orth along with his cousin of
Thurn-and-Taxis in order to present to the Laird of Cairn Ferris a
demand for Patsy's hand in accordance with the due forms of protocol.

Then Louis had forsaken the Arlington even as his mother had hoped. But,
just as Patsy had foreseen, he now followed her rather more closely than
her shadow. It was only in the early mornings, in company with Kennedy
McClure, that she could escape from her wooers. She had Louis in the
afternoon, telling her by the hour the tale of his fidelity and of all
he had done, was doing, and was going to do for her.

Then would come Prince Eitel, when at sight of Louis Raincy the blond
hairs of his moustache would bristle like those of an angry cat, while
Louis glowered a more sullen defiance. Only Miss Aline managed to stave
off the storm, but even with her shepherding of the elements, it was
bound to break one day or another.

Louis was never asked to dinner, so he had perforce to take himself
ungraciously off, leaving his rival in possession of the field. Not that
that did Eitel much good, for the Princess declined to accept of a man
in love as a whist partner. She chose instead Miss Aline who had the
gleg eye of the old maid, and a memory sharpened with forty years of
"knowing jeely pots by head mark."

Prince Eitel and Patsy lost regularly, sometimes as much as
one-and-sixpence on an evening's play, which sent the Princess to bed a
happy woman.

Besides, there began to be primroses on the Thames waterside, the sight
of which made Patsy cry, and in the gardens a wealth of yellow and blue
blossoms began to push up, the blue nestling under the shadows, and the
yellow coming boldly out even in the filtered warmth of the spring
sunshine, when the east winds blew the smoke of the city far up the
river.

Then Patsy had visions. Patsy dreamed dreams--such dreams, visions
glorious--thirty miles of Solway swept clean of mist, great over-riding
white clouds, crenellated and victorious--the Atlantic thundering on the
Back Shore, and all the tides of the North Channel tearing past. She saw
the Twin Valleys awakening--a marvel she had never yet missed--the
sheltered blooms and shy crozier-headed ferns deep in the trough of the
Abbey Burn, the wilder, vaster spaces of broom and gorse, the windflower
and hyacinth in the woods and sheltered spaces of the Glenanmays Water!
Ah, she knew where to look for every one.--And merely not to be there,
made her heart turn to water