Deane had the feeling of a man who has escaped from a great danger,--who has been able to throw off a heavy weight. This miserable document of Sinclair's was as good as in his possession! After all, Basil Rowan was not suffering in vain. The girl should have every penny that he had promised her brother! Her way in life should be made easy! It was a very small price, indeed, to be free from such torture as he had suffered during the last few weeks. He bought presents a little recklessly--presents for Olive--something, too, for Winifred Rowan, a gold cigarette-case for himself. He ordered a great basket of flowers to take with him to Scotland, and paid a visit to his gunmaker's. Then he returned to his chambers, fully expecting to have some news of Winifred Rowan.
"No one, sir, of any importance," was the answer.
"Did you ask the office about Miss Rowan?"
"No young lady at all has inquired for you there, sir," Grant answered.
Deane was a little surprised, but after all what did it matter? He travelled up to Scotland with a lighter heart than he had carried for months. Lady Olive, who met him early in the morning at the small wayside station which was nearest to her father's seat, was amazed at his vivacity.
"I expected to find you a pale, worn-out thing," she remarked, as their motor-car climbed the white, stone-bordered road which crossed the heather-covered mountain. "You don't look as though you needed a change at all."
"I've found so swift a tonic, you see," he answered, pressing her hand.
She laughed gayly. This was more the man as he had been before the days of their engagement! "I think it is the smell of the powder," she said. "You men are all like schoolboys for your holidays. Father says that the birds are much too wild, and that it will be all even you can do to hit them."
Deane smiled. "There is nothing in the world," he answered, "which I want to do so much as to lie up there in the heather and close my eyes, and feel the sun and the wind."
"In other words," she said, "you are lazy!"
"Is that laziness?" he asked. "I don't think so."
"Ah! That is a very different thing!" he replied. "We all need rest."
"Especially you," she said, "who carry about with you always the memory of some things from which you can never escape."