indow,
on the sill. Presently a new, sweet, half-forgotten fragrance came
floating in, and Sheila almost forgot the success of the experiment in
the half-delighted, half-sad reminiscences called up by the scent
of the peat. Mairi failed to see how any one could willfully smoke
a house--any one, that is to say, who did not save the smoke for his
thatch. And who was so particular as Sheila had been about having the
clothes come in from the washing dried so that they should not retain
this very odor that seemed now to delight her?

At last the room was finished, and Sheila contemplated it with much
satisfaction. The table was laid, and on the white cloth stood the
bottles most familiar to Borva. The peat-smoke still lingered in the
air: she could not have wished anything to be better.

Then she went off to look after the luncheon, and Mairi was permitted
to go down and explore the mysteries of the kitchen. The servants
were not accustomed to this interference and oversight, and might have
resented it, only that Sheila had proved a very good mistress to them,
and had shown, too, that she would have her own way when she wanted
it. Suddenly, as Sheila was explaining to Mairi the use of some
particular piece of mechanism, she heard a sound that made her heart
jump. It was now but half-past one, and yet that was surely her
husband's foot in the hall. For a moment she was too bewildered to
know what to do. She heard him go straight into the very room she had
been decorating, the door of which she had left open. Then, as she
went up stairs, with her heart still beating fast, the first thing
that met her eye was a tartan shawl belonging to Mairi that had been
accidentally left in the passage. Her husband must have seen it.

"Sheila, what nonsense is this?" he said.

He was evidently in a hurry, and yet she could not answer: her heart
was throbbing too quickly.

"Look here," he said: "I wish you'd give up this grotto-making till
to-morrow. Mrs. Kavanagh, Mrs. Lorraine and Lord Arthur Redmond are
coming here to luncheon at two. I suppose you can get something decent
for them. What is the matter? What is the meaning of all this?"

And then his eyes rested on the tartan shawl, which he had really not
noticed before.

"Who is in the house?" he said. "Have you asked some washerwoman to
lunch?"

Sheila managed at last to say, "It is Mairi come from Stornoway. I was
thinking you would be surprised to see her when you came in."