A very handsome dark man in the stream saw her signal and drifted sideways to shelter.
"Please not. Mr. Lockhart has patented it already; besides, I want you to tell me the name of that place in the Hebrides. Roederay! Yes, of course! I remember now that it put me in mind of dry champagne. By the way, you used to paint that coast once, Mr. Lockhart; do you by chance know Roederay?"
What is called a flicker of expression crossed her hearer's face. It is a poor description for the absolute blank which a chance word brings to some imaginative people by summoning them from the present into the past.
"I know it well," he replied. "And if you will excuse me, Lady Maud, I don't think it has much in common with dry champagne."
Her clear, rather scornful eyes were on him critically.
"Association belongs to Hope as well as Memory, Mr. Lockhart. You may have had a _mauvais quart d'heure_ at Roederay. We intend to have a good time; don't we, Eustace?"
"I doubt it," retorted the elder man; "civilized people, like you, Eustace, for instance, shouldn't go to those places. To begin with, there is always a difficulty about dinner."
Lady Maud laughed. "Not in these days of ice and telegraphs. Besides, some of us like high teas--don't we, Eustace?"
His face did not change, though the appeal took him back many years in his turn; but then, the speaker was in that past as she was in the present. To say sooth, she occupied them both fully.
"Yes, we can endure them. Do you remember those holidays at Lynmouth, Maud, and the feeds we had on the cliffs? I wonder if any boy ate more strawberries and cream at a sitting than I could do in those days?"
"Have you changed much since then?" she asked, smiling up at him mischievously. "I don't see it, do you, Mr. Lockhart?"
"Not a bit," replied the elder, laying his hand affectionately on the other's shoulder. "Eustace is just what he was as a boy--not to be stinted in his enjoyment of good things. To return, however, to Roederay. You won't like its simplicity, its habit of taking one right down to first principles."
"It couldn't! we are too complex--aren't we, Eustace?"
"And then it is grim. There is an island full of dead people, who appear--"
"Ah! I know all about the stone coffins and the bones; Professor Endorwick told me, and he is coming north on purpose to explore all the antiquities. There he is in the crush with Cynthia Strong. I wonder when that will come off? Call them here, Eustace, and wisdom shall confound this Evil Prophet. Why, the professor, Mr. Lockhart, thinks _Eilean-a-varai_ alone is sufficient inducement for a visit to Roederay."