So that was the opinion of this ripe old citizen of the world!  It ought not to have irritated me as it did.  It would be Catherine’s opinion, of course; but a dispassionate view was not to be expected from her.  I had not hitherto thought otherwise, myself; but now I experienced a perverse inclination to take the opposite side.  Was it so utterly impossible for a woman with this woman’s record to make a good wife to some man yet?  I did not admit it for an instant; he would be a lucky man who won so healthy and so good a heart; thus I argued to myself with Mrs. Lascelles in my mind, and nobody else.  But Bob Evers was not a man, I was not sure that he was out of his teens, and to think of him was to think at once with Sir John Sankey and all the rest.  Yes, yes, it would be madness and suicide in such a youth; there could be no two opinions about that; and yet I felt indignant at the mildest expression of that which I myself could not deny.

Such was my somewhat chaotic state of mind when I had fled the billiard-room in my turn, and put on my overcoat and cap to commune with myself outside.  Nobody did justice to Mrs. Lascelles; it was terribly hard to do her justice; those were perhaps the ideas that were oftenest uppermost.  I did not see how I was to be the exception and prove the rule; my brief was for Bob, and there was an end of it.  It was foolish to worry, especially on such a night.  The moon had waxed since my arrival, and now hung almost round and altogether dazzling in the little sky the mountains left us.  Yet I had the terrace all to myself; the magnificent voice of our latest celebrity had drawn everybody else in doors, or under the open drawing-room windows through which it poured out into the glorious night.  And in the vivid moonlight the very mountains seemed to have gathered about the little human hive upon their heights, to be listening to the grand rich notes that had some right to break their ancient silence.

  “If doughty deeds my lady please,
    Right soon I’ll mount my steed;
  And strong his arm, and fast his seat,
    That bears frae me the meed. 
  I’ll wear thy colours in my cap,
    Thy picture at my heart;
  And he that bends not to thine eye
    Shall rue it to his smart!”

It was a brave new setting to brave old lines, as simple and direct as themselves, studiously in keeping, passionate, virile, almost inspired; and the whole so justly given that the great notes did not drown the words as they often will, but all came clean to the ear.  No wonder the hotel held its breath!  I was standing entranced myself, an outpost of the audience underneath the windows, whose fringe I could just see round the uttermost angle of the hotel, when Bob Evers ran down the steps, and came toward me in such guise that I could not swear to him till the last yard.

“Don’t say a word,” he whispered excitedly.  “I’m just off!”

“Off where?” I gasped, for he had changed into full mountaineering garb, and there was his greased face beaming in the moonlight, and the blue spectacles twinkling about his hat-band, at half-past nine at night.