things that yon Whistlecrankie left," said the
gillie gravely, with a stolid glance around the room.

"Certainly," said the consul; "help yourself." He continued his dressing
as the man began to rummage in the empty drawers. The consul had his
back towards him, but, looking in the glass of the dressing-table, he
saw that the gillie was stealthily watching him. Suddenly he passed
before the mantelpiece and quickly slipped the rose from its glass into
his hand.

"I'll trouble you to put that back," said the consul quietly, without
turning round. The gillie slid a quick glance towards the door, but the
consul was before him. "I don't think THAT was left by your master," he
said in an ostentatiously calm voice, for he was conscious of an absurd
and inexplicable tumult in his blood, "and perhaps you'd better put it
back."

The man looked at the flower with an attention that might have been
merely ostentatious, and replaced it in the glass.

"A thocht it was hiss."

"And I think it isn't," said the consul, opening the door.

Yet when the man had passed out he was by no means certain that the
flower was not Kilcraithie's. He was even conscious that if the young
Laird had approached him with a reasonable explanation or appeal he
would have yielded it up. Yet here he was--looking angrily pale in the
glass, his eyes darker than they should be, and with an unmistakable
instinct to do battle for this idiotic gage! Was there some morbid
disturbance in the air that was affecting him as it had Kilcraithie?
He tried to laugh, but catching sight of its sardonic reflection in
the glass became grave again. He wondered if the gillie had been
really looking for anything his master had left--he had certainly TAKEN
nothing. He opened one or two of the drawers, and found only a woman's
tortoiseshell hairpin--overlooked by the footman when he had emptied
them for the consul's clothes. It had been probably forgotten by some
fair and previous tenant to Kilcraithie. The consul looked at his
watch--it was time to go down. He grimly pinned the fateful flower in
his buttonhole, and half-defiantly descended to the drawing-room.

Here, however, he was inclined to relax when, from a group of pretty
women, the bright gray eyes of Mrs. MacSpadden caught his, were suddenly
diverted to the lapel of his coat, and then leaped up to his again with
a sparkle of mischief. But the guests were already pairing off in dinner
couples, and as they passed out