.

"We needn't sleep in it," she whispered in Meadows's ear. "There are two
sofas."

Meanwhile Miss Field and others flitted about, adding all the luxuries
of daily use to the splendour of the rooms. Gardeners appeared bringing
in flowers, and an anxious maid, on behalf of her ladyship, begged that
Mrs. Meadows would change her travelling dress for a comfortable white
tea-gown, before tea-time, suggesting another "creation" in black and
silver for dinner. Doris, frowning and reluctant, would have refused;
but Miss Field said softly "Won't you? Rachel will be so distressed if
she mayn't do these little things for you. Of course she doesn't deserve
it; but--"

"Oh yes--I'll put them on--if she likes," said Doris, hurriedly. "It
doesn't matter."

Miss Field laughed. "I don't know where all these things come from," she
said, looking at the array. "Rachel buys half of them for her maids, I
should think--she never wears them. Well, now I shall leave you till
tea-time. Tea will be on the lawn--Mr. Meadows knows where. By the
way--" she looked, smiling, at Meadows--"they've put off the Duke. If
you only knew what that means."

She named a great Scotch name, the chief of the ancient house to which
Lady Dunstable belonged. Miss Field described how this prince of Dukes
paid a solemn visit every year to Franick Castle, and the eager
solicitude--almost agitation--with which the visit was awaited, by Lady
Dunstable in particular.

"You don't mean," cried Doris, "that there is anybody in the whole world
who frightens Lady Dunstable?"

"As she frightens us? Yes!--on this one day of the year we are all
avenged. Rachel, metaphorically, sits on a stool and tries to please. To
put off 'the Duke' by telephone!--what a horrid indignity! But I've just
inflicted it."

Mattie Field smiled, and was just going away when she was arrested by a
timid question from Doris.

"Please--shall Arthur go down to Pitlochry and engage a room for Miss
Wigram?"

Miss Field turned in amusement.

"A room! Why, it's all ready! She is your lady-in-waiting."

And taking Doris by the arm she led her to inspect a spacious apartment
on the other side of a passage, where the Lady Alice or Lady Mary
without whom Royal Highnesses do not move about the world was generally
put up.

"I feel like Christopher Sly," said Doris, surveying the scene, with her
hands in her jacket pockets. "So will she. But never mind!"

* * * * *