A deep silence hung over the table. Mr. Wishart and the Andrews stared with uncomprehending faces. Mr. Stocks studied his plate, and Alice looked on the speaker with eyes in which unwilling respect strove with consternation.
Only the culprit was at his ease. The discomfort of these good people for a moment amused him. Then the sight of Alice's face, which he wholly misread, brought him back to decent manners.
"I am afraid I have shocked you," he said simply. "If one knocks about the world one gets a different point of view."
Mr. Wishart restrained a flood of indignation with an effort. "We won't speak on the subject," he said. "I confess I have my prejudices."
Mr. Stocks assented with a smile and a sigh. In the drawing-room afterwards Lewis was presented with the olive-branch of peace. He had to attend Mrs. Andrews to the piano and listen to her singing of a sentimental ballad with the face of a man in the process of enjoyment. Soon he pleaded the four miles of distance and the dark night, and took his leave. His spirits had in a measure returned. Alice had not been gracious, but she had shown no scorn. And her spell at the first sight of her was woven a thousand-fold over his heart.
He found her alone for one moment in the hall.
"Alice--Miss Wishart, may I come and see you? It is a pity such near neighbours should see so little of each other."
His hesitation made him cloak a despairing request in the garb of a conventional farewell.
The girl had the sense to pierce the disguise. "You may come and see us, if you like, Mr. Haystoun. We shall be at home all next week."
"I shall come very soon," he cried, and he was whirled away from the light; with the girl's face framed in the arch of the doorway making a picture for his memory.
When the others had gone to bed, Stocks and Mr. Wishart sat up over a last pipe by the smoking-room fire.
The younger man moved uneasily in his chair. He had something to say which had long lain on his mind, and he was uncertain of its reception.
"You have been for a long time my friend, Mr. Wishart," he began. "You have done me a thousand kindnesses, and I only hope I have not proved myself unworthy of them."
Mr. Wishart raised his eyebrows at the peculiar words. "Certainly you have not," he said. "I regard you as the most promising by far of the younger men of my acquaintance, and any little services I may have rendered have been amply repaid me."