Lady Eustace could make nothing of Miss Macnulty in the way of sympathy, and could not bear her disappointment with patience. It was hardly to be expected that she should do so. She paid a great deal for Miss Macnulty. In a moment of rash generosity, and at a time when she hardly knew what money meant, she had promised Miss Macnulty seventy pounds for the first year and seventy for the second, should the arrangement last longer than a twelvemonth. The second year had been now commenced, and Lady Eustace was beginning to think that seventy pounds was a great deal of money when so very little was given in return. Lady Linlithgow had paid her dependent no fixed salary. And then there was the lady’s “keep” and first-class travelling when they went up and down to Scotland, and cab-fares in London when it was desirable that Miss Macnulty should absent herself. Lizzie, reckoning all up, and thinking that for so much her friend ought to be ready to discuss Ianthe’s soul, or any other kindred subject, at a moment’s warning, would become angry and would tell herself that she was being swindled out of her money. She knew how necessary it was that she should have some companion at the present emergency of her life, and therefore could not at once send Miss Macnulty away; but she would sometimes become very cross and would tell poor Macnulty that she was — a fool. Upon the whole, however, to be called a fool was less objectionable to Miss Macnulty than were demands for sympathy which she did not know how to give.
Those first ten days of August went very slowly with Lady Eustace. “Queen Mab” got itself poked away, and was heard of no more. But there were other books. A huge box full of novels had come down, and Miss Macnulty was a great devourer of novels. If Lady Eustace would talk to her about the sorrows of the poorest heroine that ever saw her lover murdered before her eyes, and then come to life again with ten thousand pounds a year, for a period of three weeks — or till another heroine, who had herself been murdered, obliterated the former horrors from her plastic mind — Miss Macnulty could discuss the catastrophe with the keenest interest. And Lizzie, finding herself to be, as she told herself, unstrung, fell also into novel-reading. She had intended during this vacant time to master the “Faery Queen”; but the “Faery Queen” fared even worse than “Queen Mab”; and the studies of Portray Castle were confined to novels. For poor Macnulty, if she could only be left alone, this was well enough. To have her meals, and her daily walk, and her fill of novels, and to be left alone, was all that she asked of the gods. But it was not so with Lady Eustace, She asked much more than that, and was now thoroughly discontented with her own idleness. She was sure that she could have read Spenser from sunrise to sundown, with no other break than an hour or two given to Shelley, if only there had been some one to sympathise with her in her readings. But there was no one, and she was very cross. Then there came a letter to her from her cousin, which for that morning brought some life back to the castle. “I have seen Lord Fawn,” said the letter, “and I have also seen Mr. Camperdown. As it would be very hard to explain what took place at these interviews by letter, and as I shall be at Portray Castle on the 20th, I will not make the attempt. We shall go down by the night train, and I will get over to you as soon as I have dressed and had my breakfast. I suppose I can find some kind of a pony for the journey. The ‘we’ consists of myself and my friend Mr. Herriot, a man whom I think you will like, if you will condescend to see him, though he is a barrister like myself. You need express no immediate condescension in his favour, as I shall of course come over alone on Wednesday morning. Yours always affectionately, F. G.”
The letter she received on the Sunday morning, and as the Wednesday named for Frank’s coming was the next Wednesday, and was close at hand, she was in rather a better humour than she had displayed since the poets had failed her. “What a blessing it will be,” she said, “to have somebody to speak to.”
This was not complimentary, but Miss Macnulty did not want compliments. “Yes, indeed,” she said. “Of course you will be glad to see your cousin.”
“I shall be glad to see anything in the shape of a man. I declare I have felt almost inclined to ask the minister from Craigie to elope with me.”
“He has got seven children,” said Miss Macnulty.
“Yes, poor man, and a wife, and not more than enough to live upon. I daresay he would have come. By the by, I wonder whether there’s a pony about the place.”
“A pony!” Miss Macnulty of course supposed that it was needed for the purpose of the suggested elopement.
“Yes; I suppose you know what a pony is? Of course there ought to be a shooting pony at the cottage for these men. My poor head has so many things to work upon that I had forgotten it; and you’re never any good at thinking of things.”
“I didn’t know that gentlemen wanted ponies for shooting.”
“I wonder what you do know? Of course there must be a pony.”
“I suppose you’ll want two?”
“No, I sha’n’t. You don’t suppose that men always go riding about. But I want one. What had I better do?” Miss Macnulty suggested that Gowran should be consulted. Now Gowran was the steward, and bailiff, and manager, and factotum about the place, who bought a cow or sold one if occasion required, and saw that nobody stole anything, and who knew the boundaries of the farms, and all about the tenants, and looked after the pipes when frost came, and was an honest, domineering, hard-working, intelligent Scotchman, who had been brought up to love the Eustaces, and who hated his present mistress with all his heart. He did not leave her service, having an idea in his mind that it was now the great duty of his life to save Portray from her ravages. Lizzie fully returned the compliment of the hatred, and was determined to rid herself of Andy Gowran’s services as soon as possible. He had been called Andy by the late Sir Florian, and, though every one else about the place called him Mr. Gowran, Lady Eustace thought it became her, as the man’s mistress, to treat him as he had b............