Roland had got a suitable mount from old Buckle and gone for 'a spin,' to leave, if possible, his worries and fidgets behind him, away by Radernie and as far as Carnbee, where the green hills that culminate in conical Kellie Law look down on the Firth of Forth and the dark blue German Sea; while Maude—after being down at Spens the poacher's cottage with money and sundry comforts for his starving wife and children—full of the subject of Roland's return and the approaching visit of her fiancé, Jack Elliot, had written a long, effusive, and young girl-like epistle to the latter, and was on her way to slip it into the locked letter-bag in the hall with her own hand. She had a consciousness that she was watched, and with it no desire that her correspondence should be discussed just then, as she had a nervous dread of Mr. Hawkey Sharpe, who had actually and presumptuously ventured on more than one occasion to evince some unmistakable tenderness towards her—an indiscretion, to say the least of it, of which she dared give no hint to her fiery brother; but which was the source of much disquietude to poor Maude, and of confusion and distress to her, as regarded the steward's power in the house, and made her change colour at the mere mention of his name.
And now when passing through a long and lonely wainscotted corridor, the windows of which on one side overlooked the haugh beneath the house, and which led to the great staircase, she came suddenly upon the very object of her dread, Mr. Sharpe, and hastily thrust her letter into the bosom of her dress.
Though her own mistress, with her engagement to Captain Elliot acknowledged and accepted by her brother, Maude, from the influence of circumstances, was—as stated—actually afraid lest this daring admirer should discover that she was writing to Elliot, so much did she dread the power of Sharpe and his sister, and their capacity for working mischief.
Some vague sense, or doubt, of his security in the future, and of his sister's continued favour to himself, made Mr. Sharpe thus raise his bold eyes to the daughter of the house, aware that she was almost unprotected; her maternal uncle, Sir Harry, was an old and well-nigh helpless man, and her brother had yet to run the risks of war in that land now deemed the grave of armies—the Soudan.
Apart from her beauty of mind and person—not that Mr. Hawkey Sharpe cared much about the former or was influenced thereby—the latter certainly allured him, and the helplessness referred to encouraged him in his pretensions, even when he began to suspect that there was another in the field, though he knew not yet precisely who that other was.
Mr. Sharpe's antecedents were not brilliant. He had begun life in a solicitor's office in Glasgow, but had learned more than law elsewhere; book-making, betting, the race-course, and billiards had brought him in contact with his betters in rank but equals in mischief and roguery, and from them he had acquired a certain factitious polish of manner, which he hoped now to turn to good account.
Maude Lindsay knew and believed in that which Roland struggled against knowing and believing, the precise tenor of their father's will; and in terror of precipitating matters with Sharpe and his sister, she had been compelled to temporize and submit to the more than effusive politeness of the former, whose bearing, however, she could not mistake.
In nothing, as yet, had he gone beyond those—in him, somewhat clumsy—tendernesses of incipient love-making, which might, or might not, mean anything, though Maude felt that they meant too much; and she never forgot the shock, the start, the humiliating conviction that she experienced when the necessity of regarding him as a lover was forced by necessity upon her.
Her disdain she utterly failed, at first, to conceal; but Hawkey Sharpe, whose reading had taught him, through the perusal of many low and exciting love stories, that a girl might be won in spite of her teeth, was resolved to persevere.
'Good-evening, Mr. Sharpe—what a start you gave me!' said Maude, essaying to pass him in the narrow corridor; but he contrived to bar her way.
'Pardon me for a moment,' said he submissively enough; 'I wish you would not call me Mr. Sharpe; and oh, more than all, that you would permit me to—to call you Maude!'
The latter's eyes flashed fire, soft and blue though they were. There was no mistaking the tenor of this mode of address. Hawkey Sharpe seemed to have opened the trenches at last, and Maude's first thought was:
'Has he been imbibing too much?'
'It was for your sake I let off that poacher Spens this morning,' said he in a slightly reproachful tone.
'For the sake of his wife and children, I hope, rather.'
'Oh, bother his wife and brats! what are they to me compared with the satisfaction of pleasing you?'
'Mr. Sharpe!' said Maude, drawing back a pace, and, in spite of herself, cresting up her proud little head.
'It seems so hard,' said he, affecting an air of humility, and casting down his eyes for a moment, 'that there should be such a gulf apparently between us, Miss Lindsay.'
'A gulf,' repeated Maude, not precisely knowing what to say.
'Yes—and you deepen it. If I attempt to speak to you even as a friend, you recoil from me; and in this huge, sequestered house, it seems natural that we should at least be friends.'
'If we are enemies, I know it not, Mr. Sharpe,' said Maude with some hesitation, and then attempting to cover the latter by a smile, as she knew the necessity—a knowledge which distressed and disgusted her—of temporizing, which seemed, even if for a moment, a species of treason to Jack Elliot.
On the other hand, inclination and calculations as to the future, made Sharpe admire Maude very much, and perhaps he was in love with her as much as it was in his nature to be in love with anyone beyond himself. Rejected, or even scorned, he was not a man to break his heart for any woman in the land, though it might become inspired by hatred and a longing for revenge. Yet he was prepared to make 'a bold stroke for a wife' in Maude's instance. If refused once he would try again, and even perhaps a third or a fourth time, and feel only an emotion of rage on his final rejection—so in reality heart was not so much the affair with him.
Maude attempted to pass him, but he still barred her way, and even sought, without success, to capture one of her hands.
'Open confession is good for the soul,' he resumed, in a blunt and blundering way, 'and avowals come to one's lips at times, and cannot be restrained. I have played too long with fire, or with edged tools. You must know, Miss Lindsay, that no man could be in your society much without admiring you, and admiration is but a prelude to—love.'
Fear of him, and all a quarrel with him might involve, repressed the girl's desire to laugh at this inflated little speech; but he—with all his constitutional impudence—quailed for a moment under the expression that flashed in her eyes—blue, and usually soft and sunny though they were—while she remained silent and thinking:
'What on earth will he say next?'
'Do you not understand me, Miss Lindsay?' he asked, perceiving a look of wonder gathering in her face. 'Do you not know that I love you?' he added, lowering his voice, while glancing round with quick and stealthy eyes.
'Mr. Sharpe,' said Maude, trembling, yet rising to the occasion, 'I understand what you say; but I hope you are not serious, and not insulting me.'
'Is the emotion with which you have inspired me likely to be mingled with jest, or with insult to you?'
'Oh, this is too much!' said Maude, interlacing her fingers, with difficulty restraining tears of anger and resentment, while, with a keen sense of future danger and his presumption, she felt as if there was something unreal and grotesque in the situation. Moreover, she was anxious to get her letter into the house postal bag ere the latter was taken away.
'I am deeply earnest, Miss Lindsay,' resumed Sharpe, still with great humility of tone and manner. 'My regard for you is no passing fancy. I learned to love you from the first moment I saw you.'
'Mr. Sharpe,' said Maude, gathering courage from desperation, 'I do not understand why you venture to talk in this style to me! Encouragement I have never given you, even by a glance.'
'Too well do I know that,' said he, affecting a mournful tone; 'but I hope to lead you to—to like me a little in return.'
'I don't dislike you,' said Maude, again seeking to temporize.
'And, if possible, to love me—as a man—one to whom you can entrust a future you cannot see—one whom you will one day call husband.'
He drew nearer as his voice became lower and more earnest, and Maude recoiled hastily in growing dismay, and the words 'a future you cannot see' stung her deeply.
Too well did she know that all this bold love-making was born of the humbled, fallen, and peculiar nature of her position under her ancestral rooftree, and of the ruin of her family—a ruin on which this man was rising under his sister's wing!
'I beseech you, Mr. Sharpe,' said she, 'to say no more on this subject, for more than the merest friendship there can never be between us.'
'Have you thought it over?'
'Certainly not!'
His face clouded, and his usually bold, observant, and keen gray eyes became inflamed with growing anger.
'Seriously—deliberately you refuse to accord me the slightest hope?'
'Yes.'
'You think by this bearing to humiliate me as much as a proud girl can do?'
'You pain me now by speaking thus,' she responded more gently.
'And you ruin my life!'
'I think not,' said Maude, with a little curl on her lovely lip.
'And may make that ruin a subject of jest to your brother's fine friends who are coming here in a few days—a few hours, rather, now.'
At this coarse remark Maude accorded him an inquiring stare.
'Oh, I know what young girls are,' he resumed in a half-savage, half-sullen manner. 'A rejection like mine is just the sort of thing they like to boast of.'
'You thus add insult to your profound presumption!' exclaimed Maude, quite exasperated now by the under-breeding of the style he adopted so suddenly; and, sweeping past him, she reached the entrance-hall, where the postal bag lay—a square and stately place, the stone floor of which was covered with soft matting; where in winter a great fire always blazed in the spacious stone fireplace, over which hung a single suit of armour, amid a trophy of weapons, old swords, mauls, and pikes.
She put her hand in her bosom—her letter—the letter she wished to dispose of with her own hand—was no longer there! How—where had she dropped it? She turned, looked hastily round her, and saw Mr. Hawkey Sharpe, who had evidently picked it up, descending the staircase, and he handed it to her with a slight and grave bow.
'Oh—thank you,' said Maude, her mind now full of confusion and vexation.
Quick as thought she dropped it into the postal bag after he handed it to her, but not before he had seen the address, and a dangerous gleam shot athwart his shifty eyes, and again the coarse, bold nature of the man came forth.
'So—so,' said he, through his clenched teeth. 'I find I have been mistaken in you, Miss Lindsay.'
'Mistaken, Mr. Sharpe?'
'Yes—mistaken all along.'
'I do not comprehend you.'
'Deceived by your soft, fair face and gentle eyes, I thought you unlike other girls—no coquette—no flirt—and now—now, I find——'
'What, sir?' demanded Maude impetuously.
'That you have correspondents.'
'Few, I suppose, are without them.'
'But who is he to whom you openly write—this Captain John Elliot?'
'Intolerable! How dare you ask me?' demanded Maude, her breast swelling, her cheeks, not flushed, but pale with anger, and her eyes flashing.
'A military friend of your brother's, I suppose we shall call him,' said he with an undisguised sneer.
'And a dear friend of mine,' said Maude defiantly, exasperated to find that the very discovery she wished to avoid had been made, and by this person particularly; 'but here comes my brother, and perhaps you had better make your inquiries of him,' she added, as a great sigh of mingled anger and relief escaped her on hearing Roland dismount under the porte-cochère; but, unable to face even him, distressed, humiliated, and altogether unnerved by her recent interview, all it involved, and all she had undergone, poor little Maude rushed away to seek alleviation amid a passion of tears, unseen and in the solitude of her own room.
So this was Maude's secret!
Hawkey Sharpe cared not just then to face Roland Lindsay; but with hands clenched he sent a glance of hate after the retreating figure of Maude, and withdrew in haste.
They met in future, as we shall show, even amid Roland's guests; but with a consciousness—a most humiliating and irritating one to Maude, that there was almost a secret understanding—that odious love-making between them—and known, as she thought, to themselves alone.