He smiled, and for a moment his eyes softened.
"Rather well, I fancy, as she has consented some day to throw in her lot with me and marry me," he returned in a happy, low-pitched voice. "And that is why any friend of hers, you know, must be a friend of mine as well. I'd like very much to have a look at the Castle, if I might be so permitted. Architecture interests me immensely. It's a hobby of mine. And this is surely one of the grandest old stately homes that Scotland possesses!"
"Isn't it?--isn't it? I can see you have the love of Home and Race in you, too, Mr. Deland, just as I have it in me," she responded, with a little happy sigh. "And if only I had not this other trouble which hangs over me like the sword of Damocles itself, life would be a very happy thing, indeed. For when one loves and is loved----" Her voice trailed off into silence, and she stood a moment looking out of the window, eyes alight, face aglow.
"Oho!" thought Cleek, with upflung brows. "So Love finds its way even into these Highland fastnesses. First James Tavish and Lady Paula's companion (if what Mr. Fairnish said was true), and now Miss Duggan herself."
"Who is the happy man?" he said smilingly, as she sighed and turned toward him.
"How does any one know that any one loves any one else--when oneself loves?" he returned enigmatically. "Remember I, too, belong to the happy band. He lives close here, Miss Duggan?"
"Yes. Only a couple of miles away. But, alas! my father will hear nothing of him, and has even forbidden him the house."
"Certainly. Because he is poor. Father's god is Mammon, Mr. Deland. He knows and acknowledges no other. And Angus Macdonald has received very little at the hands of that god."
"But a good deal at the hands of the only God that matters, I take it," put in Cleek softly, with a smile at her. "Well, they say that Love laughs at locksmiths, and always finds a way. Time will give you your chance, Miss Duggan, and you'll have to be brave enough to take it.... There's someone coming, I think."
There _was_ someone coming, for even as Cleek spoke the door swung open and a tall, gaunt, white-haired old man, with a back like a ramrod and a face of granite, and with eyes that shone like pin-points of steel in the smooth pallor of it, came into the room, followed by a dark-eyed, dark-haired, sallow-complexioned woman with the long nose of the Italian and the brand of the true coquette stamped all over her.