That same night, after Miss Cassewary had gone to bed, when the moon was high in the heavens and the world round her was all asleep, Lady Mabel again wandered out to the lake, and again seated herself on the same rock, and there sat thinking of her past life and trying to think of that before her.  It is so much easier to think of the past than of the future,—­to remember what has been than to resolve what shall be!  She had reminded him of the offer which he had made and repeated to her more than once,—­to share with her all his chances in life.  There would have been almost no income for them.  All the world would have been against her.  She would have caused his ruin.  Her light on the matter had been so clear that it had not taken her very long to decide that such a thing must not be thought of.  She had at last been quite stern in her decision.

Now she was broken-hearted because she found that he had left her in very truth.  Oh yes;—­she would marry the boy, if she could so arrange.  Since that meeting at Richmond he had sent her the ring reset.  She was to meet him down in Scotland within a week or two from the present time.  Mrs Montacute Jones had managed that.  He had all but offered to her a second time at Richmond.  But all that would not serve to make her happy.  She declared to herself that she did not wish to see Frank Tregear again; but still it was a misery to her that his heart should in truth be given to another woman.

CHAPTER 38

Crummie-Toddie

Almost at the last moment Silverbridge and his brother Gerald were induced to join Lord Popplecourt’s shooting-party in Scotland.  The party perhaps might more properly be called the party of Reginald Dobbes, who as a man knowing in such matters.  It was he who made the party up.  Popplecourt and Silverbridge were to share the expense between them, each bringing three guns.  Silverbridge brought his brother and Frank Tregear,—­having refused a most piteous petition on the subject from Major Tifto.  With Popplecourt of course came Reginald Dobbes, who was, in truth, to manage everything, and Lord Nidderdale, whose wife had generously permitted him this recreation.  The shooting was in the west of Perthshire, known as Crummie-Toddie, and comprised an enormous acreage of so-called forest and moor.  Mr Dobbes declared that nothing like it had as yet been produced in Scotland.  Everything had been made to give way to deer and grouse.  The thing had been managed so well that the tourist nuisance had been considerably abated.  There was hardly a potato patch left in the district, nor a head of cattle to be seen.  There were no inhabitants remaining, or so few that they could be absorbed in game-preserving or cognate duties.  Reginald Dobbes, who was very great at grouse, and supposed to be capable of outwitting deer by venatical wiles more perfectly than any other sportsman in Great Britain, regarded Crummie-Toddie