“And if it is, why not drink it and say no more about it?  I think they enjoyed themselves pretty well this evening—­don’t you, Ogilvie?”

“Yes, yes; but then, my dear fellow, the cost!  You will say it is none of my business; but what would your decent, respectable mother say to all this extravagance?”

“Ah?” said Macleod, “that is just the thing; I should have more pleasure in my little dinner parties if only the mother and Janet were here to see.  I think the table would look a good deal better if my mother was at the head of it.  And the cost?—­oh, I am only following out her instructions.  She would not have people think that I was insensible to the kindness that has been shown me; and then we cannot ask all those good friends up to Castle Dare; it is an out-of-the-way place, and there are no flowers on the dining-table there.”

He laughed as he looked at the beautiful things before him; they would look strange in the gaunt hall of Castle Dare.

“Why,” said he, “I will tell you a secret, Ogilvie.  You know my cousin Janet—­she is the kindest-hearted of all the women I know—­and when I was coming away she gave me L2000, just in case I should need it.”

“L2000!” exclaimed Ogilvie.  “Did she think you were going to buy Westminster Abbey during the course of your holidays?” And then he looked at the table before him, and a new idea seemed to strike him.  “You don’t mean to say, Macleod, that it is your cousin’s money—­”

Macleod’s face flushed angrily.  Had any other man made the suggestion, he would have received a tolerably sharp answer.  But he only said to his old friend Ogilvie,—­

“No, no, Ogilvie; we are not very rich folks; but we have not come to that yet.  ‘I’d sell my kilts, I’d sell my shoon,’ as the song says, before I touched a farthing of Janet’s money.  But I had to take it from her so as not to offend her.  It is wonderful, the anxiety and affection of women who live away out of the world like that.  There was my mother, quite sure that something awful was going to happen to me, merely because I was going away for two or three months, And Janet—­I suppose she knew that our family never was very good at saving money—­she would have me take this little fortune of hers, just as if the old days were come back, and the son of the house was supposed to go to Paris to gamble away every penny.”

“By the way, Macleod,” said Ogilvie, “you have never gone to Paris, as you intended.”

“No,” said he, trying to balance three nectarines one on the top of the other, “I have not gone to Paris.  I have made enough friends in London.  I have had plenty to occupy the time.  And now, Ogilvie,” he added, brightly, “I am going in for my last frolic, before everybody has left London, and you must come to it, even if you have to go down by your cold-meat train again.  You know Miss Rawlinson; you have seen her at Mrs. Ross’s, no doubt.  Very well; I met her first