CHAPTER IX.

THE APPLE OF DISCORD.

To Dove the news from the far-away Indian Hills fell with a sense of dull, aching sorrow that wrung the girl's heart; and she failed to understand the grim, cold, unsympathetic, and at times, quietly exultant bearing of her father when Gillian was not present.

The death, the assumption of mourning, and so forth, caused a few days' delay in the movements of my Lord Campsie; and thus, untrammelled by his presence, Dove was kinder and more tender than ever to poor Gillian, whom she was told in secret by her father, was penniless now--a veritable beggar--but not to mention it to himself. So the soft-hearted Dove was pitiful, exceedingly pitiful, and murmured to herself,

"What matters it? Papa is rich, and can give us enough for two."

Full of her great love for Gillian, and real sorrow for the calamity that had befallen them--for his father's death implied and involved more than the loss of him--Dove had attached but small importance to the attentions of Lord Campsie, and was rather provoked by them than otherwise, as she was under the idea that he was only amusing himself and seeking to kill the hours in a town which he declared to be intensely dull and stupid; but she was fairly distressed and "worried," when, by some remarks of her father, that were rather more than hints, she was given to understand that he had sought and obtained permission to address her.

"Viscountess Kilsythe would sound well, Dove," said he, pinching her chin with a playfulness that was not his wont, and sat ill upon him.

"Perhaps," replied Dove, with indifference.

"The castle is a roofless ruin, though it has entertained some of the popish House of Stuart, been battered by the Blasphemer, and has now been abandoned to ghosts and gleds; but the Viscount has a place like a palace, they say, in England."

"The dowry of a cotton-merchant's daughter, so Gillian says," said Dove angrily.

"What can he, or such as he, know about it?" demanded Mr. Gainswood, his eyes gleaming dangerously under his shaggy, bristling brows. "It is a place that you may be the mistress of one day, Dove."

"Perhaps, papa; but that would depend upon who was the master and how I liked him," replied Dove, laughing to conceal her annoyance, while her father turned away and left her full of anger.

Now old Mrs. McBriar had barely seen a lord, and certainly had never before spoken to one, hence she was greatly impressed by the idea of Dove's new and sudden expectations, and thus felt, perhaps, less compunction for the intended supplanting of Gillian Lamond, and, acting under Mr. Gainswood's orders, sought to bias the girl's mind to suit his own views and wishes; but, as yet, in vain.

"Dove, dearie," said she; "you will offend your good papa; you are too impulsive and don't know how to guide yourself, or the value of your own bright prospects. A coronet is at your feet--or may be. Oh, lassie, you might as well have expected to see the crown of Scotland there!"

"Oh, bother!" was the unsentimental rejoinder of Dove.

"Now, don't you think you could tolerate such a handsome husband as Lord Campsie?"

"No!" replied Dove sharply, as the unctuous way in which Mrs. McBriar pronounced the titled name provoked her.

"Aye, and learn in time to love him?"

"Don't talk of it, Mrs. McBriar, the very idea chills my heart. And you, too, have turned against him?"

"Against whom?"

"Gillian!" replied Dove, her dark blue eyes flashing through their tears, while the rich colour mantled high in her soft cheek; "Elspat McBriar, I am Gillian Lamond's promised wife; my father gave me to him to be so, and his dead father--God rest him in his far-away grave!--blessed us both; and Gillian shall I marry, or never, never marry at all!"

Mrs. McBriar smiled, shook her head incredulously, and withdrew by the way of the inner drawing-room, for, at that moment, a servant announced, "Lord Campsie."

Dove was certainly, at that moment, in the worst of moods to receive him, and, though secretly a little scared, lest what she feared was to come, she made up a kind of "company smile" as she presented her hand, begged him to be seated, and while a few of the usual commonplaces were uttered, he was as usual eyeing her critically and approvingly.

Dove was in deep mourning, and the black silk and crape, relieved only by her collar, cuffs, and a simple silver brooch--the badge of the Lamonds, of Cowal and Avon-na-gillian, the gift of Gillian--set off to the utmost advantage the whiteness of her slender throat and the purity of her complexion. In the sheeny gold of her auburn hair, in the violet-blue of her beautiful liquid eyes, the usual expression of which was one of softness and--if we may so phrase it--partial surprise, in the fine contour of her features and the firmness of her curled vermilion lip, there were all that Campsie could desire, and he felt conscious that she would adorn the sphere to which he fully intended to remove her.

Such a wife as Dove would certainly adorn his home, and put an end to his St. John's Wood expenses on one hand, and to the schemes and pretensions of certain dowagers and their aspiring daughters in Mayfair and Tyburnia, on the other.

"By Jove!" thought his lordship; "how came such an old toad as this fellow Gainswood ever to have such a daughter?"

"Your mourning does indeed become you," said he, rising and placing a hand on the back of Dove's chair, and bending over her admiringly.

"I deplore that I have had reason to wear it," said she. "It is for Gillian's father--you are aware."

"For Colonel Lamond," said Campsie, fitting his glass in his left eye.

"Poor Gillian's father," persisted Dove.

"He was a brave old fellow, it would seem."

"And devoted to Gillian."

This iteration of the same name, by which Dove hoped to protect herself, as by a charm, certainly did pique Campsie, and rather put him out, as he felt that to have such a rival was something contemptible and unendurable; but he changed the subject, and began to pave the way by much small talk and many really earnest compliments, to which Dove listened with a quiet air of resignation, which somewhat baffled him; but, resolved to bring matters to an issue, he very deliberately, and with a greater tone of self-abnegation than he had ever thought to assume, and in, certainly, very well-chosen and well-bred language, made Dove a formal proposal of marriage, which, in a manner as delicate as it was decided--though she secretly trembled, with apprehension, she knew not of what--Dove most distinctly declined.

Though she knew it was coming, she was more fluttered than flattered, and would have given the world, she thought, to have "a good cry over it."

Campsie drew back a pace, and eyed her with a very mingled expression of face, while coolly re-adjusting his eye-glass and buttoning a glove; he was always fussy about his ties, collars, and gloves.

"By Jove!" thought he. Her coldness and indifference piqued and roused in him a spirit of opposition; it enhanced her value, and inspired him with a resolution to conquer, whether he actually cared for her enough or not. It was too absurd that he, "a drawing-room pet" in town, should be baffled thus by a provincial lawyer's daughter--a mere country chit. "It was doocid funny, but doocid unpleasant, to be held so cheap, don't you know!"

"Miss Gainswood--Dove--dear Dove, is there no chance--no hope, that one--in the coming time, perhaps--haw----"

"There is no hope, my lord--I am unchangeable as yonder castled rock!"

"Am I, then, to understand that there is some preoccupation--some foolish fancy----"

"I give you to understand nothing," said Dove, with a decision in her tone that carried conviction with it for the time, and then rose as if the interview was over; and Campsie, his heart, _blasé_ and vapid as it was, swelling more with mortification and anger than it had ever done with love, took the hint, and assumed his hat, saying:

"I do not despair of yet gaining your favour, and even more, your love and esteem, Dove Gainswood; but, for the present, I shall retire, and wish you a very good morning."

"Good morning, my lord," faltered Dove, as she rang the bell, and he bowed himself out, without even touching her hand, and feeling himself rather put down and confused, all the more that he had not a big regalia to hang on to.

"He surely cannot call here again after this," thought Dove (but she was mistaken), as she cast herself into a seat, and murmuring the name of Gillian again and again, gave way to tears and dire apprehension of the future.

Meanwhile, as if to get rid of his annoyance, Lord Campsie, who believed that a good gallop was the best panacea for any evil under the sun, spurred his horse along a lonely road that led into the wooded bosom of the Corstorphine hills, for an hour's rough ride, ere he despatched from the United Service, the Edinburgh "Rag," a brief note to Mr. Gainswood, to report how Dove had rejected him, which meant, to Campsie, the loss of many more thousands than he could think of with patience--especially, when he remembered his betting-book.

Indescribable was the wrath of Mr. Gainswood on receiving the brief note of Lord Campsie. His fury was too great for words and too deep for noisy demonstration, but he hurried home to upbraid, admonish, and rebuke his daughter.

"Refused a lord--you have actually refused Lord Campsie!" he gasped in sheer bewilderment.

"He is a fool, papa."

"You are a fool--an ass, and--and worse!" was the coarse rejoinder, "and little more would make me curse you--yea, curse you--as you deserve--but it beseems not," he added, relapsing into his sanctimonious whine.

"Oh, papa!" urged the weeping girl, holding up her beautiful hands as if in deprecation.

"You underrate the good qualities of Lord Campsie."

"That does not matter much, papa."

"Why?" he hissed through his teeth.

"Because he does not underrate himself at all events."

"I should think not--a lord--a viscount that is to be, with ever so many thousands a year; you are mad, girl--stark, staring mad! You will repent this obstinacy."

"When?"

"When you know him better."

"In that case I am very unlikely to repent it at all, papa," said Dove, trembling excessively, for never before had her father, with all his faults, addressed her in his present tone.

"You have trifled with his lordship's heart."

"I don't think _that_ had much to do with his proposal," replied the girl, smiling through her tears, "and certainly I am not disposed to sell mine."

"Minx and fool! your ingratitude will break mine," he added, with gravity suitable to the assertion.

"Oh, papa," urged Dove, in her most touching voice, "on earth the most despicable thing is surely the man or woman who marries for money, for rank, or anything but pure and true affection."

"This comes of reading novels--Scott, Bulwer, Dickens--and such-like sinful and pernicious literature. It is the very language of hopeless idiotcy. Alas! that kind Providence should put upon me the sore dispensation of having a child, so blind to her own welfare, so undutiful and rebellious, so disobedient and cruel to such a father as I have been!" He threw himself into a chair, and believing himself to be a very ill-used man, glared at Dove with his hard, fishy eyes, and added, "May God pardon you for this day's work--but I never, never shall!"

"Dearest papa," said Dove, with fresh tears that seemed to well-up as from her very heart; "do not quite forget that you promised me to Gillian."

"To Gillian!" repeated Gains wood, with a deep snort of the fiercest passion and concentrated rage, while starting to his feet as if a cobra had stung him; "to Gillian," he added, grinding his teeth till the sound thereof made Dove's blood run cold; "hah!--true--yes; and now to end that folly for ever; and luckily, here he comes. Follow me to the library--I would speak with you--_you_, who have sown the apple of discord under my roof-tree!" said he to his nephew, who at that moment entered the room, from which Mr. Gainswood departed, looking grim as Ajax.

"What is the matter, Dove?" asked Gillian, looking already crushed in spirit, as the foreboding of evil had come heavily upon him.

She wound her soft arms around him, and pressing her quivering lips to his cheek, whispered hurriedly:

"Papa would speak with you; be brave, gentle, and trusting, whatever he may say, and remember, that tide what may, _I love you, Gillian_?"

The latter followed his uncle mechanically into the library, when there a conversation ensued that was fated never to be forgotten by either.