When Mona appeared at the breakfast-table next morning, Rachel regarded her with critical dissatisfaction.
"I wonder you don't get tired of that dress," she said, as she poured out the tea—from the brown teapot. "It's very nice of course, and as good as new, but changes are lightsome, and one would think you would sometimes prefer to wear something more youthful-like. Pity your print's at the wash."
Mona looked out of the window.
"I have another," she said, "if you think it won't rain."
"Oh no. And besides, you can take your waterproof."
"It's not so much that I mind getting anything spoiled, as that I hate to be dressed unsuitably; but I do think it is going to be a beautiful day."
She left the room as soon as she had finished breakfast, and returned in about ten minutes.
"A gavotte in cream and gold," she said, making a low curtsey. "I hope it meets with your approval."
"My word!" said Rachel, "you do look the lady! and it's cheap stuff too. Why, I declare you would pass for a beauty if you took the trouble to dress well. It's wonderful how you become that hat!"
"Took a little trouble to dress well!" ejaculated Mona mentally. "A nice thing to say to a woman who makes dress her first aim in life!"
They walked in to Kirkstoun, and there took the coach. Mona would fain have gone outside, but Rachel wanted to point out the lions they passed on the way, and she considered that they got their "penny's worth" better inside. Fortunately there were not many passengers, and Mona succeeded in placing herself on the windward side of two fishwives.
About noon they reached St Rules, and wandered rather aimlessly through the streets, paying incidental visits to the various places of note. Rachel had about as much idea of acting the part of cicerone as she had of trimming hats, or making scones, or keeping shop, or indeed of doing anything useful; and she was in a constant state of nervous perturbation, lest some officious guide should force his services upon them, and then expect a gratuity.
The season was over and the visitors were few, so Mona's pretty gown attracted not a little attention. Simple as it was, she regretted fifty times that she had put it on; Rachel's dress would have escaped notice but for the contrast between them.
It was positively a welcome interlude when they arrived at the pastry-cook's; but at the door Rachel stood aside obsequiously, to give place to a lady who came up behind them "in her carriage;" and then gave her own order in a shamefaced undertone, as if she had no right to make use of the shop at the same moment as so distinguished a personage. Poor Mona! She thought once more of Lady Munro, and she sighed.
"The only other thing that we really need to see," said Rachel, wiping her hands on a crumpled paper bag that happened to lie beside her, "is the Castle. I'll be glad to rest my legs a bit, while you run round and look about you."
She had at least shown her good sense in reserving the Castle as a bonne bouche. Mona's irritation vanished as she stood in the enclosure and saw the velvety green turf under foot, the broad blue sky overhead, the bold outline of ruined masonry round about, and the "white horses" rifling in on the rugged coast below. She was wandering hither and thither, examining every nook and cranny, when suddenly, in an out-of-the-way corner she came upon a young man and a girl in earnest conversation. The girl started and turned her back, and Mona left them in peace.
"Surely I have seen that face before," she thought, "and not very long ago. I know! It is that silly little minx, Matilda Cookson. I hope the young man is up to no mischief."
In another moment the "silly little minx" was swept out of her mind; for, standing on a grassy knoll, laughing and talking with Rachel, she saw Dr Dudley.
An instinctive rush of surprise and pleasure, a feeling of uneasiness at the thought of what Rachel might be saying, a sense of satisfaction in her own fresh girlish gown,—all these passed through Mona's mind, as she crossed the open space in the sunshine.
"Well," said Dudley, as she joined them, "this can give a point or two even to Castle Maclean."
"Do you think so?" she responded gravely. "That is high praise."
He laughed. "Have you seen that gruesome dungeon?"
"Not properly. I am on my way to it now."
He turned to walk with her, and they leant over the railing looking down on the blackness below. A few feet from the top of the dungeon a magnificent hart's-tongue fern sprang from a crevice, and curled its delicate, pale-green fronds over the dank, dark stone.
"How lovely!" said Mona.
"Yes," he said. "And it is not only the force of contrast. Its gloomy surroundings really do make it more beautiful."
"Yes," said Mona relentlessly; "but it is not what Nature meant it to be."
"True," he replied. "Yet who would wish it transplanted!"
Presently he turned away, and looked over the rough blue sea.
"This place depresses me unspeakably," he said. "It reminds me of a book of 'martyr stories' I had when I was a child. I have a mental picture now of a family sitting round a blazing fire, and saying in awestruck whispers, 'It's no' sae cheery as this the nicht i' the sea tower by St Rules.' What appalling ideas of history they give us when we are children!" And he added half absently—
"'Sitzt das kleine Menschenkind
An dem Ocean der Zeit,
Schöpft mit seiner kleinen Hand
Tropfen aus der Ewigkeit.'"
Mona looked up with sparkling eyes and made answer—
"'Schöpfte nicht das kleine Menschenkind
Tropfen aus dem Ocean der Zeit,
Was geschieht verwehte wie der Wind
In den Abgrund öder Ewigkeit.'"
"Go on, go on," she said, regardless of his unconcealed surprise, "the best thought comes last." So he took up the strain again:—
"'Tropfen aus dem Ocean der Zeit
Schöpft das Mennchenkind mit kleiner Hand.
Spiegelt doch, dem Lichte zugewandt,
Sich darin die ganze Ewigkeit.'"
"I don't know," he said moodily. "There was precious little of Eternity in the drops that were doled out to me."
"Not then," said Mona; "but when you were old enough to turn them to the light, you could see the eternal even there."
His face relaxed into a smile. This girl was like an outlying part of his own mind.
They strolled slowly back to Rachel.
"Do you enjoy sight-seeing?" he asked.
"The question is too big. Cut it down."
"Nay, I will judge for myself,—if you are not too tired to turn back to the town."
"Not a bit."
When Rachel heard of the proposal, she rose to her feet, with considerable help from Mona and from a stout umbrella. She would fain have "rested her legs" a little longer, and the necessity of acting the part of chaperon never so much as crossed her mind; but the honour of Dr Dudley's escort through the streets of St Rules was not to be lightly foregone.
The first half-hour brought considerably more pain than pleasure to Mona. She was straining every nerve to draw out the best side of Rachel; and this, under the circumstances, was no easy task.
Rachel's manner was often simple, natural, and even admirable, when she was speaking to her inferiors; but the society of any one whom she chose to consider her superior was sure to draw out her innate vulgarity. Mona understood Dr Dudley well enough to know that he had no regal disregard for what are known as "appearances," and she suffered more for him than for herself.
It did not occur to her that Rachel was acting very effectively the part of the damp, black wall, which was throwing the dainty fern into more brilliant relief.
"It is all his own doing," sho thought indignantly. "Why has he brought this upon himself and me? And it will fall upon me to keep Rachel from talking about it for the next week."
Fortunately, though Rachel trudged about gallantly to the last, she soon became too tired to talk, and then Mona gave herself up to the enjoyment of the hour. Either Dr Dudley knew St Rules by heart, or he possessed a magnetic power of alighting on the things that were worth seeing. Curious manuscripts and half-effaced inscriptions; stained-glass windows and fine bits of carving; forgotten paintings, and quaint old vergers and janitors who had become a part of the buildings in which they had grown old;—all served in turn as the text for his brilliant talk. He might well say that talking was his Verderben.
Finally they wandered again through the ruins of the cathedral.
"'Pull down the nests and the rooks will fly away!'" quoted Dudley rather bitterly. "Here at least we have the other side of the 'martyr stories.'"
"I think sight-seeing is simply delightful," said Mona, as he stowed them into the coach; "but one wants special eyes to do it with."
"Everything becomes more interesting when seen 'through a temperament,'" he said. "I am glad if mine has served as a makeshift."
"She won't spot that reference," he thought to himself.
That evening all three made reflections about the day's outing.
"It came off wonderfully well, considering that I went in search of it," thought Dudley. "I fully expected it to be a dead failure. She must have met the draper accidentally."
"He is very gentlemanly and amazingly clever," thought Rachel; "and he seemed as pleased at the meeting as any of us. But how my legs do ache!"
"I'll no more of this masquerading!" thought Mona. "I will take the first opportunity of asking Rachel's permission to tell him the whole truth. Perhaps he will take it all as a matter of course."
But when she went up to dinner the next day, Rachel calmly informed her that Dr Dudley had gone. "He has just walked up to the station with a bag in his hand," she said, "and Bill had a lot of luggage on a hurley. I think it's a queer sort of thing that he didn't look in and say good-bye, after we were all so friendly-like yesterday."
Mona smiled a little drearily.
"He might well say 'so long,'" she said to herself, an hour later, as she sat on the battlements of Castle Maclean. "Looked at in the abstract, as a period of time, three months is a pretty fair sample of the commodity!"
Thus does, the feminine mind, while striving to grasp the abstract, fall back inevitably into the concrete!
"As a man," said Mona, "he is not a patch upon the Sahib; but I never had such a playfellow in my life!”