Sweetheart looked at Hugh John with the far-away gentle compassion which always drove that matter-of-fact warrior wild.
"All girls are the same," he asserted insultingly, "they always get thinking they are going to die right off, if only their little finger aches!"
"You'll be sorry!" said Sweetheart, warningly.
"Oh, will I?" said Hugh John, truculently, "isn't what I say true, Toady Lion?"
But Toady Lion was sitting upon a buffet, in the character of Morris upon his portmanteau. He was shaking and chattering with such exaggerated terror that Maid Margaret, wrapped in a dust-sheet for a disguise and armed with the kitchen poker, could not rob him for very laughter. So neither of them paid any heed.
"You'll be sorry for speaking like that about Die Vernon," Sweetheart went on; "I've looked and I know. She was a true heroine. And she is worth a whole pack of your heroes any day."
"And, indeed, that's not saying much!" said Hugh John, who also had his sorrows. "But at any rate that was no proper place to break off a story. And I'll tell father so. Let's tease to have some more. It's a wet day, and we can't do anything else!"
"Oh, yes--let's!" said Sweetheart. "Stop all that, Toady Lion, and you, Maid Margaret. We are going to ask for the second tale from _Rob Roy!_"
"Well," grumbled Hugh John, "I hope that there will be more about Rob Roy in it this time. It's not too soon."
And Sweetheart only continued to regard him with the same quiet but irritating smile, and nodded her head as who would say, "Those who live the longest see the most!"
BUT it became more and more evident that Frank's time at Osbaldistone Hall was growing short. A certain travelling merchant, a friend and countryman of Andrew Fairservice, the Osbaldistone gardener, brought news from London of how Frank's character had been attacked there in the matter of Morris, and that in the high court of Parliament itself.
Moreover, Frank felt that he could not much longer remain in the same house with Miss Vernon. His love for her daily increased. Yet she told him plainly that she could and would only be a friend to him. He must ask her no questions, however deep the mysteries which encircled her might seem. One day he found a man's glove lying on the library table. On another occasion, after Rashleigh's departure for London, he distinguished two shadows on the windows of the library while he was patrolling the garden after dark.