of the room, he saw that she was on the
arm of Kilcraithie. Yet, as she passed him, she audaciously turned her
head, and in a mischievous affectation of jealous reproach, murmured:--

"So soon!"

At dinner she was too far removed for any conversation with him,
although from his seat by his hostess he could plainly see her saucy
profile midway up the table. But, to his surprise, her companion,
Kilcraithie, did not seem to be responding to her gayety. By turns
abstracted and feverish, his glances occasionally wandered towards the
end of the table where the consul was sitting. For a few moments he
believed that the affair of the flower, combined, perhaps, with the
overhearing of Mrs. MacSpadden's mischievous sentence, rankled in the
Laird's barbaric soul. But he became presently aware that Kilcraithie's
eyes eventually rested upon a quiet-looking blonde near the hostess. Yet
the lady not only did not seem to be aware of it, but her face was more
often turned towards the consul, and their eyes had once or twice met.
He had been struck by the fact that they were half-veiled but singularly
unimpassioned eyes, with a certain expression of cold wonderment and
criticism quite inconsistent with their veiling. Nor was he surprised
when, after a preliminary whispering over the plates, his hostess
presented him. The lady was the young wife of the middle-aged dignitary
who, seated further down the table, opposite Mrs. MacSpadden, was
apparently enjoying that lady's wildest levities. The consul bowed, the
lady leaned a little forward.

"We were saying what a lovely rose you had."

The consul's inward response was "Hang that flower!" His outward
expression was the modest query:--

"Is it SO peculiar?"

"No; but it's very pretty. Would you allow me to see it?"

Disengaging the flower from his buttonhole he handed it to her. Oddly
enough, it seemed to him that half the table was watching and listening
to them. Suddenly the lady uttered a little cry. "Dear me! it's full
of thorns; of course you picked and arranged it yourself, for any lady
would have wrapped something around the stalk!"

But here there was a burlesque outcry and a good-humored protest from
the gentlemen around her against this manifestly leading question. "It's
no fair! Ye'll not answer her--for the dignity of our sex." Yet in the
midst of it, it suddenly occurred to the consul that there HAD been a
slip of paper wrapped around it, which had come off and remained