anger underneath, I quietly took
the paper out of her hand between the tips of my thumb and first finger
(as if the contamination of her touch had made it unclean) and carried
it to the fire and burnt it.

This seemed to be the end of all things. The tall Mr. Eastcliff went
over to the open door and said:

"Deuced fine day for a motor drive, isn't it?"

That gentleman had hitherto shown no alacrity in establishing the truth
of Alma's excuse for the cruise on the ground of his visit to "his
friend who had taken a shoot in Skye;" but now he found himself too
deeply interested in the Inverness Meeting to remain longer, while the
rest of the party became so absorbed in the Perth and Ayr races,
salmon-fishing on the Tay, and stag-shooting in the deer-forests of
Invercauld, that within a week thereafter I had said good-bye to all of
them.

All save Alma.

I was returning from the hall after the departure of a group of my
guests when Alma followed me to my room and said:

"My dear, sweet girl, I want you to do me the greatest kindness."

She had to take her mother to New York shortly; but as "that dear old
dunce" was the worst of all possible sailors, it would be necessary to
wait for the largest of all possible steamers, and as the largest
steamers sailed from Liverpool, and Ellan was so near to that port,
perhaps I would not mind . . . just for a week or two longer. . . .

What _could_ I say? What I did say was what I had said before, with
equal weakness and indiscretion, but less than equal danger. A word,
half a word, and almost before it was spoken, Alma's arms were about my
neck and she was calling me her "dearest, sweetest, kindest friend in
the world."

My maid Price was present at this interview, and hardly had Alma left
the boudoir when she was twitching at my arm and whispering in my ear:

"My lady, my lady, don't you see what the woman wants? She's watching
you."

SEVENTY-THIRD CHAPTER

My husband was the next to go.

He made excuse of his Parliamentary duties. He might be three or four
weeks away, but meantime Alma would be with me, and in any case I was
not the sort of person to feel lonely.

Never having heard before of any devotion to his duty as a peer, I
asked if that was all that was taking him to London.

"Perhaps not all," he answered, and then, with a twang of voice and a
twitch of feature, he said:

"I'm getting sick of this God-forsaken place, and then . . . to tell you
the