r affairs frankly with certain reservations.
Once he commented on the strangeness of it.

"A singular creature is man, Montagu! Here are we two as friendly as--as
brothers I had almost said, but most brothers hate each other with good
cause. At all events here we lie with nothing but good-will; we are too
weak to get at each other's throats and so perforce must endure each the
other's presence, and from mere sufferance come to a mutual--shall I say
esteem? A while since we were for slaying; naught but cold steel would let
out our heat; and now--I swear I have for you a vast liking. Will it last,
think you?"

"Till we are on our feet again. No longer," I answered.

"I suppose you are right," he replied, with the first touch of despondency
I had ever heard in his voice. "The devil of it is that when I want a
thing I never rest till I get it, and after I have won it I don't care any
more for it."

"I'm an obstinate man myself," I said.

"Yes, I know. And when I say I'll do a thing and you say I sha'n't nothing
on earth can keep us from the small sword."

"Did you never spare a victim--never draw back before the evil was done?"
I asked curiously.

"Many a time, but never when the incentive to the chase was so great as
now. 'Tis the overcoming of obstacles I cannot resist. In this case--to
pass by the acknowledged charms of the lady--I find two powerful reasons
for continuing: her proud coyness and your defense of her. Be sure I shall
not fail."

"I think you will," I answered quietly.

Out of doubt the man had a subtle fascination for me, even though I hated
his principles in the same breath. When he turned the batteries of his
fine winning eyes and sparkling smile on me I was under impulse to
capitulate unconditionally; 'twas at remembrance of Aileen that my jaws
set like a vice again.

But as the days passed I observed a gradual change in Volney's attitude
toward the Highland lass. Macdonald had found a temporary home for her at
the house of a kind-hearted widow woman who lived in the neighbourhood,
and so long as we were in danger the girl and her grey-haired friend came
often to offer their services in nursing. Aileen treated the baronet with
such shy gentle womanliness, her girlish pity struggling through the
Highland pride, forgetting in the suffering man the dastard who had
wronged her, that he was moved not a little from his cynical ironic
gayety. She was in a peculiar relation toward us, one lacking the