'll just run up and see if maw's coming down.
She'd admire to see you." Then she stopped, hesitated, and as she rose
added, "Then a laird's wife wouldn't be Lady anything, anyway, would
she?"

"She certainly would acquire no title merely through her marriage."

The young girl laughed again, nodded, and disappeared. The consul,
amused yet somewhat perplexed over the naive brusqueness of the
interview, waited patiently. Presently she returned, a little out of
breath, but apparently still enjoying some facetious retrospect, and
said, "Maw will be down soon." After a pause, fixing her bright eyes
mischievously on the consul, she continued:--

"Did you see much of Malcolm?"

"I saw him only once."

"What did you think of him?"

The consul in so brief a period had been unable to judge.

"You wouldn't think I was half engaged to him, would you?"

The consul was obliged again to protest that in so short an interview he
had been unable to conceive of Malcolm's good fortune.

"I know what you mean," said the girl lightly. "You think he's a crank.
But it's all over now; the engagement's off."

"I trust that this does not mean that you doubt his success?"

The lady shrugged her shoulders disdainfully. "That's all right enough,
I reckon. There's a hundred thousand dollars in the syndicate. Maw put
in twenty thousand, and Custer's bound to make it go--particularly as
there's some talk of a compromise. But Malcolm's a crank, and I reckon
if it wasn't for the compromise the syndicate wouldn't have much show.
Why, he didn't even know that the McHulishes had no title."

"Do you think he has been suffering under a delusion in regard to his
relationship?"

"No; he was only a fool in the way he wanted to prove it. He actually
got these boys to think it could be filibustered into his possession.
Had a sort of idea of 'a rising in the Highlands,' you know, like that
poem or picture--which is it? And those fool boys, and Custer among
them, thought it would be great fun and a great spree. Luckily, maw had
the gumption to get Watson to write over about it to one of his friends,
a Mr.--Mr.--MacFen, a very prominent man."

"Perhaps you mean Sir James MacFen," suggested the consul. "He's a
knight. And what did HE say?" he added eagerly.

"Oh, he wrote a most sensible letter," returned the lady, apparently
mollified by the title of Watson's adviser, "saying that there was
little doubt, if any, that if the American McHulishes wanted