In an ancient and delightful garden, where glimpses of the loch below gleamed through a mass of summer foliage, and the gray castle walls looked down on smooth, green glades, the Baron slowly paced the shaven turf. But he did not pace it quite alone, for by his side moved a graceful figure in a wide, sun-shading hat and a frock entirely irresistible. Beneath the hat, by bending a little down, you could have seen the dark liquid eyes and tender lips of Eva Gallosh. And the Baron frequently bent down.
“I am proud of everyzing zat I find in my home,” said the Baron gallantly.
The lady's color rose, but not apparently in anger.
“Ach, here is a pretty leetle seat!” he exclaimed in a tone of pleased discovery, just as though he had not been leading her insidiously towards it ever since they, came into the garden.
It was, indeed, a most shady and secluded bench, an ideal seat for any gallant young Baron who had left his Baroness sufficiently far away. He glanced down complacently upon his brawny knees, displayed (he could not but think) to great advantage beneath his kilt and sporran, and then with a tenderer complacency, turned his gaze upon his fair companion.
“You say you like me in ze tartan?” he murmured.
“I adore everything Highland! Oh, Lord Tulliwuddle, how fortunate you are!”
Nature had gifted Miss Gallosh with a generous share of romantic sentiment. It was she who had egged on her father to rent this Highland castle for the summer, instead of chartering a yacht as he had done for the past few years; and ever since they had come here that sentiment had grown, till she was ready to don the white cockade and plot a new Jacobite uprising. Then, while her heart was in this inspired condition, a noble young chief had stepped in to complete the story. No wonder her dark eyes burned.
“What attachment you must feel for each stone of the Castle!” she continued in a rapt voice. “How your heart must beat to remember that your great-grandfather—wasn't his name Fergus?”
“Fergus: yes,” said the Baron, blindly but promptly.
“No, no; it was Ian, of course.”
“Ach, so! Ian he vas.”
“You were thinking of his father,” she smiled.
“Yes, his fazzer.”
She reflected sagely.
“I am afraid I get my facts mixed up some times. Ian—ah, Reginald came before him—not Fergus!”
“Reginald—oh yes, so he did!”
She looked a trifle disappointed.
“If I were you I should know them all by heart,” said she.
“I vill learn zem. Oh yes, I most not make soch mistakes.”
Indeed he registered a very sincere vow to study his family history that afternoon.
“What was I saying? Oh yes—about your brave great-grandfather. Do you know, Lord Tulliwuddle, I want to ask you a strange favor? You won't think it very odd of me?”
“Odd? Never! Already it is granted.”
“I want to hear from your own lips—from the lips of an actual Lord Tulliwuddle—the story of your ancestor Ian's exploit.”
With beseeching eyes and a face flushed with a sense of her presumption, she uttered this request in a voice that tore the Baron with conflicting emotions.
“Vich exploit do you mean?” he asked in a kindly voice but with a troubled eye.
“You must know! When he defended the pass, of course.”
“Ach, so!”
The Baron looked at her, and though he boasted of no such inventive gifts as his friend Bunker, his ardent heart bade him rather commit himself to perdition than refuse.
“You will tell it to me?”
“I vill!”
Making as much as possible of the raconteur's privileges of clearing his throat, settling himself into good position, and gazing dreamily at the tree-tops for inspiration, he began in a slow, measured voice—
“In ze pass he stood. Zen gomed his enemies. He fired his gon and shooted some dead. Zen did zey run avay. Zat vas vat happened.”
When he ventured to meet her candid gaze after thus lamely libelling his forefather, he was horrified to observe that she had already recoiled some feet away from him, and seemed still to be in the act of recoiling.
“It would have been kinder to tell me at once that I had asked too much!” she exclaimed in a voice affected by several emotions. “I only wanted to hear you repeat his death-cry as his foes slew him, so that it might always seem more real to me. And you snub me like this!”
The Baron threw himself upon one knee.
“Forgive me! I did jost lose mine head mit your eyes looking so at me! I get confused, you are so lovely! I did not mean to snob!”
In the ardor of his penitence he discovered himself holding her hand; she no longer seemed to be recoiling; and Heaven knows what might have happened next if an ostentatious sound of whistling had not come to their rescue.
“Bot you vill forgive?” he whispered, as they sprang up from their shady seat.
“Ye-es,” she answered, just as the serene glance of Count Bunker fell humorously upon them.
“You seem to have been plucking flowers, Tulliwuddle,” he observed.
“Flowers? Oh, no.”
The Count glanced pointedly at his soiled knee.
“Indeed!” said he. “Don't I see traces of a flower-bed?”
“I think I should go in,” murmured Eva, and she was gone before the Count had time to frame a compensating speech.
His friend Tulliwuddle looked at him with marked displeasure, yet seemed to find some difficulty in adequately expressing it.
“I do not care for vat you said,” he remarked stiffly. “Nor for ze look now on your face.”
“Baron,” said the Count imperturbably, “what did you tell me the Wraith said to you—something about 'Beware of the ladies,' wasn't it?”
“You do not onderstand. Ze ghost” (he found some difficulty in pronouncing the spirit's chosen name) “did soppose naturally zat I vas ze real Lord Tollyvoddle, who is, as you have told me yourself, Bonker, somezing of a fast fish. Ze varning vas to him obviously, so you should not turn it upon me.”
Bunker opened his eyes.
“A deuced ingenious argument,” he commented. “It wouldn't have occurred to me if you hadn't explained. Then you claim the privilege of wooing whom you wish?”
“Wooing! You forget zat I am married, Bonker.”
“Oh no, I remember perfectly.”
His tone disturbed the Baron. Taking the Count's arm, he said to him with moving earnestness—
“Have I not told you how constant I am—like ze magnet and ze pole?”
“I have heard you employ the simile.”
“Ach, bot it is true! I am inside my heart so constant as it is possible! But I now represent Tollyvoddle, and for his sake most try to do my best.”
Again Count Bunker glanced at his knee.
“And that is your best, then?”
“Listen, Bonker, and try to onderstand—not jost to make jokes. It appears to me zat Miss Gallosh vill make a good vife to Tollyvoddle. She is so fair, so amiable, and so rich. Could he do better? Should I not lay ze foundations of a happy marriage mit her? Soppose ve do get her instead of Miss Maddison, eh?”
His artful eloquence seemed to impress his friend, for he smiled thoughtfully and did not reply at once. More persuasively than ever the Baron continued—
“I do believe mit patience and mit—er—mit kindness, Bonker, I might persuade Miss Gallosh to listen to ze proposal of Tollyvoddle. And vould it not be better far to get him a lady of his own people, and not a stranger from America? Ve vill not like Miss Maddison, I feel sure. Vy troble mit her—eh, Bonker?”
“But don't you think, Baron, that we ought to give Tulliwuddle his choice? He may prefer an American heiress to a Scottish.”
“Not if he sees Eva Gallosh!”
Again the Count gently raised his eyebrows in a way that the Baron could not help considering unsuitable to the occasion.
“On the other hand, Baron, Miss Maddison will probably have five or ten times as much money as Miss Gallosh. In arranging a marriage for another man, one must attend to such trifles as a few million dollars more or less.”
For the moment the Baron was silenced, but evidently not convinced.
“Supposing I were to call upon the Maddisons as your envoy?” suggested Bunker, who, to tell the truth, had already begun to tire of a life of luxurious inaction.
“Pairhaps in a few days we might gonsider it.”
“We have been here for a week already.”
“Ven vould you call?”
“To-morrow, for instance.”
The Baron frowned; but argument was difficult.
“You only jost vill go to see?”
“And report to you.”
“And suppose she is ogly—or not so nice—or so on——zen vill I not see her, eh?”
“But suppose she is tolerable?”
“Zen vill ve give him a choice, and I vill continue to be polite to Miss Gallosh. Ah, Bonker, she is so nice! He vill not like Miss Maddison so vell! Himmel, I do admire her!”
The Baron's eyes shone with reminiscent affection.
“To how many poles is the magnet usually constant?” inquired the Count with a serious air.
The Baron smiled a little foolishly, and then, with a confidential air, replied—
“Ach, Bonker, marriage is blessed and it is happy, and it is everyzing that my heart desires; only I jost sometimes vish it vas not qvite—qvite so uninterruptable!”
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