Eddy had gone, and a silence, that seemed to radiate round the house like a special atmosphere, fell upon Rosmore. Winter, which had been only threatening, dropped all at once in torrents of sweeping rain and wild winds that shook the house. It requires a lively spirit at any time to stand up against the pale downpour which falls in sheets from the colourless sky between the large dull windows and the cowering trees, and shuts out every other prospect: but when there is misery within, the climax afforded by that dismal monotony without is appalling. The two girls scarcely knew what it was; it was the re-action after the ball, which had been such a great thing to look forward to, and now was over, and everything connected with it: no more preparations or consultations—everything swept away and ended. It was the departure of everybody, even “the boys,” as Marion called them, Archie and Eddy, who had been the constant companions of “the girls” in all their walks and talks: quite enough to account for the dismal dullness which fell over these two unfortunate young women like a pall. Rosamond had not gone with her brother, partly because she was under her father’s orders to remain, and partly because a great fear of some discovery, she did not know what, which might be made after Eddy was gone, and for which he would need an advocate and champion on the spot, was in her mind. Eddy had so often wanted a defender; there had been so often discoveries made after he had got himself out of reach of censure; and it was so much more likely in this particular matter, which was disturbing the house, whatever it might be, that it was Eddy and not Archie who was to blame. Rosamond thought, with a little contempt of Archie, that it was so little likely he would be to blame. He had not spirit enough to go wrong. He was so tame, so unaccustomed to do anything—and to do something, even if it were wrong, seemed so much better than the nullity of such a limited life. It seemed to Rosamond that Eddy, who was always in scrapes, always doing something, and mostly wrong things, was twenty times more interesting than the other, but far more likely to be the author of this trouble which hung so heavy on the house than Archie was. It seemed to the experienced sister that something was sure to happen in a day or two to prove this; to bring back Archie and place her in her accustomed position as her brother’s defender. That anticipation, and a deep knowledge of the dreariness of the London house, all shut up and dusty, with the dreadful ministrations of the charwoman, and the gloom of the closed rooms from which she could not escape to any cheerfulness of a club, kept her in Rosmore, though she was exceedingly tired of it and of the society of Marion, now her chief companion. They were as unlike each other as girls could be. Rosamond’s aspirations were not perhaps very lofty, but that hope of departing from all the conventionality (as she thought) of life, and setting up with Mabel Leighton in lodgings like two young men, to work together at whatever fantasy might be uppermost, was an opening at least to the imagination which Marion’s limited commonplace had no conception of. Marion thought of the glories of the coming spring, of going to Court and the dress she should wear, and the suitors who would come to her feet. That duke!—she had not made acquaintance with any dukes, and wondered whether there was one young enough and free, so as to realize Eddy’s prophecy. She did not even know that all that information could be acquired from Debrett, nor was there a Debrett in the house, had she been aware of its qualities. The duke was a sort of Prince Charming,—always possible. If it could only come about by any combination of fortune that Eddy should turn out to be one! but that was a contingency which Marion knew to be impossible, and upon which she did not suffer herself to dwell.

It was in reality a sign of her simplicity and unsophisticated mind that she gave herself up so unhesitatingly to this dream. Rosamond knew a great deal better: she knew for one thing that there was no duke in the market—a fact hidden from poor Marion—and that suitors do not precipitate themselves at the feet even of a rich young woman in society, unless she is a fabulously rich young woman. Rosamond was also much too experienced to imagine for a moment, as the simple Marion did, that whatever Archie had done he would be summarily disinherited and all his advantages handed over to his sister. There had been a row, Rosamond was aware, but it would pass over as rows did in families, and the son would have his natural place, and May would but be a prettyish underbred girl the more, with a good deal of money, but not that fabulous fortune which alone works miracles. Rosamond did not think very highly of Marion’s chances; and all that she thought about Archie was a hope that her father might not see him and build any plans upon him in respect to herself.

While, however, the girls, in waterproofs, took occasional walks together, not knowing how to make conversation, two creatures speaking different languages, and found time hang very heavy on their hands—indoors the elder pair also passed the days heavily, with an absence of all meaning and motive in their life, such as aggravates every trouble. It is always a difficult matter for a man who has led a busy life, full of work and its excitements, to settle down in the country, especially if he has no estate to manage,—nothing to do, as people say, but enjoy himself. And no doubt this first setting in of winter and the virtual separation from the world caused by the persistent bad weather, would have been, under any circumstances, a trial of James Rowland’s cheerfulness and patience. But enhanced as this was by the horror and shame of such a discovery—one that turned the wavering balance of disappointment and hope, sometimes swaying to one side and sometimes to the other, into an immovable bar of sharp despair and bitter rage against his only son, the unworthy and shameless boy who had left him so little in doubt as to his character and qualities—the effect was terrible. Sometimes Evelyn persuaded him to go out with her down the glistening gravel paths towards the woods, or even to the Manse and the village: for he now loathed “the view” which he had loved, and avoided that favourite peep of Clyde, as if it had a voice to taunt him with the disappointment of his hopes. The minister and his wife received them indeed with open arms, with the cordial “Come away in” of Scotch hospitality, and brewed, or rather “masked” (or perhaps Mrs. Dean, an advanced person, “infused”) the genial tea, and spread the steaming scones, which are a simple (and inexpensive) substitute for the fatted calf, gone out of fashion, for those rare guests. “Indeed, I thought we were never to see you again,” said the minister’s wife, not without a touch of offence. And when Evelyn put forward a hesitating excuse as to the bad weather, the west-country lady took her up a little sharply. “Lady Jean used never to mind. We are well used to the rain here, and it does no harm. You just put on a waterproof and you are quite safe. Indeed, I have heard people from the South say that though we have a great deal of rain, it’s very rare to find a day that you can’t go out sooner or later.”

“Mrs. Rowland will think, my dear,” said the minister, “that you are less glad to see her now than to upbraid her with not coming before.”

“That means that I am interfering with his department,” said Mrs. Dean. “I will not do that; and indeed, I have not seen you since the ball. Such a success as it was! I have seen very grand doings in the old times, when Lord Clydesdale had more heart to make a stir.”

“What was it that took away his heart?” said Rowland; “the old reason—want of money, I suppose?” It revived a little spirit in him, and the impulse of wealth to plume itself on its own advantages when he heard of this. It pleased him to think that he could do so easily without feeling it at all, what had cost Lord Clydesdale an effort which he no longer cared to take.

The Deans, husband and wife, regarded the other pair before them with that mild disdain which people in society feel for those who do not know everything that everybody knows about the families and persons who form the “world.” They were not perhaps exactly in society themselves, but they did know at least about the Clydesdale family and all that had happened to them. “It was not precisely want of money,” Mr. Dean said cautiously, “though we all know, more’s the pity, that they are not rich.”

“Oh! nonsense, Alexander,” said his wife, “as if everybody didn’t know the whole story! It might be a struggle, but they always held up their heads, and never made a poor mouth. What it was that took the heart out of the Earl was a great disappointment in his family. Young Lord Gourock was a very fine boy: you would never have thought it of him, but he just fell into the hands of some woman. That’s the great danger with young lads of family. You must surely have heard of it?”

“You forget that we have been in India, both of us, for years,” Evelyn said quickly.

“Ah! that would account for it: but even in India these things are known, among——” Mrs. Dean was about to say the right kind of people—but she remembered to have heard that Mrs. Rowland was a lady—one of the Somethings of Northamptonshire—and forbore. “At all events,” she said, “it was well known here. I wonder you have not heard the whole story from Miss Eliza. She is a very clever person at finding out, and she always knows every detail, but all in the kindest spirit. I have always had a warm heart for poor young Gourock myself. He was such a nice boy! I believe his father and Lady Jean don’t even know where he is,” she added in a lower voice.

“Oh,” said the minister, “they will easily find out where he is when he is wanted. You can always trace a man with a handle to his name.”

“When he has to come to take up the succession—which will be great comfort to his poor father!” said Mrs. Dean scornfully. “But this,” she added, “is but a melancholy kind of conversation; and your ball was just beyond everything—such luxury—and the decorations—and the band—and——”

Even Evelyn could scarcely bear any more, and Rowland did not even pretend to pay any attention; he put away the scones (though they were excellent) with a gesture that looked like disgust, and listened most impatiently to something the minister had to say about the Teinds, and the earnest need of an augmentation, and the objections of the heritors to do anything. He had a vague sense that money was wanted, and that he himself might get free if he made a large offer. “If there is anything I can do, command me,” he said. “I may not be of much use in other ways, but so far as money goes—Evelyn, don’t you think we should go before the rain comes on?”

“But you have had no tea!” said the minister’s wife, “and the sky is clearing beautifully over the hills, which is just the quarter the rain comes from. Let Mrs. Rowland finish her tea.”

“We must be going,” said Rowland, and he went out first, leaving his wife to follow. He said nothing till they had walked far along the edge of the bay, and were once more in Rosmore woods, in a path overhung with low trees, from which occasionally came a big cold drop on their faces or on their shoulders. He had put his arm within his wife’s according to his usual fashion, and half-pushed her before him in the preoccupation of his thoughts. At last he spoke. He had made little or no reply to her remarks, scarcely wishing, it seemed, to hear them as they came along.

“It will just be some vile woman that has got possession of him,” he said abruptly, “like yon young lord.”

“Oh, James, we know nothing. I don’t believe that he is guilty at all.”

“Some vile woman,” he repeated, “just like yon young lord.” It seemed to give him a sort of comfort that it was like the young lord. Is it not indeed a kind of terrible comfort always to hear of other cases worse than our own?

“I won’t repeat what I said,” said Evelyn, “but you know what I think.”

“Think!—think!” he said impatiently, “of what use is thinking? The thing’s done: it was not done without hands. It will perhaps be something in the house.”

“Something in the house!”

“Well!” he said querulously, “you need not repeat what I say. I have heard of a curse upon a house, and that nothing throve that ever was in it.” He paused with an effort, and then said with his hard laugh, “I am speaking like a fool, but people used to believe in that in the old times. What’s that fellow wanting?” he added angrily, “a man from the stables! What right has he to speak to you?”

It was Sandy the groom, who touched his cap, and stood on the edge of the path, desiring an audience. Sandy had no fear of being supposed impertinent. He had spoken to Lady Jean, wherever he had met her, with the familiarity of a respect which required no proof, and he regarded Mrs. Rowland, who had shown claims to a similar treatment, with much of the same confident and friendly feeling. Accordingly, he paid no attention to his master’s threatening looks (“The auld man was in a very ill key: he was giving it to her, het and strong, puir leddy,” was his after-comment). “It’s just auld Rankin, mem,” said Sandy, who spoke a little thick, turning over his words like a sweet morsel under his tongue, as the minister said in his prayer, “he’s awfu’ anxious just to have a word wi’ your leddyship.”

“Old Rankin!” said Evelyn surprised, “a word with me?”

“What do you want with Mrs. Rowland,” cried Rowland angrily, “do you think she has time to go after every fool in the place? You can tell your wants to me.”

“Oh, ay, sir, I could do that,” said Sandy, “but it’s no you he’s wanting, it’s the leddy,—he’s terrible keen to see the leddy. We wad be nae satisfaction to him, neither you nor me.”

“Tell him I’ll come and see him,” said Evelyn hurriedly. “You know he is a very uncommon person, James. I will just walk with you as far as the house, and then I will come back.”

“You had better go now,” he said loosing his arm. “You are getting like all the other Rosmore people, taking every crow for a dove. I can go home very well by myself.”

“But James!—”

He waved his hand to her, walking quickly away. Her company was a consolation; and then to be without her company was a relief. He had got to that restless stage.

“It’s just the gospel truth,” said Sandy, “the maister would have been nae comfort to the auld man. It’s just the leddy, the leddy, he’s been deaving us a’ with the haill day.”

“Is he ill, Sandy?”

“Na, nae waur than usual. He’s very frail, but nae waur nor usual. Hey, Janet, here’s the leddy. She’s just coming, and I had nae trouble with her ava.”

The cold drops on the trees came in a little deluge over Evelyn as she crossed the little glen under the ash tree: she was half amused in the midst of her trouble by the summons, thinking it might be a demand for some comfort, or a complaint of some inconvenience which was about to be made to her, things to which she had been accustomed in the country life of old. Rankin lay as usual with his picturesque head and beard rising from the mass of covering. He held out the large hand with which he fished in the nest beside him for puppies, and gave it to Evelyn to shake.

“I am sorry to hear you are not well,” she said.

“Oh, I’m just in my ordinary’,” said Rankin, “naething to brag of, but naething to find fault with either—just warstling on as pleases the Lord, and I dinna complain. Give the leddy a chair, Janet woman, and just go ben the house yoursel, and bring me particular word what the thermometer was last night. You can take a pencil and a bit of paper and write it down, for I’m very particular to have the figures exact.”

“Oh, you needna make any of your fuil’s errands for me,” said Janet. “I ken what you mean weel enough,” and the brisk little wife went away, carefully shutting the door behind her. What did he mean? Evelyn grew a little alarmed in spite of herself.

“I hear, mem,” said Rankin, confidentially leaning towards her out of his bed, “that you’re in some trouble at the Hoose?”

“You hear—that we’re in trouble!” cried Evelyn in the last astonishment. “If we are,” she said, “which I don’t allow, you would not expect me to come and speak of it to you.”

“Wherefore no?” said Rankin. “Do you think, madam, that because I’m held fast here, I’m no a man with sympathies, and a heart to feel for my neebours? You’ll maybe think I’m taking too much upon me, calling the like of you my neebours. But it was One greater than any of us that did that. We’re a’ neebours in the sight of God.”

“That is quite true, no doubt,” said Evelyn, with a gleam of faint amusement in the midst of her trouble, “but I don’t know—”

“Madam,” said Rankin, “I would take it very ill if ye kent something to my advantage or that would maybe save a heart-break, and keepit it to yoursel’.”

“I hope I would not do so in any circumstance,” said Evelyn.

“I think you wad not, and therefore I’m fain to speak. I’m a real observant person, and given to muckle study of my fellow-creatures. I’ve taken a great notion of you, Mistress Rowland. My opinion is that you’re no the stepmother familiar to us in fiction, but a person with a real good meaning towards your good gentleman and all belonging to him.”

“I hope so,” said Evelyn, half-amused, half-disturbed, by this strange address.

“And we’ve heard you’re in trouble up bye, and Mr. Archie, a fine quiet lad, sent out o’ the house in disgrace.”

“Mr. Rankin,” said Evelyn, “you really must excuse me for saying that any gossip about my house——”

He held up his hand, bidding her to silence, and made a gesture as of putting her back in her chair. “Whisht,” he said, “never mind that;” then bending forward, in a tone so low as to be almost a whisper: “It’s a’ lees,” he said, “it’s not true; it’s just a’ a parcel of lees.”

“What do you know about it?” cried Evelyn, greatly excited. “For God’s sake, if you know anything, tell me,” she added, forgetting her precautions in the shock. What use was there in pretending that his information was not correct? He did not ask anything: he knew.

“I will do that,” said Rankin. “There is a young gentleman at the house that is called Mr. Sawmaries, a very queer name.”

“Saumarez—yes—but he is gone.”

“Oh, he is gone? to rejoin the ither no doubt. I might have expected that.”

“What other?” cried Evelyn, in great excitement.

“There was another,” said Rankin, “but not at the house; not a person, maadam, to be presented to you—though I was muckle astonished to hear of him at the ball: but nae doubt he just slippit in, favoured by yon lad, when nobody was looking. Well, as I was saying, there was another, a shabby creature, just a bit little disreputable Jew, or something of that kind. What gave me a kind of insight into the Saumarez lad (that was a clever laddie and no an ill callant, but ill guided) was his trying to foist off this creature upon me as Maister Johnson of St. Chad’s—a mistaken man and very confused in his philology, but still, I have nae reason to doubt, a gentleman, and maybe a kind of a scholar too, in his way.”

“Johnson! yes: but I have seen him; he was asked to the ball; I never doubted—”

“Na, mem,” said Rankin, “I could swear ye doubted; but being a real lady, and no suspicious as the like of me is always, you couldna believe he was cheating. He might mean it only as a kind of a joke, ye never can tell with these callants. But, madam, this is all very indifferent and not to the purpose; what I’m wanting to tell is, that there was something going on that was no building kirks between these young men.”

Evelyn was not acquainted with the figurative language of the humble Scot, but she divined what he meant. She made a hurried gesture of entreaty that he would go on: “Well! that’s just about all I know; there was something the one wanted and the other was loathe to give. The shabby body was just full of threats, and no blate about saying them before me, a stranger; and young Saumarez, he was holding off, trying his jokes, and to take his attention with the dowgs and various devices. And syne they went out of my house in close colloquy. The wife is not a woman of much book-learning, but she has a wonderful judgment. She said to me, when she came in from showing them to the door. ‘Take you my word, John Rankin,’ says she, ‘if there’s ony mischief comes to pass, thae twa will have the wyte of it,’ which agreed entirely with my ain precognition. I wouldna say but we thought of mair vulgar crimes, being of the practical order ourselves. And I hear the trouble’s about a cheque, whether stolen or what I cannot tell. But my advice to you, maadam, as one educated person with another, is—just look for it there.”

“Eddy!” Evelyn said below her breath, “Eddy!” Long before Rankin’s speech had come to an end, her quick mind had realized the shock, felt it to the bottom of her heart, staggered out of the course of her thoughts for a moment in sheer dismay and horror; then with the sudden spring of intellectual power quickened by pain had returned to the simple question. Eddy! Eddy! who had been so sympathetic, so affectionate, such true feeling in his eyes, such real zeal for the house, so good to James, so generous about Archie. Ah! generous! then she began to think and remember. If Rankin was right, he had introduced that man on a false pretence to her house, and it had been difficult to her to realize that Eddy was really so sympathetic. And surely there were things he had said! Her head began to buzz and ache with the rapid throng of thoughts, thoughts half understood, half seen only in the hurry and rush of bewildering and confusing suggestion. The old gamekeeper went on talking, but she did not hear him, and he perceived what processes he had set in motion, and for a moment was silent too.

“There is just one thing, mem,” he said, “before you go,”—when Evelyn rose, still bewildered, wading through the chaos of her own thoughts. “The night o’ the ball—there’s aye een on the watch in a house like yours—the body Johnson disappeared as soon as the gentleman arrived that came from the bank, him that arrived in a coach all the way round the land road. There was one that saw him leave go of the leddy that was dancing with him—the nasty toad to daur to ask a leddy to dance!—and jump out of the window behind the curtain, and was never seen more. And Mr. Archie to get the wyte of it, a fine, ceevil, well-spoken young man! Na, na, we will not bide that. Just you look in that direction, Mistress Rowland, for there the true culprit’s to be found.”

“I will—I will think of what you say,” cried Evelyn, faltering. “It is a dreadful light, but if it is a light—You are proud people, you Scotch, you don’t like your own secrets to be exposed to all the world. And you don’t know all the story, Rankin, only a bit of it. Stop these people talking! you can surely do it, you who are so clever; think how you would like it. And my husband, my poor husband!”

“I feel for Maister Rowland,” said Rankin, “but a house with a score of servants a’ on the watch, how are ye to keep a thing secret? There are nae secrets in this world. If there’s a thing ye wish to keep quiet, that’s just the thing the haill countryside will jabber about. I’ll do what I can. I’ll do what I can,” he added hurriedly, “but the only thing to stop it is to bring the lad hame.”