Lady Bellair pleased herself with imagining would one day be presented to Lord Liftore. But she could not, upon such occasions of morning judgment as this, fail to doubt sorely whether the visits she paid him, and the liberties which upon fortunate occasions she allowed him, were such as could be justified on any ground other than that she was prepared to give him all. All, however, she was by no means prepared to give him: that involved consequences far too terrible to be contemplated even as possibilities.
With such causes for disquiet in her young heart and brain, it is not, then, wonderful that she should sometimes be unable to slip across this troubled region of the night in the boat of her dreams, but should suffer shipwreck on the waking coast, and have to encounter the staring and questioning eyes of more than one importunate truth. Nor is it any wonder either that, to such an inexperienced and so troubled a heart, the assurance of one absolutely devoted friend should come with healing and hope, even if that friend should be but a groom, altogether incapable of understanding her position, or perceiving the phantoms that crowded about her, threatening to embody themselves in her ruin. A clumsy, ridiculous fellow! she said to herself, from whose person she could never dissociate the smell of fish, who talked a horrible jargon called Scotch, and who could not be prevented from uttering unpalatable truths at uncomfortable moments; yet whose thoughts were as chivalrous as his person was powerful, and whose countenance was pleasing, if only for the triumph of honesty therein: she actually felt stronger and safer to know he was near and at her beck and call.
CHAPTER XV.
PORTLOSSIE.
Mr. Crathie, seeing nothing more of Malcolm, believed himself at last well rid of him, but it was days before his wrath ceased to flame, and then it went on smouldering. Nothing occurred to take him to the Seaton, and no business brought any of the fisher-people to his office during that time. Hence, for some time he heard nothing of the mode of Malcolm's departure. When at length, in the course of ordinary undulatory propagation, the news reached him that Malcolm had taken the yacht with him, he was enraged beyond measure at the impudence of the theft, as he called it, and rushed to the Seaton in a fury. He had this consolation, however: the man who accused him of dishonesty and hypocrisy had proved but a thief.
He found the boathouse indeed empty, and went storming from cottage to cottage, but came upon no one from whom his anger could draw nourishment, not to say gain satisfaction. At length he reached the Partan's, found him at home, and commenced, at haphazard, abusing him as an aider and abettor of the felony. But Meg Parton was at home also, as Mr. Crathie soon learned to his cost, for, hearing him usurp her unique privilege of falling out upon her husband, she stole from the ben-end, and having stood for a moment silent in the doorway, listening for comprehension, rushed out in a storm of tongue. "An' what for sudna my man," she cried at full height of her screeching voice, "lay tu his han' wi' ither honest fowk to du for the boat what him 'at was weel kent for the captain o' her sin' ever she was a boat wantit dune? Wad ye tak the comman' o' the boat, sir, as weel's o' a' thing ither aboot the place?"
"Hold your tongue, woman," said the factor: "I have nothing to say to you."
"Aigh, sirs! but it's a peety ye wasna foreordeent to be markis yersel'! It maun be a sair vex to ye 'at ye're naething but the factor."
"If you don't mind your manners, Mistress Findlay," said Mr. Crathie in glowing indignation, "perhaps you'll find that the factor is as much as the marquis when he's all there is for one."
"Lord save 's! hear till him!" cried the Partaness. "Wha wad hae thoucht it o' 'im? There's fowk 'at it sets weel to tak upo' them! His father, honest man! wad ne'er hae spoken like that to Meg Partan; but syne he was an honest man, though he was but the heid-shepherd upo' the estate. Man, I micht hae been yer mither gien I had been auld eneugh for 's first wife, for he wad fain hae had me for 's second."
"I've a great mind to take out a warrant against you, John Findlay, otherwise called the Partan, as airt an' pairt in the stealing of the Marchioness of Lossie's pleasure-boat," said the factor. "And for you, Mistress Findlay, I would have you just please to remember that this house — as far, at least, as you are concerned — is mine, although I am but the factor, and not the marquis; and if you don't keep that unruly tongue of yours a little quieter in your head, I'll set you in the street the next quarter-day but one, as sure's ever you gutted a herring; and
