The Collected Works of D. K. Broster. D. K. Broster

give me the pleasure of your company at it?”

      Ewen was conscious of the kind of jolt caused when a hitherto decorously travelling chaise goes unexpectedly over a large stone.

      “I fear I shall be too much occupied, my lady,” he stammered. “I thank you, but I must devote all my time to——”

      “Now, do not say to conspiring,” she admonished him, smiling. “As a good Whig I shall have to denounce you if you do!”

      “If it be conspiracy to try to procure the commutation of Doctor Cameron’s sentence,” answered Ewen, “then his lordship is conspiring also.”

      “Very true,” admitted Lady Stowe. “We will not, then, call it by that name. But, Mr. Cameron, you cannot spend all your time writing or presenting petitions. What do you say to coming to a small card-party of my intimate friends, on Monday? You can hardly hope to be accomplishing anything so soon as that!”

      Ewen bowed. “I am deeply grateful to your ladyship, but I am in hopes of an order to visit Doctor Cameron in the Tower on that day, and since I do not know for what hour the permission will be granted——”

      “Mr. Cameron, you are as full of engagements as any London beaux! And an order for the Tower! How are you going to procure that—’twill not be easy. Ah, the Earl, I suppose?”

      “His lordship has been so good as to promise to try to obtain one.”

      Lady Stowe made a moue. “I vow I shall ask Lord Cornwallis not to grant it! Nay, I was but jesting. Yet you are vastly tiresome, sir. If you should not get the order will you promise me to come and take a hand at quadrille on Monday?”

      “I am a poor man, Lady Stowe, with a wife and children, and cannot afford to play quadrille,” replied Ewen bluntly.

      His hostess stared at him. “You are married . . . and have children!”

      “I have been married these seven years,” said Ewen in a tone of some annoyance. Lady Stowe was, he knew, old enough to be his mother, but that was no reason why she should think, or pretend to think him a boy.

      The Countess began to laugh. “I cry you mercy, sir, for having supposed you a bachelor, since it seems to displease you. Tell me of your wife and children.”

      “There is little to tell,” responded Ewen. At least, there seemed little to tell this fine lady.

      “Seven years,” said her ladyship reflectively. “Then you were married soon after the Re—the Rising?”

      “No, during it,” replied her guest. “About five weeks before the battle of Culloden—But I am sure that this cannot interest you, my lady.”

      “On the contrary,” said Lady Stowe, smiling her sweet, slow smile. “And your wife—how romantical! Tell me, did she seek and find you upon the battlefield . . . for something tells me that you were left there for dead?”

      “My wife was then in France,” replied Ardroy rather shortly.

      “But you were left upon the battlefield?” pursued Lady Stowe, looking at him with fresh interest.

      “Yes, I was,” admitted Ewen, with a good deal of unwillingness. “But you must forgive me for saying once more that I do not see of what interest it can be to your ladyship whether I was or no.”

      “O Mr. Cameron, do not snub me so!” cried the Countess. Secretly she was charmed; what man in the whole of London would have spoken to her with such uncompromising directness? “I protest I meant nothing uncomplimentary in the assumption—rather the reverse!”

      “Few men who were so left were lucky enough to come off with their lives,” remarked Ewen grimly.

      “Why? Ah, I remember hearing that it was very cold in the North then. Did you suffer from the severity of the weather?”

      “I suppose I did,” admitted Ardroy, “though I knew little about it at the time. And it was not, for the most part, the weather which killed our wounded. . . . But I am occupying too much of your ladyship’s time, and if you will permit me I will take my leave.” And he rose from his chair with that intention.

      But Lady Stowe remained sitting there, looking up at him. “Have you taken a vow never to speak of your past life, Mr. Cameron? For I protest that you are singularly uncommunicative, which is, I believe, a trait of your countrymen from the Lowlands. That provokes a woman, you know, for she is naturally all curiosity about persons in whom she is interested. And in your case, too, there is the link with my poor Keith. Did you tell him nothing?”

      “It was about him, not myself, that I came to talk,” was almost upon Ewen’s lips; but he kept the remark unuttered. If Keith’s mother wanted to know more of his past history he supposed he must gratify the desire; moreover, he was afraid that he had taken up a churlish attitude towards this gracious and beautiful lady. He had not yet got over the jolt.

      So he tried to make amends. “I fear that I am being extremely uncivil, and that you will think me very much of a barbarian, Lady Stowe. Anything that you care to hear about me I am very ready to tell you; and in exchange you will perhaps (if I do not ask too much) tell me something of Major Windham. I knew so little of his past life.”

      The Countess of Stowe studied him as he stood there in her boudoir, nothing of the barbarian about him save, perhaps, his stalwart height. He would evidently come to see her to talk about her dead son, though he would not come to a rout or a tea-party. Very well then. And for how many occasions could she make her reminiscences of Keith last out? There must not be too many served up at each meeting. And would those deep blue eyes look at her again with that appealing gaze? On such a strong face that fleeting expression held an irresistible charm . . . but then so had his very different air when she tried to make him speak of what he had no mind to. Like a true connoisseur Lady Stowe decided to cut short the present interview in order to have the pleasure of looking forward to others. She glanced at the cupid-supported clock on the mantelpiece, gave an exclamation and rose.

      “I had forgotten the time . . . I must go and dress. . . . Then it is a bargain, Mr. Cameron? You’ll come again and hear of my poor boy? Come at any time when you are not conspiring, and I will give orders that you shall be instantly admitted—that is, if I am without company. You shall not, since you do not wish it, find yourself in the midst of any gatherings. Nor indeed,” she added with a faint sigh, “could we then speak of my dear Keith.” And with that, swaying ever so little towards him, she gave him her hand.

      No, thought Ewen as he went down the great staircase, but they might have spoken of him this afternoon a great deal more than they had done. Lady Stowe had told him nothing, yet the shock of Keith’s death, even to a mother’s heart, must be a little softened after seven years. And what could it have mattered to her whether or no he had been left out all night on a battlefield, and whether he were married or single? He concluded that fashionable ladies were strange creatures, and wondered what Alison would have made of the Countess of Stowe.

      * * * * *

      Not far from the steps of Stowe House, when Ewen got into the square, there was waiting an extremely respectable elderly man who somehow gave the impression of being in livery, though he was not. As Ardroy came towards him he stepped forward, and, saluting him in the manner of an upper servant, asked very respectfully for the favour of a few words with him.

      “Certainly,” said Ewen. “What is it that you wish to speak to me about?”

      “I understand, sir,” said the man, “that you are the gentleman that was with Major Windham when he was killed, and was telling my lady his mother how it happened. I’m only a servant, sir, but if you would have the goodness . . . I taught him to ride, sir, held him on his first pony, in the days when I was with Colonel Philip Windham his father, and I was that fond of him, sir, and he always so good to me! ’Twas he got me the place in his lordship’s household that I have still; and if, sir, you could spare me a moment to tell me of his end among those murdering Highlanders . . . ?” His voice