"We are, I hope, at least friends?" said he, presenting his hand with great but grim suavity. "Oh yes, Cosmo, the best of friends--do excuse my laughing so; but nothing more, remember, nothing more," she replied, and withdrawing her hand, which he attempted to kiss, she darted through the labyrinth towards the house, leaving "Marmion" forgotten on the gravel behind her. "By Jove! to be baffled, laughed at, and by a chick like this!" muttered Cosmo with an oath which we care not to record, as he gave the volume a kick, and strode angrily away, full of bitter and dark thoughts, and inspired with rage at a rivalry which, in truth, he was ashamed to acknowledge, even to himself. CHAPTER XV. THE BLOW. "Take comfort: he no more shall see my face; Lysander and myself will fly this place. Before the time I did Lysander see, Seemed Athens as a paradise to me: Oh, then, what graces in my love do dwell, That he hath turned a heaven unto a hell!" _Midsummer Night's Dream._ A very dark idea crossed the Master's mind, and then another, darker still! A few guineas judiciously bestowed among the smugglers, who, when the nights were dark and gusty, frequented the coves near the castle (and when some person or persons unknown hung a lantern over the rocks to guide their steerage through a narrow cleft in the Partan Craig), might for ever rid him of Quentin Kennedy. They could land him on the sands of Dunkirk or Boulogne, or, or--what? Oh, no! he thrust away the next idea as too horrid, though _such_ things had been done of old in Carrick by the lawless lairds of Auchindrane, and to denounce them, in one terrible instance, had not the sea given up its dead? He thought of despatching a line to the lieutenant commanding the pressgang at Ayr, by whose agency poor Quentin might be shipped off for seven years' sea service in the East or West Indies, but dread of exposure, and the outcry consequent thereto, made him relinquish such kidnapping ideas of revenge, though they were practical enough in the days when George III. was king. Revolving these thoughts, with brows knit and his stealthy eyes fixed on the ground, Cosmo quitted the garden and entered the avenue, where the evening shadows under the sycamore trees were gloomy and dark; and there as he strode forward, with a quick and impatient step, he stumbled roughly against some one, who, like himself, seemed lost in reverie. "Quentin Kennedy!" he exclaimed in a hoarse voice, as this collision brought all his readily excited fury to the culminating point; "confound it, fellow, is this you?" "I beg pardon, sir--I did not see you--I was lost in thought," replied Quentin. "Lost in thought, were you?" repeated Cosmo, in his most insulting tone; "you were loitering near the labyrinth in the garden?" he added with almost fierce suspicion. "I was down in the oakwood shaw, two miles off." "Hah--indeed! and what have you been doing with that gun??