"Good-bye, dearest! We're just off. I envy you. You happy, happy girl! I am sure you will have such a good time. What a man! As natural as nature! I see, by the insular paper that your islanders adore him.

"Hope you found your father better. Another wonderful man! Such an original type, too! Good-bye, my dearest dear_, ALMA.

"_P.S. Have missed you so much, darling! Castle Raa wasn't the same place without you--I assure you it wasn't_."

While I was turning this letter over in my hand, wondering what the beautiful fiend had meant by it, my maid, who was standing by, was visibly burning with a desire to know its contents and give me the benefit of her own interpretation.

I told her in general what Alma had said and she burst into little screams of indignation.

"Well, the huzzy! The wicked huzzy! That's all she is, my lady, begging your pardon, and there's no other name for her. Arranged a month ago, indeed! It was never thought of until last night after Mr. Conrad's telegram came."

"Then what does it mean?"

"I can tell your ladyship what it means, if you'll promise not to fly out at me again. It means that Madame wants to stand in your shoes, and wouldn't mind going through the divorce court to do so. And seeing that you can't be tempted to divorce your husband because you are a Catholic, she thinks your husband, who isn't, might be tempted to divorce you. So she's setting a trap for you, and she expects you to fall into it while she's away, and if you do... ."

"Impossible!"

"Oh, trust _me_, your ladyship. I haven't been keeping my ears closed while your ladyship has been away, and if that chatterbox of a maid of hers hadn't been such a fool I suppose she would have been left behind to watch. But there's somebody else in the house who thinks she has a grievance against you, and if listening at keyholes will do anything ... Hush!"

Price stopped suddenly with her finger to her lip, and then going on tiptoe to the door she opened it with a jerk, when the little housekeeper was to be seen rising to an upright position while pretending that she had slipped.

"I only came to ask if her ladyship had lunched?" she said.

I answered that I had not, and then told her (so as to give her no further excuse for hanging about me) that in future she was to take her orders from Price--an announcement which caused my maid to stand several inches taller in her shoes, and sent the housekeeper hopping downstairs with her beak in the air like an injured cockatoo.

All the afternoon I was in a state of the utmost agitation, sometimes wondering what Martin would think of the bad manners of my husband, who after inviting him had gone away just as he was about to arrive; sometimes asking myself, with a quiver of shame, if he would imagine that this was a scheme of my own contriving; but oftenest remembering my resolution of renunciation and thinking of the much fiercer fight that was before me now that I had to receive and part with him alone.

More than once I had half a mind to telegraph to Martin putting him off, and though I told myself that to do so would not be renunciation but merely flight from temptation, I always knew at the bottom of my heart that I really wanted him to come.

Nevertheless I vowed to my very soul that I should be strong--strong in every word and look--and if Alma was daring me I should defy her, and she would see that I should neither yield nor run away.

Thus I entrenched myself at last in a sort of bright strong faith in my power to resist temptation. But I must leave it to those who know better than I the way to read a woman's heart to say how it came to pass that towards five o'clock, when I heard the sound of wheels and going on to my balcony saw a jaunting-car at the front entrance, and then opening my door heard Martin's great voice in the hall, I flew downstairs--literally flew--in my eagerness to welcome him.

There he was in his brown Harris tweeds and soft slouch hat with such an atmosphere of health and sweep of winds about him as almost took away my breath.

"Helloa!" he cried, and I am sure his eyes brightened at the sight of me for they were like the sea when the sun shines on it.

"You're better, aren't you?" he said. "No need to ask that, though--the colour in your face is wonderful."

In spite of my resolution, and the attempt I made to show him only a kind of glad seriousness, I could not help it if I blushed. Also I could not help it if, while going upstairs and telling him what had happened to the house-party, I said he was doomed to the disappointment of having nobody except myself for company, and then, woman-like, waited eagerly for what he would say.

"So they're all gone except yourself, are they?" he said.

"I'm afraid they are," I answered.

"Well, if it had been the other way about, and you had gone and they had stayed, by the stars of God, I _should_ have been disappointed. But things being as they are, we'll muddle through, shan't we?"

Not all the vows in the world could prevent me from finding that answer delightful, and when, on entering my boudoir, he said:

"Sorry to miss Madame though. I wanted a word with that lady before I went down to the Antarctic," I could not resist the mischievous impulse to show him Alma's letter.

While he read it his bright face darkened (for all the world like a jeweller's window when the shutter comes down on it), and when he had finished it he said once more:

"I hate that woman! She's like a snake. I'd like to put my foot on it."

And then--

"She may run away as much as she likes, but I _will_ yet, you go bail, I will."

He was covered with dust and wanted to wash, so I rang for a maid, who told me that Mr. and Mrs. Eastcliff's rooms had been prepared for Mr.

Conrad. This announcement (though I tried to seem unmoved) overwhelmed me with confusion, seeing that the rooms in question almost communicated with my own. But Martin only laughed and said:

"Stunning! We'll live in this wing of the house and leave the rest of the old barracks to the cats, should we?"

I was tingling with joy, but all the same I knew that a grim battle was before me.

SIXTY-FOURTH CHAPTER

By the time he returned from his room I had tea served in my boudoir, and while we sat facing the open door to the balcony he told me about his visit to his old school; how at the dinner on the previous night the Principal had proposed his health, and after the lads had sung "Forty Years On" he had told them yarns about his late expedition until they made the long hiss of indrawn breath which is peculiar to boys when they are excited; how they had followed him to his bedroom as if he had been the Pied Piper of Hamelin and questioned him and clambered over him until driven off by the house-master; and how, finally, before he was out of bed this morning the smallest scholar in the junior house, a tiny little cherub with the face of his mother, had come knocking at his door to ask if he wanted a cabin boy.

Martin laughed as if he had been a boy himself (which he always was and always will be) while telling me these stories, and I laughed too, though with a certain tremor, for I was constantly remembering my resolution and feeling afraid to be too happy.

After tea we went out on to the balcony, and leaned side by side over the crumbling stone balustrade to look at the lovely landscape--loveliest when the sun is setting on it--with the flower-garden below and the headland beyond, covered with heather and gorse and with a winding white path lying over it like the lash of a whip until it dipped down to the sea.

"It's a beautiful old world, though, isn't it?" said Martin.

"Isn't it?" I answered, and we looked into each other's eyes and smiled.

Then we heard the light _shsh_ of a garden hose, and looking down saw an old man watering the geraniums.

"Sakes alive! It's Tommy the Mate," cried Martin, and leaving me on the balcony he went leaping down the stone stairway to greet his old comrade.

"God bless me!" said Tommy. "Let me have a right look at ye. Yes, yes, it's himself, for sure."

A little gale of tender memories floated up to me from my childhood at seeing those two together again, with Martin now standing head and shoulders above the old man's Glengarry cap.

"You've been over the highways of the sea, farther than Franklin himself, they're telling me," said Tommy, and when Martin, laughing merrily, admitted that he had been farther south at all events, the old sailor said:

"Well, well! Think of that now! But wasn't I always telling the omadhauns what you'd be doing some day?"

Then with a "glime" of his "starboard eye" in my direction he said:

"You haven't got a woman yet though? ... No, I thought not. You're like myself, boy--there's not many of them sorts _in_ for you."

After that, and a more undisguised look my way, the old man talked about me, still calling me the "lil misthress" and saying they were putting a power of gold on my fingers, but he would be burning candles to the miracles of God to see the colour of it in my cheeks too.