The Greatest Historical Novels & Stories of D. K. Broster. D. K. Broster

out of your way after Miss Campbell, and spent—how long?—in her company?”

      “Does that matter?” asked Ian wearily. “ ’Tis all over and done with now.”

      “Do you think,” enquired his father, roused and stern, “that you can put deceit behind you as easily as that? And what else, may I ask, have you put behind as ‘over and done with’?”

      “What do you mean?” asked the young man, roused also.

      “Who else was at Kilrain—who saw you there? If you have given cause for scandal—if you have compromised Miss Campbell——”

      “——You fear that I might have to marry her!” finished Ian bitterly. “Then I wish to God that I had compromised her! Unfortunately I cannot think that I did!”

      The wrath which could still burn in the old Highlander lit up like fire among summer heather. “You wish you had compromised her! I see what all your protestations are worth, all your fair speeches about my ghost and the barrier in your own heart! You have shown me the truth——”

      Ian started forward. “Father—no, as God is my witness! I do mean every word that I have spoken. Cannot you understand—you were young once—I said good-bye to her for ever . . . but it was cruelly hard, and is still. . . .”

      Alexander Stewart had become dry and cold now. “We had better look at this dispassionately. Apart from your lying to me, your action may have a consequence which you would evidently welcome only too eagerly. For Campbell of Cairns, thickskinned like all his race, would probably raise no particular objection to his daughter marrying a Stewart—indeed, if matters turn out as you evidently hope, he would have to swallow any such objection. What if he holds that you have fatally injured her reputation—what then?”

      Ian gave no intelligible reply. He had turned his back and laid his head against the hands which gripped the mantelshelf.

      “Answer me what I have already asked you! Who else was at Kilrain?”

      “Miss Campbell’s woman—no one else.”

      “How long were you there?”

      “Two days.”

      “And two nights?”

      “Yes.”

      “And you mean to tell me that there was no one else at Kilrain then, taking the whey? It is a fashionable enough occupation for gouty, scandalmongering old men!”

      “There was no one else.”

      “And no traveller passed through the clachan? It lies on a highroad, I believe.”

      “One traveller passed.”

      “He did not see you together, I hope?”

      “Your hope is not justified.”

      “He did see you! But—please God—he did not know either of you?”

      Ian was silent.

      “Answer me that, if you please—and try not to lie again!”

      Ian suppressed all retort. “He knew Miss Campbell—well, it seemed, and she him. He had known her since she was a child.”

      “My God! A friend of the family—of her father’s?”

      “Apparently.”

      “Then if he did his duty he would go straight and tell Cairns what he had seen!”

      “As it happened,” said Ian, with infinitely more coolness than he was feeling, “he was on his way into Lochaber. In any case he did not appear at all perturbed about Miss Campbell.”

      “ ‘He did not appear’,” repeated his father scornfully. “How can you tell what was in a stranger’s mind, and what he would report? Your madness has—but there, what use to speak of it? I will give you credit for meaning what you said just now about having put away the idea of marrying Miss Campbell—you could not be a Stewart and my son, with a brother lying under the sod of Culloden, without meaning it—but your disastrous folly has rendered all that unavailing. But the day that you are forced to marry Olivia Campbell, if it disgracefully comes to that, will see me carried to my grave . . . and I think you will not greatly care!”

      Ian turned round; he was the colour of chalk. “I will never marry Olivia Campbell—not if Cairns begged me to!—Father, I have done more than cut off my right hand that I might not fail in my duty to you and to the blood in my veins . . . and you can say such a thing as that about your death!”

      “You have shaken my confidence too severely,” was the old man’s unmoved reply. “You may have done what you say, and I do not doubt your sincerity at the time, but——”

      “In short, you don’t trust me!” said Ian, flaring up. “I have trampled my life’s happiness under my feet—for you—and this is all the thanks I get for it! ’Tis true I never looked for thanks . . . but reproaches and distrust are a little too much to swallow quietly.—I think we had best bring this interview to an end!” And, seething with indignation, but impelled, too, by a fear of saying to his father what he would afterwards regret, he crossed quickly to the door and went out of the room, out of the house altogether.