the Celt, that salmon are ground game, and free to all, while the natives were allowed to use ancient flint-locked fusils on his black cocks.  Mr. Macrae was a thoroughly generous man, and a tall, clean-shaved, graceful personage.  His public gifts were large.  He had just given 500,000_l_. to Oxford to endow chairs and students of Psychical Research, while the rest of the million was bestowed on Cambridge, to supply teaching in Elementary Logic.  His way of life was comfortable, but simple, except where the comforts of science and modern improvements were concerned.  There were lifts, or elevators, now in the castle of Skrae, though Blake always went by the old black corkscrew staircases, holding on by the guiding rope, after the poetical manner of our ancestors.

On a knowe which commanded the castle, in a manner that would have pained Sir Dugald Dalgetty, Mr. Macrae had erected, not a ‘sconce,’ but an observatory, with a telescope that ‘licked the Lick thing,’ as he said.  Indeed it was his foible ‘to see the Americans and go one better,’ and he spoke without tolerance of the late boss American millionaire, the celebrated J. P. van Huytens, recently deceased.

   Duke Humphrey greater wealth computes,
   And sticks, they say, at nothing,

sings the poet.  Mr. Macrae computed greater wealth than Mr. van Huytens, though avoiding ostentation; he did not

   Wear a pair of golden boots,
   And silver underclothing.

The late J. P. van Huytens he regarded with moral scorn.  This rival millionaire had made his wealth by the process (apparently peaceful and horticultural) of ‘watering stocks,’ and by the seemingly misplaced generosity of overcapitalising enterprises, and ‘grabbing side shows.’  The nature of these and other financial misdemeanours Merton did not understand.  But he learned from Mr. Macrae that thereby J. P. van Huytens had scooped in the widow, the orphan, the clergyman, and the colonel.  The two men had met in the most exclusive circles