their respective
rooms.

The pair were in accord. The future contained for Gabrielle
Heyburn--asleep and all unconscious of the dastardly conspiracy--only
that which must be hideous, tragic, fatal.

CHAPTER V

THE MURIES OF CONNACHAN

Elise, Lady Heyburn's French maid, discovered next morning that an
antique snake-bracelet was missing, a loss which occasioned great
consternation in the household.

Breakfast was late, and at table, when the loss was mentioned, Gabrielle
offered to drive over to Connachan in the car and make inquiry and
search. The general opinion was that it had been dropped in one of the
rooms, and was probably still lying there undiscovered.

The girl's offer was accepted, and half an hour later the smaller of the
two Glencardine cars--the "sixteen" Fiat--was brought round to the door
by Stokes, the smart chauffeur. Young Gellatly, fresh down from Oxford,
begged to be allowed to go with her, and his escort was accepted.

Then, in motor-cap and champagne-coloured dust-veil, Gabrielle mounted
at the wheel, with the young fellow at her side and Stokes in the back,
and drove away down the long avenue to the high-road.

The car was her delight. Never so happy was she as when, wrapped in her
leather-lined motor-coat, she drove the "sixteen." The six-cylinder
"sixty" was too powerful for her, but with the "sixteen" she ran
half-over Scotland, and was quite a common object on the Perth to
Stirling road. Possessed of nerve and full of self-confidence, she could
negotiate traffic in Edinburgh or Glasgow, and on one occasion had
driven her father the whole way from Glencardine up to London, a
distance of four hundred and fifty miles. Her fingers pressed the button
of the electric horn as they descended the sharp incline to the
lodge-gates; and, turning into the open road, she was soon speeding
along through Auchterarder village, skirted Tullibardine Wood, down
through Braco, and along by the Knaik Water and St. Patrick's Well into
Glen Artney, passing under the dark shadow of Dundurn, until there came
into view the broad waters of Loch Earn.

The morning was bright and cloudless, and at such a pace they went that
a perfect wall of dust stood behind them.

From the margin of the loch the ground rose for a couple of miles until
it reached a plateau upon which stood the fine, imposing Priory, the
ancestral seat of the Muries of Connachan. The aspect as they drove up
was very imposing. The winding r