Chapter 12 - Page 2

Merton; 'I profess myself the friend of cats.'

'He is only trying to photograph a wild cat at home in the hills; they are very scarce.'

'In fact he is Jones Harvey, the naturalist again, for the nonce, not the sportsman,' said Merton.

'It was as Jones Harvey that he--' said Lady Bude, and, blushing, stopped.

'That he grasped the skirts of happy chance,' said Merton.

'Why don't you grasp the skirts, Mr. Merton?' asked Lady Bude. 'Chance, or rather Lady Fortune, who wears the skirts, would, I think, be happy to have them grasped.'

'Whose skirts do you allude to?'

'The skirts, short enough in the Highlands, of Miss Macrae,' said Lady Bude; 'she is a nice girl, and a pretty girl, and a clever girl, and, after all, there are worse things than millions.'

Miss Emmeline Macrae was the daughter of the host with whom the Budes and Merton were staying at Skrae Castle, on Loch Skrae, only an easy mile and a half from the sea and the cove beside which Merton and Lady Bude were sitting.

'There is a seal crawling out on to the shore of the little island!' said Merton. 'What a brute a man must be who shoots a seal! I could watch them all day--on a day like this.'

'That is not answering my question,' said Lady Bude. 'What do you think of Miss Macrae? I know what you think!'

'Can a humble person like myself aspire to the daughter of the greatest living millionaire? Our host can do almost anything but bring a spate, and even that he could do by putting a dam with a sluice at the foot of Loch Skrae: a matter of a few thousands only. As for the lady, her heart it is another's, it never can be mine.'

'Whose it is?' asked Lady Bude.

'Is it not, or do my trained instincts deceive me, that of young Blake, the new poet? Is she not "the girl who gives to song what gold could never buy"? He is as handsome as a man has no business to be.'

'He uses belladonna for his eyes,' said Lady Bude. 'I am sure of it.'

'Well, she does not know, or does not mind, and they are pretty inseparable the last day or two.'

'That is your own fault,' said Lady Bude; 'you banter the poet so cruelly. She pities him.'

'I wonder that our host lets the fellow keep staying here,' said Merton. 'If Mr. Macrae has a foible, except that of the pedigree of the Macraes (who were here before the Macdonalds or Mackenzies, and have come back in his person), it is scientific inventions, electric lighting, and his new toy, the wireless telegraph box in the observatory. You can see the tower from here, and the pole with box on top. I don't care for that kind of thing myself, but Macrae thinks it Paradise to get messages from the Central News and the Stock Exchange up here, fifty miles from a telegraph post. Well, yesterday Blake was sneering at the whole affair.'

'What is this wireless machine? Explain it to me,'