CHAPTER III.

THE INTRODUCTION.

A day or two after the rencontre we have narrated, when the sisters were quietly reading in their little drawing-room, the curtained windows of which opened to the lovely glen, through which May flows, visitors were announced—two strangers and their old friend the parish minister.

The latter entered, hat in hand, with the cheery confidence of one who knew he was welcome, saying,

'My dear girls, allow me to introduce two new friends—Captain Colville and Sir Redmond Sleath—Miss Wellwood—Miss Ellinor Wellwood.'

A few well-bred bows, with the subsequent inevitable remarks about the weather followed, and as all seated themselves, Dr. Wodrow said,

'We have had a long ramble by the Linn, and even as far as the King's Haugh, and have just dropped in to have a cup of afternoon tea, my dears.'

Mary sweetly gave a smile of welcome and assent, as her hand went to the bell.

The old minister, who knew that for reasons yet to be explained, Captain Colville was anxious to see once more the fair girl whom he had met and succoured by Mayside, had artfully arranged the proper introduction, which had now come to pass, and the end of which he—good, easy, and unthinking man—could little then foresee.

Sir Redmond, as he was introduced to Mary, took his glass out of his right eye, where it had hitherto been, and placed it in his left to focus Ellinor when introduced to her, each time bowing very low, yet with an expression of appreciative scrutiny in his face.

The transference of his glass from eye to eye was perhaps a small matter in one way, yet in another it was very indicative of the man's cool
insouciance
of character and bearing.

On the unexpected arrival of these visitors, the first thoughts of the sisters were that their household furniture was decidedly the worse for the wear, that it was all old-fashioned, and that the curtains, carpets, and chairs were all toned down by time; yet everything was scrupulously clean, and in all its details Birkwoodbrae was evidently the home of gentlewomen of taste and refinement. Flowers, artistically sorted, were distributed whereever they might be placed with propriety, with all the pretty trifles and nick-nacks peculiar to the atmosphere of 'the British drawing-room,' while the newest music lay upon the open piano, and Colville's observant eye quickly detected the latest novels and illustrated papers too.

'Miss Wellwood and I are already old friends,' said Captain Colville, with a pleasant smile, as he slid at once into conversation with Mary, laughingly, about their meeting by the river.

'You have not been fishing for some days past, Miss Wellwood,' he remarked, incidentally.

'No, I have been otherwise occupied,' replied Mary, as she thought 'he has been looking for me, or has missed me,' and she knew not whether to be flattered or provoked by the discovery, while, with secret pleasure, Colville was looking into her minute and handsome face, with its starry blue eyes, and tender, mobile mouth—a face as rare in its candour and innocence of expression as in its delicate beauty.

Sir Redmond Sleath—of whom more anon—was tall, fair-haired, and undoubtedly handsome, with a tawny or blonde moustache, and regular features. He was every way the style of man to please a woman's fancy, yet to those who watched him closely it was evident that his blue eyes—for they were a species of cold China blue rather than grey—had a shifty, almost dishonest expression, and that no smile ever pervaded them, even when his lips laughed.

He was in morning costume, with accurately fitting, light-coloured gloves, and a dainty 'button-hole' in the lapel of his black coat; while Colville wore a dark velvet shooting-coat and tan gaiters, his thick, brown hair carefully dressed, his dark moustache pointed, a plain signet ring glittering on his strong brown hand—an onyx, which bore, as Ellinor's sharp, artistic eye observed, the Wellwood crest, or one uncommonly like it—a demi-lion rampant; but then the crests of so many families are the same.

Dr. Wodrow, the minister of Invermay (called of old the Kirktown of Mailler), was a tall, stout, and more than fine-looking man, with aquiline features, and a massive forehead, from which his hair, very full in quantity, and now silvery white, seemed to start up in Jove-like spouts, to fall behind over his ears and neck. He had keen, dark-grey eyes, always a pleasant smile, with a calm, kind, and dignified, if not somewhat pompous, manner, born, perhaps, of the consciousness that, after the laird, he was a chief man in the parish.

His one little vanity, or pet weakness, was pride in his descent from the pious but superstitious old author of 'Analecta Scotica,' and other almost forgotten works, but who was a great man in his time, before and after the Treaty of Union, and in honour of whom he had named his only son 'Robert.'

The afternoon tea proceeded in due course, served in fine old dragon china, brought in by old Elspat, a hard-featured little woman, in deep black, owing to her recent bereavement, who curtseyed in an old-fashioned way to each and all, and with whom the minister shook hands, somewhat to the surprise of his London friends.

'What a splendid type of dog you have here, Miss Wellwood—all muscle and sinew—half bull, half fox terrier,' said Colville, in a pause of the conversation, patting Jack, who was nestling close to Mary's skirt, for the captain deemed rightly that her dog was a safe thing to enlarge upon.

'He is indeed a pet—the dearest of dogs,' she replied, tickling Jack's ears, and getting a lick of his red tongue in return.

'Are you not afraid of him?' asked Sir Redmond, a little nervously.

'Afraid of Jack—I should think not!' replied Mary, laughing.

But somehow Jack seemed to have an antipathy for the baronet, and growled and showed his molar tusks very unmistakably each time that personage focussed him with his eyeglass.

The cabinet portrait of an old officer, in uniform with epaulettes and one or two medals, seemed to attract the interest of Leslie Colville.

'That is papa,' said Mary, in an explanatory tone.

'Ah, he was in the service, then,' said the captain, smiling. 'So am I—in the Scots Guards.'

'The Scots Guards! Then perhaps you know our cousin, Captain Wellwood.'

'Of course I know him intimately,' he replied, with some hesitation, while colouring deeply.

Mary thought there was something strange in his manner, as he spoke in a low and indistinct voice, heard by herself alone, so she pursued the, to her, rather distasteful subject no further, but the captain added,

'A lucky dog—he has succeeded lately to a pot of money—quite a fortune, in fact.'

'Lucky indeed,' assented Sir Redmond. 'By Jove, there is nothing like money for enabling one to enjoy life. Don't you think so, doctor?'

'No,' replied the minister, shaking his white head, 'I agree with my worthy ancestor, who remarks, in the third volume of his
Analecta
, that "wealth is apt to abate the godly habits of a people." Of course, Sir Redmond, you have read Wodrow's
Analecta
.'

'Sorry to say, my dear sir, that I never heard of it.'

'Indeed. It was the labour of twenty-seven years. Thus, you may see that he was unlike Hué, the learned Bishop of Avranches, who used to say that all human learning could be comprised in one volume folio.'

Sir Redmond felt himself somewhat at a loss here, and ignoring the minister, whom he deemed 'an old parish pump,' he turned again to Ellinor Wellwood, some of whose framed landscapes drew attention to her merits as an amateur artist, and led to the production of a portfolio of her sketches, over which the baronet hung, as well as over herself, in real or well-simulated admiration.

The latter could scarcely be, as Ellinor had so many personal attractions, her long lashes imparted such softness to her dark hazel eyes, and the contour of her head and neck seemed so graceful and ladylike as Sir Redmond stooped over her, and complimented her artistic efforts.

Meanwhile Jack, with his hair bristling up, and his bandy legs planted firmly on the carpet, was growling, snarling, and showing such manifestations of making his tusks acquainted with the baronet's calves or ankles, that he had to be ignominiously taken out of the room by Elspat.

'Dogs have strange instincts and antipathies,' said Dr. Wodrow, rather unluckily, and unaware of all his words implied. 'Ah,' he added, as Ellinor displayed one of her drawings, 'that is the Holy Hill of Forteviot, and these stones you see depicted among the turf possess a curious legend—the story of a miller's daughter who married a king—a story you must get Miss Wellwood to tell you one of these days. And so you have given old Elspat a home here, Mary,' he added, smoothing her bright hair with his hand, as he had been wont to do when she was a child, caressingly.

'Yes, for Ellinor and I both love the poor old creature.'

'You are one after God's own heart, Mary,' said the minister, his grey eyes kindling as he spoke.

'We have never forgotten the strange weird dream—if dream it was—she had in the winter night before dear papa died.'

'And this dream?' said Captain Colville, inquiringly, and regarding the girl's face with genuine interest.

'Was a waking one—tell him, Mary,' said Dr. Wodrow, seeing that she hesitated to speak of such things to an utter stranger.

'When papa was on his death-bed,' said she, 'the winter snow covered all the hills; it lay deep in the glen there, and even the great cascade at the Linn hung frozen like a giant's beard in mid-air. About the solemn gloaming time Elspat saw from her cottage window a strange, dim, flickering light leave our house here, and proceed slowly towards the village church, by a line where no road lies, and pass through the churchyard wall at a place where no gates open, and then, at a certain point, it vanished! At that precise time papa died, and when the funeral day came—a day never to be forgotten by us—the roads were so deep with snow that the procession took the way traversed by the light, and, as the gates were buried deep, the wall was crossed at the point indicated by the light, and the grave was found to have been dug where the light vanished.'

Mary's gentle voice broke as she told this little story, and whatever Colville thought of it, though a town-bred Scotsman, no unbelief was traceable in his face.

'We know not what to think of such things,' said Dr. Wodrow, with one of his soft smiles; 'but, as Sir William Hamilton says in his metaphysics, "to doubt and be astonished is to recognise our own ignorance. Hence it is that the lover of wisdom is to a certain extent a lover of the mythic, for the subject of the mythic is the astonishing and the marvellous." But the corpse-light is a common superstition here, as the tomb-fires of the Norse used to be of old.'