The room was half full. A group of young ladies and two or three young men were at the piano, and, near the drawn curtains of the window a whist-table was set, at which four elderly people were seated in the throes of their game.
The two Miss Robertsons occupied a sofa a little apart from the rest of the company and Miss Hersey was talking to Captain Somerville, whose infirmity forbade him to rise and welcome individual guests, while it enabled him to consistently entertain the principal ones.
‘You are late, Mr. Barclay,’ said the hostess, as she held out her hand. ‘We had been hoping for you to join the rubber which is going on, but some of our friends were impatient, and so they have settled down to it.’
‘I was detained, ma’am,’ said the lawyer. ‘I have been out to Whanland, and nothing would content Speid but that I should stay and dine with him.’
‘See what it is to be such a popular man!’ exclaimed the coastguard’s lady, looking archly over her fan.
She was not above the acceptance of the little compliments with which Barclay, who was socially ambitious, plied her.
‘You flatter me sadly, I fear, Mrs. Somerville; but that is your kindness and not my merit.’
‘I have not yet seen Mr. Speid,’ said Mrs. Somerville, ‘but I hear he is a very well-looking young man. Quite the dandy, with his foreign bringing up.’
‘Yes, that is exactly what I tell him,’ replied Barclay. ‘A very affable fellow, too. He and I are great friends. Indeed, he is always plaguing me to go out to Whanland.’
That he had never gone there on any errand but business was a fact which he did not reveal to his hostess.
‘So many stories are afloat respecting his--his antecedents,’ said the lady, dropping her eyes, ‘one hardly knows what to believe. However, there he is, master of his--of the Speid property. I think bygones should be bygones, don’t you, Mr. Barclay?’
As she said this, she glanced towards a corner of the room in which Lucilla Somerville, a homely virgin in white muslin and red arms, was whispering with a girl friend.
Barclay knew as much as his hostess of Gilbert’s history, and very little more, whatever his conjectures might be, but he relapsed instantly from the man of the world into the omniscient family lawyer.