Cleek recognized them at once. Here were the chief actors in the little comedy of what was at present a girl's imaginings, and which he sincerely hoped would never become anything else. What a hard face the man had! What a trap-like mouth! What a merciless, seeking eye! And the woman with him--all soft curves and roundness, with those luminous eyes of southern Italy looking out at him from the frame of her pale, ivory-tinted face, with already a hint of coquetry in their velvet depths for any well-dressed, well-apportioned specimen of mankind. Beside the something rugged and clear-cut in Maud Duggan's personality--the something Scotch and enduring which is the birthright of those born beyond the boundary-line of England--this woman's pale suavity fell into a kittenish foolishness, became instantly trivial and beyond recognizance.
At sound of their approach Maud Duggan turned hurriedly and waved a hand toward Cleek.
"Father," said she in her low, level-toned voice, "this is Mr. Deland of whom I told you last night. Mr. Deland is engaged to Ailsa Lorne, my old school friend at the convent in Paris--and he has come down for the fishing, and did me the honour to call upon me the very first thing. I have asked him to stay and lunch with us."
Sir Andrew bowed stiffly and then extended a blue-veined and tremulous hand. Cleek took it and bent over it like a courtier.
"Very pleased indeed to see you, Mr. Deland," said Sir Andrew, in a deep, full-throated voice that spoke more of the man he had been than of the man he was now. "You are welcome to our hospitality now and at any other time."
"I am deeply grateful, sir, and during my short stay in these parts I shall hope to make fuller acquaintance of you and your family--your wife? How do you do, Lady Paula? I am enamoured of your charming surroundings and your glorious home. May I be permitted to congratulate you upon both?"
A fleet look flashed from her eyes, a swift warmth of friendship for this stranger who made her so much _one_ of them who had never yet been made one by the family themselves.
"It is beautiful, isn't it?" Smooth as velvet her voice, warm, subtle, alluring as the country that gave her birth. "I love it--_how_ I love it! Even though I am not of the Scotch blood, yet have I that birthright of my nation--home-love. Maud, dear, take Mr. Deland round, won't you? I have still some matters to arrange with your father, so you must do the honours in my stead. And when Sir Andrew and I have finished with our little _personal_ matters"--she smiled suddenly, showing a flash of snowy teeth between the warm red lips which Time had not yet cooled to the more even tenor of England's blood--"then we will join you upon the terrace. And be sure and show Mr. Deland the electric-lighting plant, dear. He will be interested."