Sallie had been far too happily occupied since she had come to Loquhariot to have been conscious of the wheels within wheels revolving about her there.

She could scarcely at once accustom herself to look upon the great, grey, age-old castle as her home; but there was Janet M\'Kissock always eager to help her in that respect, with endless stories of bygone days which made the place seem always more familiar and friendly to her. She grew, by degrees, to know and love it almost as if she had lived there all her life.

It was much more difficult to grasp the idea that the whole of the beautiful white world beyond its windows was also hers, and hers alone; from the rugged, snow-clad mountains towering behind and on either hand, even to the Small Isles, like bergs in the sun amid the smoking seas in that turbulent weather. But Slyne missed no opportunity to impress that important fact upon her. And she was finding it always easier to forget her unhappy past, to enjoy the marvellous present and the most inspiriting part in it, to leave the over-difficult future to evolve itself.

The men and women about the place were all devoted to her. She had very soon won the staunch good-will of the cottagers at the cliff-foot. And her soft sway was everywhere undisputed, although Slyne had at first been inclined to contest it himself. But he soon seemed to realise that it would be best, in the meantime, to order events from the background and in her voice.

He had shown some disposition, too, to question the extent of the liberty she might now assume to herself. But he had not pressed that point unduly either, and they continued on that footing of pleasant comradeship which he had been at such ceaseless pains to promote. His debonair courtesy to her, his easy deference to most of her wishes, were very different indeed from his off-hand manner of former days. And she could not but be grateful to him, in the meantime, for the almost over-ample fulfilment of his original promise.

Regarding her pledge to him, he had said nothing more, although she spent long afternoons and evenings in his company when the weather was at its worst, while Mr. Jobling was away. Captain Dove left the two of them very much to themselves, and Slyne had offered to teach her to play billiards, to pass the time.

She would have been entirely content, indeed, but for the hardship her coming had entailed on Justin Carthew. She had met him more than once out of doors, and he had always seemed pleased to see her, but—it was of common report that he was a poor man, and she could not help feeling that he had shown himself very much more generous to her than she to him. She found comfort, however, in the conclusion that circumstances were quite beyond her control, and that he would understand better by and by the complications through which she had had to find her way as best she could.

She had gone down to the village on the afternoon when the Olive Branch arrived in the loch, and she walked back as far as the castle with Carthew. The reappearance of that ill-omened craft had alarmed her more than a little, and she could see that Carthew was becoming always more sorely puzzled. But he had promised her to await events without question for three short months; and he was keeping his promise loyally. She could have told him nothing, in any case.

She met Slyne in the hall, on her way indoors, and he reassured her as to her perfect safety from any further risk of evil-doing by Captain Dove. He pointed out, too, that the steamer\'s crew was too scanty now to cope with the force he could call to her aid from the village in case the old man should attempt to make any mischief, which was most unlikely. And she went on to her own cosy quarters, quite content again.

She was changing her outdoor dress for one of her pretty Parisian tea-gowns, when word was brought her that the Duchess of Dawn and Lord Ingoldsby had come across the mountains to pay her a call.

She remembered Lord Ingoldsby, and wondered what could have brought him to Loquhariot. The idea of entertaining a duchess dismayed her a little; she had no notion at all what the conventions called for under circumstances so unusual in her own experience—although Slyne had been at some pains to explain a number of other conventions to her. But she went along to the blue drawing-room at once, and was relieved to find Slyne there before her, unconcernedly chatting with a very beautiful young woman in a sadly splashed habit, her back to the fire, booted feet a little apart, hunting-crop in clasped hands, laughter in her clear eyes; while Lord Ingoldsby, looking much less imbecile and more of a man in his travel-soiled riding-kit, stood listening gloomily.

His face cleared at sight of Sallie, however. "Here\'s Lady Josceline, Aunt Jane," he cried, and the duchess, after a single swift, appraising glance at her, came forward with outstretched hands and kissed her without any more ado.

"Oh! my dear," said the duchess impulsively, "you can\'t imagine what a relief you are. Ingoldsby has been simply raving about you, and—I was so anxious, don\'t you know. But I don\'t blame him now.

"I\'ve seen you before, too—one night at the Savoy. If I had only known then who you were—But some one said you were a Miss Harris! You\'ve kept it all such a close secret! We wouldn\'t have known even now if we hadn\'t heard, quite by chance, that the beacon had been lighted one night. And we\'ve been wondering ever since—So you must tell me all about everything now, if you will." And she drew Sallie down beside her on a low couch at one side of the white marble fireplace, leaving the two men to their own devices while she went on to explain herself no less volubly.

"It was madness, of course, to cross the Pass in weather like this, but—Ingoldsby would give me no peace; and I\'ve been so curious myself to find out who could be here. I\'m your nearest neighbour, you know, although Castle Dawn is ten miles away; those are worse than twenty anywhere else. So, when the rain stopped this forenoon we set out—and here we are, covered with mud! The road\'s in a dreadful state, but you must come over and stay with me as soon as the bridges are mended. We\'re going to be great friends. I knew your father—although I\'m not quite so old as you might imagine from that, for I wasn\'t out of short petticoats the last time he spoke to me. And, as for being the aunt of that scapegrace there, he\'s five years older than I am in years—and fifty in—"

"Don\'t be too rough on a fellah, Aunt Jane!" interrupted her noble nephew, who had been regarding Sallie with fixed vacuity through his eye-glass. "An\' don\'t you believe all you hear about me, Lady Josceline: I\'m not so black as I\'m painted, at any rate."

"He\'s been simply raving about you," the duchess declared again, in a laughing whisper. "I couldn\'t imagine what had brought him down to Dawn in midwinter, until he confided in me that he had been searching the wide world for you ever since he met you first: and he imagined that you might, after all, be here, at home."

She had a great many questions to ask Sallie then, questions which Sallie, in such a situation, might have found it very difficult to answer but for Jasper Slyne\'s sharp ears and tactful tongue. And the duchess was not slow to understand.

"Of course you can\'t confide in me yet," she declared laughingly. "But some day you must tell me all your adventures. Your home-coming after all these years will make a nine days\' wonder once the papers get to hear of it."

A servant came in to light the lamps, and Slyne sauntered to a window before the curtains were drawn.

"It\'s snowing again, Ingoldsby," said he. "You won\'t get back to Dawn to-night."

The duchess looked a little alarmed, but was soon laughing again.

"All right," she agreed, in response to Sallie\'s prompt proffer of hospitality. "I\'ll be most happy to stay over-night—and so will Ingoldsby, I\'m sure."

"I\'ll go and let Mrs. M\'Kissock know," Slyne volunteered. "Will you look into the gun-room when you pass, Lady Josceline?"

"Is old Janet still here?" the duchess asked as he left the room. "I must have a chat with her. She and I used to be great friends before—when Torquil St. Just was still alive and my mother would bring me over to Loquhariot when she came to call on yours. I was Jane Gairloch in those days."

Lord Ingoldsby sat listening very patiently for a time while they talked to each other, and then he became possessed by a strangled cough—to which the duchess paid no attention.

"You might give a fellah a chance, Aunt Jane," he at length suggested desperately, and she rose from the couch with a most penitent expression.

"Bless my heart, child!" she said. "I had almost forgotten—But—I\'ll go and talk to old Janet now." And she disappeared without other apology.

Sallie looked surprised. But Lord Ingoldsby, having cleared his throat again, claimed her attention.

"You\'ve no idea, Lady Josceline," he said hurriedly, "what a deuce of a bat I\'ve been in for nearly a fortnight. I was afraid I\'d never find you again. And, now that I\'ve found you, don\'t y\'know, what I want to say to you is—It\'s very difficult to express—But I mean—What I\'m trying to tell you is that I thought we might maybe make a match of it. Will you marry me, Lady Josceline?"

Sallie looked still more surprised. But she was not slow in answering such a preposterous question.

"I can\'t," she said, concisely.

"But why not?" he cried. "For heaven\'s sake! don\'t go so fast. Give me time to—"

"Time couldn\'t make any difference," she said, seeing that he was very much in earnest. "I can\'t—"

"But—why not?" he insisted. "Is—is there some one else already? It\'s not that fellah I met in Monte Carlo with you, I\'m sure; he\'s such a rank outsider—you couldn\'t care for him, I\'m sure. And why not give me just a chance to show you—

"There\'s nothing I wouldn\'t do for you, Lady Josceline. Give me just a chance."

"I can\'t," she repeated for the third time, and he stared at her as if in abject despair.

"Why can\'t you?" he demanded in a difficult, husky voice.

She could scarcely answer that question, a question which he had no right to ask. But—she felt sorry for him in his very obvious disappointment.

"If you care to ask Captain Dove, perhaps he will tell you," she said, unable to think of any other safe way out of that difficulty, and not caring very much what Captain Dove might say.

But Lord Ingoldsby was not so easily to be got rid of. He stayed where he was, arguing and imploring by turns until his youthful aunt appeared again, looking somewhat serious; she seemed to take in the situation between them at a shrewd glance.

He left the room then for a little, and when he returned Sallie and the duchess were on the point of retiring.

"I\'m going to have a hot bath and a rest before dinner, Ingoldsby," his aunt informed him.

"Your rooms will be ready now, too," Sallie added, unwilling to be left alone there with him again. And he went off, very glumly, under convoy of a servant, toward the bachelor apartments in the Warder\'s Tower.

Sallie saw the duchess settled in the suite which had been prepared for her, and having provided her with a plentiful choice of evening frocks, went on to the gun-room, to see what Slyne wanted with her.

Captain Dove and he were seated on either side of the fireplace, and looked round rather uncertainly as she came into the room.

"I\'ve made the duchess quite comfortable, Jasper," she said with a smile, "and she\'s been exceedingly nice to me. I hope you\'ll look as well after Lord Ingoldsby."

"I\'ve told them to give him the run of my wardrobe," Slyne answered indifferently. "So he\'ll be all right.

"And—what I wanted to say to you, Sallie, is that—I\'ve ............