When the others had gone yawning to bed, he returned and sat at the
window for a little, smoking hard and puzzling out the knots which
confronted him. He had a dismal anticipation of failure. Not
defeat--that was a little matter; but an abject show of incompetence.
His feelings pulled him hither and thither. He could not utter moral
platitudes to checkmate his opponent's rhetoric, for, after all, he was
honest; nor could he fill the part of the cold critic of hazy sentiment;
gladly though he would have done it, he feared the reproach in girlish
eyes. This good man was on the horns of a dilemma. Love and habit, a
generous passion and a keen intellect dragged him alternately to their
side, and as a second sign of weakness the unwilling scribe has to
record that his conclusion as he went to bed was to let things drift--to
take his chance.
CHAPTER IX
THE EPISODES OF A DAY
It is painful to record it, but when the Glenavelin party arrived at
noon of the next day it was only to find the house deserted. Lady
Manorwater, accustomed to the vagaries of her nephew, led the guests
over the place and found to her horror that it seemed undwelt in. The
hall was in order, and the tart and rosy lairds of Etterick looked down
from their Raeburn canvases on certain signs of habitation; but the
drawing-rooms were dingy with coverings and all the large rooms were in
the same tidy disarray.
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