ewd glance upon his visitor in the bygoing.
"H'm, I've been there on a short turn myself; there are several of the
Highland gentry about the place."

"There is one Bethune--Hugh Bethune of Ballimeanach, Baron," replied
Count Victor meaningly. "Knowing that I was coming to this part of the
world, and that a person of my tongue and politics might be awkwardly
circumstanced in the province of Argyll, he took the liberty to give me
your direction as one in whose fidelity I might repose myself. I came
across the sleeve to Albion and skirted your noisy eastern coast
with but one name of a friend, _pardieu_, to make the strange cliffs
cheerful."

"You are very good," said the Baron simply, with half a bow. "And Hugh
Bethune, now--well, well! I am proud that he should mind of his old
friend in the tame Highlands. Good Hugh!"--a strange wistfulness came
to the Baron's utterance--"Good Hugh! he'll wear tartan when he has
the notion, I'm supposing, though, after all, he was no Gael, or a very
far-out one, for all that he was in the Marischal's tail."

"I have never seen him in the tartan, beyond perhaps a waistcoat of it
at a _bal masque._"

"So? And yet he was a man generally full of Highland spirit."

Count Victor smiled.

"It is perhaps his only weakness that nowadays he carries it with less
dignity than he used to do. A good deal too much of the Highland spirit,
M. le Baron, wears hoops, and comes into France in Leith frigates."

"Ay, man!" said the Baron, heedless of the irony, "and Hugh wears the
tartan?"

"Only in the waistcoat," repeated Count Victor, complacently looking at
his own scallops.

"Even that!" said the Baron, with the odd wistfulness in his voice. And
then he added hurriedly, "Not that the tartan's anything wonderful.
It cost the people of this country a bonny penny one way or another.
There's nothing honest men will take to more readily than the breeks,
says I--the douce, honest breeks----"

"Unless it be the petticoats," murmured the Count, smiling, and his
fingers went to the pointing of his moustache.

"Nothing like the breeks. The philabeg was aye telling your parentage in
every line, so that you could not go over the moor to Lennox there but
any drover by the roadside kent you for a small clan or a family of
caterans. Some people will be grumbling that the old dress should be
proscribed, but what does it matter?"

"The tartan is forbidden?" guessed Count Victor, somewhat puzzled.

Doom f