“None,” answered Haward.  “I go myself to Fair View to-morrow, and then I shall ask you to drink with me again.”

As he spoke he held out his hand.  MacLean looked at it, sighed, then touched it with his own.  A gleam as of wintry laughter came into his blue eyes.  “I doubt that I shall have to get me a new foe,” he said, with regret in his voice.

When he had bowed to the lady and to her father, and had gone out of the room and down the lilac-bordered path and through the gate, and when the three at the window had watched him turn into Duke of Gloucester Street, the master of Westover looked at the master of Fair View and burst out laughing.  “Ludwell hath for an overseer the scapegrace younger son of a baronet; and there are three brothers of an excellent name under indentures to Robert Carter.  I have at Westover a gardener who annually makes the motto of his house to spring in pease and asparagus.  I have not had him to drink with me yet, and t’other day I heard Ludwell give to the baronet’s son a hound’s rating.”

“I do not drink with the name,” said Haward coolly.  “I drink with the man.  The churl or coward may pass me by, but the gentleman, though his hands be empty, I stop.”

The other laughed again; then dismissed the question with a wave of his hand, and pulled out a great gold watch with cornelian seals.  “Carter swears that Dr. Contesse hath a specific that is as sovereign for the gout as is St. Andrew’s cross for a rattlesnake bite.  I’ve had twinges lately, and the doctor lives hard by.  Evelyn, will you rest here while I go petition AEsculapius?  Haward, when I have the recipe I will return, and impart it to you against the time when you need it.  No, no, child, stay where you are!  I will be back anon.”

Having waved aside his daughter’s faint protest, the Colonel departed,—­a gallant figure of a man, with a pretty wit and a heart that was benevolently gay.  As he went down the path he paused to gather a sprig of lilac.  “Westover—­Fair View,” he said to himself, and smiled, and smelled the lilac; then—­though his ills were somewhat apocryphal—­walked off at a gouty pace across the buttercup-sprinkled green toward the house of Dr. Contesse.

Haward and Evelyn, left alone, kept silence for a time in the quiet room that was filled with late sunshine and the fragrance of flowers.  He stood by the window, and she sat in a great chair, with her hands folded in her lap, and her eyes upon them.  When silence had become more loud than speech, she turned in her seat and addressed herself to him.

“I have known you do many good deeds,” she said slowly.  “That gentleman that was here is your servant, is he not, and an exile, and unhappy?  And you sent him away comforted.  It was a generous thing.”

Haward moved restlessly.  “A generous thing,” he answered.  “Ay, it was generous.  I can do such things at times, and why I do them who can tell?  Not I!  Do you think that I care for that grim Highlander, who drinks my death in place of my health, who is of a nation that I dislike, and a party that is not mine?”