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Nevis, "it will not be for to-day. She is leaving within the hour for Beem-Tay in her motor-car." "Oh, then I shall follow her to Beem-Tay." "If you can do that," said Mrs. Nevis, "I will give you a line to my sister. Maybe she could help you. She's the housekeeper at Beem-Tay Miss MacNish is her name." And she added as if by an after-thought. "We are twins."
McTavish did not come that day, but she learned indirectly that he had taken rooms at the McTavish Arms in Beem-Tay village, and from Mr. Traquair, manager of the local branch of the Bank of Scotland, that he was taking steps to hire for the season the forest of Clackmanness, a splendid sporting estate that marched with her own lands. Mr.
When she tired of her castle at Beem-Tay she could hop into her motor-car and fly down the Great North Road to her castle at Brig O'Dread. This was a fifty-mile run, and from any part of the road she could see land that belonged to her forest, farm, and moor.
Halfway she met the car. "McDonald," she cried, "can you make Beem-Tay in the hour?" "It's fifty miles," said the driver, doubtfully. "Can you make it?" "The road " he began. "I know the road," she said impatiently; "it's all twisty-wisty. Can you make it?" "I'm a married man," said he. "Ten pounds sterling if you make it." "And if we smash and are kilt?"
All in a burst then, half laughing, half in a grave kind of excitement, she told her old friend how she had played housekeeper first at Brig O'Dread and later at Beem-Tay. And how, on the latter occasion, McTavish had displayed his admiration so openly that there could be but the one climax.
She sank back luxuriously, sighed, and began to wonder how she should find McDonald his ten pounds sterling. She need not have hurried, nor thrown to the wind those ten pounds that she had somehow to raise. On arriving at Beem-Tay she had given orders that any note addressed to Miss MacNish, and presented at the gate, should be brought at once to her.
A few minutes later she heard the distant purring of his car, and a thought struck her with dismay. "What if he goes straight to Beem-Tay and presents the letter before I get there!"
He opened the throttle and the car once more shot dizzily forward. Twenty miles out of Brig O'Dread they came upon another car, bound in the same direction and also running desperately fast. They passed it in a roaring smother of dust. "McDonald," said The McTavish, "you needna run sae fast noo. Keep the lead o' yon car to Beem-Tay gate that is all."
If the air at Beem-Tay was too formal, or the keep at Brig O'Dread too gloomy, she could put up at any of her half-dozen shooting lodges, built in wild, inaccessible, wild-fowly places, and shake the dust of the world from her feet, and tread, just under heaven, upon the heather. But mixed up with all this fine estate was one other temporal trouble.
"Why, there'll be a more generous master than I in Beem-Tay and in Brig O'Dread that's all." She leaped into the car, and a minute later they were flying along the narrow, tortuous North Road like a nightmare.
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