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Horrible imaginings of deformity possessed my brain, and profaned all that was purest and dearest in my recollections of Miss Dunross. It was useless to change the subject the evil influence that was on me was too potent to be charmed away by talk.
Knowing what I now knew, the last sacrifice I could make to her would be to obey her wishes. I made the sacrifice. In an hour more Peter informed me that the ponies were at the door, and that the Master was waiting for me in the outer hall. I noticed that Mr. Dunross gave me his hand, without looking at me.
He was scrupulously, almost painfully, courteous; but there was something in his manner which, for the first time in my experience, seemed designedly to keep me at a distance from him. Knowing the intimate sympathy, the perfect confidence, which existed between the father and daughter, a doubt crossed my mind whether the secret of the past night was entirely a secret to Mr. Dunross.
Still, however his detractors might malign him, they could not attempt to deny the fact that Tobias Clutterbuck was the third son of the Honourable Charles Clutterbuck, who again was the second son of the Earl of Dunross, one of the most ancient of Hibernian families. This pedigree the old soldier took care to explain to every one about him, more particularly to the sappy youths aforementioned.
Peter followed with the harp, and closed the door after him as he went out. The streak of daylight being now excluded from the room, Miss Dunross threw back her veil, and took the harp on her knee; seating herself, I observed, with her face turned away from the fire. "You will have light enough to see the cats by," she said, "without having too much light for me.
She lifted her hand not beckoning me to approach her, as before, but gently signing to me to remain where I stood. I waited feeling awe, but no fear. My heart was all hers as I looked at her. She moved; gliding from the window to the chair in which Miss Dunross sat; winding her way slowly round it, until she stood at the back.
I sat cowering by the fire and she sat waiting, with her writing-case on her lap. THE moments passed; the silence between us continued. Miss Dunross made an attempt to rouse me. "Have you decided to go back to Scotland with your friends at Lerwick?" she asked. "It is no easy matter," I replied, "to decide on leaving my friends in this house."
After making my acknowledgments to the unknown and half-seen lady, I venture to ask the inevitable question, "To whom have I the honor of speaking?" The lady answers, "I am Miss Dunross; and I hope, if you have no objection to it, to help Peter in nursing you." This, then, is the "other person" dimly alluded to by our host!
Van Brandt; and not a word dropped from her lips which implied, directly or indirectly, that I had pained or disappointed her. I could only conclude that she had something important to say in relation to herself or to me and that for reasons of her own she unwillingly abstained from giving expression to it at that time. Speaking of this, we naturally spoke also of Miss Dunross.
He listens in his subdued, courteous way; but he makes no inquiries about our relatives; he shows no interest in the arrival of the Government yacht and the Commissioner for Northern Lights. All sympathy with the doings of the outer world, all curiosity about persons of social position and notoriety, is evidently at an end in Mr. Dunross.
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