But indeed, Lady Florimel did not want to steer; she
was so much occupied with her thoughts that her hands must remain
idle.
Partly to turn them away from the more terrible portion of her
adventure, she began to reflect upon her interview with Mrs Catanach
--if interview it could be called, where she had seen no one. At
first she was sorry that she had not told her father of it, and
had the ruin searched; but when she thought of the communication
the woman had made to her, she came to the conclusion that it was,
for various reasons--not to mention the probability that he would
have set it all down to the workings of an unavoidably excited
nervous condition--better that she should mention it to no one
but Duncan MacPhail.
When they arrived at the harbour quay, they found the carriage
waiting, but neither the marquis nor Lady Florimel thought of
Malcolm's foot, and he was left to limp painfully home. As he passed
Mrs Catanach's cottage, he looked up: there were the blinds still
drawn down; the door was shut, and the place was silent as the
grave. By the time he reached Lossie House, his foot was very much
swollen. When Mrs Courthope saw it, she sent him to bed at once,
and applied a poultice.
CHAPTER XLII: DUNCAN'S DISCLOSURE
The night long Malcolm kept dreaming of his fall; and his dreams
were worse than the reality, inasmuch as they invariably sent him
sliding out of the breach, to receive the cut on the rocks below.
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