where his master wrote.
"They're all right, so far as I went with them," said he; "but if your
Grace in my position came upon a foreigner in the wood of Strongara--a
gentleman by the looks of him and a Frenchman by his moustachio, all
alone and looking after Sergeant Donald's company, what would your
Grace's inference be?"

Argyll, obviously, did not share much of his Chamberlain's excitement.
"There was no more than one there?" he asked, sprinkling sand upon his
finished letter. "No! Then there seems no great excuse for your extreme
perturbation, my good Sim. I'm lord of Argyll, but I'm not lord of the
king's highway, and if an honest stranger cares to take a freeman's
privilege and stand between the wind and Simon MacTaggart's
dignity--Simon MacTaggart's very touchy dignity, it would appear--who
am I that I should blame the liberty? You did not ride _ventre a terre_
from Strongara (I see a foam-fleck on your breeches) to tell me we had
a traveller come to admire our scenery? Come, come, Sim! I'll begin to
think these late eccentricities of yours, these glooms, abstractions,
errors, and anxieties and indispositions, and above all that pallid
face of yours, are due to some affair of the heart." As he spoke Argyll
pinched his kinsman playfully on the ear, quite the good companion,
with none of the condescension that a duke might naturally display in so
doing.

MacTaggart reddened and Argyll laughed, "Ah!" he cried. "Can I have hit
it?" he went on, quizzing the Chamberlain. "See that you give me fair
warning, and I'll practise the accustomed and essential reel. Upon my
soul, I haven't danced since Lady Mary left, unless you call it so
that foolish minuet. You should have seen her Grace at St. James's last
month. Gad! she footed it like an angel; there's not a better dancer in
London town. See that your wife's a dancer, whoever she may be, Sim; let
her dance and sing and play the harpsichord or the clarsach--they are
charms that will last longer than her good looks, and will not weary you
so soon as that intellect that's so much in fashion nowadays, when every
woman listens to every clever thing you say, that she may say something
cleverer, or perhaps retail it later as her own."

MacTaggart turned about impatiently, poked with his riding crop at the
fire, and plainly indicated that he was not in the mood for badinage.

"All that has nothing to do with my Frenchman, your Grace," said he
bluntly.

"Oh, confound your F