ile suffering from severe nervous breakdown, and that the
remarkable doctrines of that speech need not be taken seriously. As I
had expected, the public put its own interpretation upon this tale.
Men took each other aside in clubs, women gossiped in drawing-rooms,
and in a week the Cargill scandal had assumed amazing proportions. The
popular version was that the Home Secretary had got very drunk at
Caerlaverock House, and still under the influence of liquor had
addressed the Young Liberals at Oldham. He was now in an Inebriates'
Home, and would not return to the House that session. I confess I
trembled when I heard this story, for it was altogether too libellous
to pass unnoticed. I believed that soon it would reach the ear of
Cargill, fishing quietly at Tomandhoul, and that then there would be
the deuce to pay.

Nor was I wrong. A few days later I went to see my aunt to find out
how the land lay. She was very bitter, I remember, about Claudia
Barriton. "I expected sympathy and help from her, and she never comes
near me. I can understand her being absorbed in her engagement, but I
cannot understand the frivolous way she spoke when I saw her yesterday.
She had the audacity to say that both Mr. Vennard and Mr. Cargill had
gone up in her estimation. Young people can be so heartless."

I would have defended Miss Barriton, but at this moment an astonishing
figure was announced. It was Mrs. Cargill in travelling dress, with a
purple bonnet and a green motor-veil. Her face was scarlet, whether
from excitement or the winds of Tomandhoul, and she charged down on us
like a young bull.

"We have come back," she said, "to meet our accusers."

"Accusers!" cried my aunt.

"Yes, accusers!" said the lady. "The abominable rumour about Alexander
has reached our ears. At this moment he is with the Prime Minister,
demanding an official denial. I have come to you, because it was here,
at your table, that Alexander is said to have fallen."

"I really don't know what you mean, Mrs. Cargill."

"I mean that Alexander is said to have become drunk while dining here,
to have been drunk when he spoke at Oldham, and to be now in a
Drunkard's Home." The poor lady broke down, "Alexander," she cried,
"who has been a teetotaller from his youth, and for thirty years an
elder in the U.P. Church! No form of intoxicant has ever been
permitted at our table. Even in illness the thing has never passed our
lips."

My aunt by this tim