He found her a new factor, carrying on the duties till the new young man (from his own solicitor's office) was installed. He waited with Miss Aline the portentous visit of Sir Bunny Bunny, Bart., of Crawhall. He came to demand the honour of her hand for his clodhopping son, George Bunny Bunny, who hitherto had only distinguished himself by shooting a keeper in the leg, by frightening village children gathering violets and daisies, and by going to the wars with a troop of horse raised in the neighbourhood, only to be sent back again for incompetence. He had, since then, been the chief support of the press-gang in the neighbourhood, and, if he had not been so much despised, might have been hated. But he had enough sense to restrain from active interference with the Free Traders, for, owing to a personal dislike for violence in any form which might endanger his skin, he kept clear of press-gang scrimmages, confining himself to assisting Superintendent McClure with such information as the Easterhall coast-line afforded.
The baronet himself was a keen-eyed, long-nosed old gentleman, with many times the spirit of his son. He had been accustomed all his life to getting his own way, except with his wife. Even at Castle Raincy he had known how to cow the gentle mother of Louis Raincy, though something dangerous in the boy's eye had led him to let Louis alone.
"The spark of mad Raincy blood is in the whelp," he confided to his friends; "the same his grandfather has. They can look positively murderous sometimes."
Sir Bunny was taken aback to find Julian waiting for him in Miss Aline's white and gold drawing-room at Ladykirk.
"Am I, then, to congratulate you?" he said to Julian Wemyss, with false good nature.
"You are," said Julian calmly, "upon the friendship and trust of the best woman in the world. Anything else I should consider impertinence and know how to resent as such!"
"I desire to see Miss Aline," said Sir Bunny, to cut short a conversation which might easily become unpleasant.
"Certainly," said Julian carelessly, as if he were saying the lightest of nothings; "but I think you will find that I could have answered you quite as well."
"How so?" said the baronet, glowering at him, his fingers twitching to take this courtly, easy-spoken man by the throat.