Malcolm felt considerably refreshed after his tussle with the mare and his victory over her, and much enjoyed his ride of ten miles. It was a cool autumn afternoon. A few of the fields were being reaped, one or two were crowded with stooks, while many crops of oats yet waved and rustled in various stages of vanishing green. On all sides kine were lowing; overhead, rooks were cawing; the sun was nearing the west, and in the hollows a thin mist came steaming up. Malcolm had never in his life been so far from the coast before: his road led southwards into the heart of the country.
The father of the late proprietor of Kirkbyres had married the heiress of Gersefell, an estate which marched with his own, and was double its size, whence the lairdship was sometimes spoken of by the one name, sometimes by the other. The combined properties thus inherited by the late Mr Stewart were of sufficient extent to justify him, although a plain man, in becoming a suitor for the hand of the beautiful daughter of a needy baronet in the neighbourhood —with the already somewhat tarnished condition of whose reputation, having come into little contact with the world in which she moved, he was unacquainted. Quite unexpectedly she also, some years after their marriage, brought him a property of considerable extent, a fact which doubtless had its share in the birth and nourishment of her consuming desire to get the estates into her own management.
Towards the end of his journey, Malcolm came upon a bare moorland waste, on the long ascent of a low hill,—very desolate, with not a tree or house within sight for two miles. A ditch, half full of dark water, bordered each side of the road, which went straight as a rod through a black peat moss lying cheerless and dreary on all sides—hardly less so where the sun gleamed from the surface of some stagnant pool filling a hole whence peats had been dug, or where a patch of cotton-grass waved white and lonely in the midst of the waste expanse. At length, when he reached the top of the ridge, he saw the house of Kirkbyres below him; and, with a small modern lodge near by, a wooden gate showed the entrance to its grounds. Between the gate and the house he passed through a young plantation of larches and other firs for a quarter of a mile, and so came to an old wall with an iron gate in the middle of it, within which the old house, a gaunt meagre building—a bare house in fact, relieved only by four small turrets or bartizans, one at each corner—lifted its grey walls, pointed gables, and steep roof high into the pale blue air. He rode round the outer wall, seeking a back entrance, and arrived at a farm yard, where a boy took his horse. Finding the kitchen door open, he entered, and having delivered his letter to a servant girl, sat down to wait the possible answer.
In a few minutes she returned and requested him to follow her. This was more than he had calculated upon, but he obeyed at once. The girl led him along a dark passage, and up a winding stone-stair, much worn, to a room richly furnished, and older-fashioned, he thought, than any room he had yet seen in Lossie House.
On a settee, with her back to a window, sat Mrs Stewart, a lady tall and slender, with well-poised, easy carriage, and a motion that might have suggested the lithe grace of a leopard. She greeted him with a bend of the head and a smile, which, even in the twilight and her own shadow, showed a gleam of ivory, and spoke to him in a hard sweet voice, wherein an ear more experienced than Malcolm’s might have detected an accustomed intent to please. Although he knew nothing of the so-called world, and hence could recognize neither the Parisian air of her dress nor the indications of familiarity with fashionable life prominent enough in her bearing, he yet could not fail to be at least aware of the contrast between her appearance and her surroundings. Yet less could the far stronger contrast escape him, between the picture in his own mind of the mother of the mad laird, and the woman before him; he could not by any effort cause the two to coalesce.
“You have had a long ride, Mr MacPhail,” she said; “you must be tired.”
“What wad tire me, mem?” returned Malcolm. “It’s a fine caller evenin’, an’ I hed ane o’ the marquis’s best mears to carry me.”
“You’ll take a glass of wine, anyhow,” said Mrs Stewart. “Will you oblige me by ringing the bell?”
“No, I thank ye, mem. The mear wad be better o’ a mou’fu’ o’ meal an’ watter, but I want naething mysel’.”
A shadow passed over the lady’s face. She rose and rang the bell, then sat in silence until it was answered.