Part 40 (2/2)

Seeing Calamity deep in thought, McPhulach, who had leaned over the wind-screen to return the tobacco-pouch, slid gently back into his seat and absent-mindedly dropped the pouch into his own pocket.

The car was now proceeding up a broad avenue which led to the main entrance of the Towers, and a vision came to Calamity of himself as a small boy on horseback, cantering down this same avenue with his father.

The thought of the latter brought back to his memory the brother who had blackened him in his father's eyes and made him what he had been; what, in heart, he still was--an outcast and an exile.

Never had he hated his brother as he hated him at this moment.

Lady Betty, meanwhile, was taking advantage of his thoughtfulness to examine his profile at her leisure. It was a strong face, she reflected, stronger and harder far than that of the youth she had loved fifteen years ago.

”A penny for your thoughts,” she said lightly, to dissipate an emotion induced by his proximity and those memories of their youth.

He turned swiftly, and the baffling, rather grim smile which played about his mouth, together with the fixed and merciless stare of his gla.s.s eye, embarra.s.sed her to the point of actual nervousness.

”You shall have them at your own price when I put them up for sale,” he answered.

She coloured. Her first thought was that he intended to snub her, but she quickly dismissed the idea. No, he must have meant that the moment was not propitious. Perhaps he, also, had been thinking of....

”You never married in all those years?” she asked abruptly, and with a little tremor in her voice that she could not control.

”No.”

”Why?”

He smiled at her in a quizzical way and shrugged his shoulders.

”Ah, here we are,” he said as the car drew up before the stately entrance to Redhurst Towers. Springing out, he made his way round to the other side in order to help her to alight. McPhulach, however, was before him and stood with his arm crooked at an angle of forty-five degrees, his body bent, and an ingratiating leer on his face.

”Hae a care o' yon step, ye'r leddys.h.i.+p,” he remarked.

But the lady was equal to the occasion. Ignoring his arm, she sprang to the ground.

”Will you be so kind as to bring my furs from the car?” she asked sweetly, and to herself: ”Why on earth has John brought this uncouth, seafaring savage with him?”

The sound of the approaching motor had brought a child of about twelve running out on to the terrace. She waited at the head of the stone steps, colouring up shyly as she met the stranger's gaze.

”This is my little girl, Elfrida,” said Lady Betty. ”Elfrida, this is your Uncle John.”

The child held her hand out frankly to her grim relative, and there was no suggestion of shrinking in her manner.

”I came out to be the first to welcome you home to Redhurst, Uncle John,” she said a trifle primly. Then, becoming all child again, she turned to her mother. ”Oh, mummy, I thought you'd never come. I'll go and tell them you're here. We're all having tea in the hall.”

As he watched the fair-haired child disappear, Calamity thought, with something of a pang, that she might have been his own. But this feeling lasted only a moment, and he remembered once more that she was the child of the man who had ruined him.

”Welcome home,” said Lady Betty softly.

”Thank you,” he answered without enthusiasm.

”It has been home to me, and I have loved it for fourteen years,” she said, and then continued archly, obviously inviting and expecting a denial. ”And now you've come to turn me out.”

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