It seemed that an expedition had been planned, for a servant now appeared to say that coach and horses were at the door.  Mr. Touris explained: 

“I’ve engaged to show Mr. and Mrs. Goodworth our considerable town.  Mr. Wotherspoon, too, has a moment’s business there.  Alison will not come, but Munro Touris rides along.  Will you come, too, Glenfernie?  We’ll have a bit of dinner at the ‘Glorious Occasion.’”

“No, thank you.  I have to get home presently.  But I’ll stay a little and talk to Mrs. Alison, if I may.”

“Ah, you may!” said Mrs. Alison.

From the porch they watched the coach and four away, with Munro Touris following on a strong and ugly bay mare.  The elm boughs of the avenue hid the whole.  The cloud continents and islands were dissolving into the air ocean, the sun lay in strong beams, the water drops were drying from leaf and blade.  Mrs. Alison and Alexander moved through the great hall and down a corridor to a little parlor that was hers alone.  They entered it.  It gave, through an open door and two windows set wide, upon a small, choice garden and one wide-spreading, noble, ancient tree.  Glenfernie entered as one who knew the place, but upon whom, at every coming, it struck with freshness and liking.  The room itself was most simple.

“I like,” said Alexander, “our spare, clean, precise Scotch parlors.  But this is to me like a fine, small prioress’s room in a convent of learned saints!”

His old friend laughed.  “Very little learned, very little saintly, not at all prior!  Let us sit in the doorway, smell the lavender, and hear the linnets in the tree.”

She took the chair he pushed forward.  He sat upon the door-step at her feet.

“Concerning Ian,” she said.  “What do you make out of it all?”

“I make out that I hope he’ll not involve himself in some French and Tory mad attempt!”

“What do his letters say?”

“They speak by indirection.  Moreover, they’re at present few and short....  We shall see when he comes!”

“Do you think that he will tell you all?”

Alexander’s gray eyes glanced at her as earlier they had glanced at Mr. Wotherspoon.  “I do not think that we keep much from each other!...  No, of course you are right!  If there is anything that in honor he cannot tell, or that I—­with my pledges, such as they are, in another urn—­may not hear, we shall find silences.  I pin my trust to there being nothing, after all!”

“The old wreath withered, and a new one better woven and more evergreen—­”

“I do not know....  I said just now that Ian and I kept little from each other.  In an exceeding great measure that is true.  But there are huge lands in every nature where even the oldest, closest, sworn friend does not walk.  It must be so.  Friendship is not falsified nor betrayed by its being so.”