skine asked, abashed by this
directness.

"He told me that he had asked her three times a day ever since they
met, and I, for one, hope that she'll think twenty times of him to once
she thinks of that devilish John Montrose."

I cared nothing for the silly old Mrs. Erskine, but my heart bled for
her daughter, who became a piteous white at the turn the talk had
taken, and put her handkerchief to her face, affecting a cough. Nancy
saw this and her heart spoke.

"Dandy Carmichael," she says, "talks to you, Mrs. MacGillavorich, to
please ye--you lay too much stress by what he says."

But the italicizing lady was routed, and as Janet watched her departure
from the window she said:

"Mark my words, John Stair! she's fetched that girl here to marry her
to Danvers Carmichael. I've not known Anne Erskine all these years for
nothing. The old cat!" she cried.

CHAPTER XV

CONCERNING DANVERS CARMICHAEL AND HIS GRACE OF BORTHWICKE

It was from the time of the garden party on that Danvers Carmichael and
his Grace of Borthwicke were, to speak rudely, walking into each other
at every turn of Stair, and it is a task beyond me to tell the strain
which came into our affairs with the entrance of Montrose.

Subtle, subtle, subtle! It was the word which followed him everywhere,
and it was as difficult to manage him as to handle quicksilver. He
flattered with a contradiction; saw nothing unmeant for him to see;
bent to the judgment of him with whom he talked; was supple in speech;
modest, even to the point of regarding himself as a somewhat humorous
failure; told long stories with something of a stagelike jauntiness, of
fights in his boyhood, in India, in the House of Lords--and by his own
telling was ever the one worsted, the one upon whom the laugh had
turned.

For myself, I confessed openly then, as I do now, that I found him the
most diverting person I have ever met, and took such pleasure in his
company that upon me should rest much of the dirdum of having him at
Stair.

There were two things, however, which annoyed me no little concerning
his frequent visits to my home. The first of these was the attitude
toward him of Father Michel. I was coming out of the new chapel with
his grace one morning when we encountered the good father, and I was
struck with amazement to see the duke grow suddenly white and give a
start backward, with a quick indrawing of the breath which made a
choking sound in his throat, and that Fat