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"I mean you've a touch of malaria; you've been working a little too hard." "He has indeed," drawled Mrs. Cardross, laying aside her novel; and, placidly ignoring Hamil's protests: "Neville, you drag him about through those dreadful swamps before he is acclimated, and you keep him up half the night talking plans and making sketches. He is too young to work like that."
No need for him to make inquiries of passing negroes; no need to ask where the House of Cardross might be found; for although he had seen it only by starlight, and the white sunshine now transformed everything under its unfamiliar glare, he remembered his way, étape by étape, from the foliated iron grille of Whitehall to the ancient cannon bedded in rusting trunnions; and from that mass of Spanish bronze, southward under the tall palms, past hedges of vermilion hibiscus and perfumed oleander, past villa after villa embowered in purple, white, and crimson flowering vines, and far away inland along the snowy road until, at the turn, a gigantic banyan tree sprawled across the sky and the lilac-odour of china-berry in bloom stole subtly through the aromatic confusion, pure, sweet, refreshing in all its exquisite integrity.
She was "no bonnie" Helen Cardross; it was just a round, rosy, sonsie face, with no features in particular, but she was pleasant to look upon, and inexpressibly pleasant to live with; for it was such a wholesome nature, so entirely free from moods, or fancies, or crochets of any kind those sad vagaries of ill-health, ill-humor, and ill-conditionedness of every sort, which are sometimes only a misfortune, caused by an unhappy natural temperament, but oftener arise from pure egotism, of which there was not an atom in Helen Cardross.
She continued to survey him with smiling intentness, and went on slowly: "Shiela Cardross; the girl here. People are quite mad about her, I assure you. My dear, every man at Palm Beach tags after her; rows of callow youths sit and gaze at her very footprints in the sand when she crosses the beach; she turns masculine heads to the verge of permanent dislocation.
Cardross lived several years after then lived to be nearly ninety. It was the far younger life young, and yet how old in suffering! which had thus suddenly and unexpectedly come to an end. The earl was found dead in his bed, in his customary attitude of repose, just as Malcolm always placed him, and left him till the morning. His eyes were wide open, so that he could not have died in his sleep.
He never could become quite accustomed to the vast scale on which Cardross undertook things. "That will make a corking preserve," he said. "What do you suppose is in there now?" "Some bears and deer, a few lynx, perhaps one or two panthers. The boar will hold their own if they can stand the summer and I'm sure they can. The alligators, no doubt, will get some of their young when they breed.
He lived at a castle called Cardross, on the beautiful banks of the river Clyde, near to where it joins the sea; and his chief amusement was to go upon the river, and down to the sea in a ship, which he kept for his pleasure. He was no longer able to sit upon his war-horse, or to lead his army to the field.
Hamil tucked her into her chair, the darky pedalled off; then the young man returned to the terrace where presently a table for two was brought and luncheon announced as Shiela Cardross appeared. Hamil displayed the healthy and undiscriminating appetite of a man who is too busy mentally and physically to notice what he eats and drinks; Shiela touched nothing except fruit.
Cardross wandered through the house for some time before he found a single servant to direct him to the person of whom he was in search. Mr. Menteith sat alone in a little room filled with guns and fishing rods, and ornamented with stag's heads, stuffed birds, and hunting relics of all sorts, which had been called, not too appropriately, the earl's "study."
Yet all the while her friend saw that she was very hard, and bent upon being hard; that, had Cardross appeared before her at that minute, she would immediately have frozen up again into the stern mother whose confidence had been betrayed, whose principles infringed, and who, though loving her son with all the strength of her heart, could also punish him with all the power of her conscience, even though her heart was breaking with sorrow the while.
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