Drawing near Edinburgh, and encountering the first tram lines, it was pretty to watch Barrie's excitement. To understand, one had to remember that this was by far the biggest town the child had ever seen, so that even the outskirts impressed her as something stupendous.

As if for her pleasure, the rain stopped. "The nice, quiet man" uncovered us pampered passengers, and as we went on again, Edinburgh the beautiful, lying before us like a shadowy blue and purple map, began to take shape as a city of spires and monuments and gardens, and reveal its unique marvels. At this moment, I had my uses. Though it was my first sight of the Athens of Great Britain, I've fagged it all up so faithfully for the book that I know what everything is and what most things mean. I ventured to point out the Salisbury Crags, and Arthur's Seat watching over the town and Castle like a guardian lion. It was all very well for Barrie to come to Edinburgh to find her mother, but I didn't want her to miss realizing that she was entering perhaps the most beautiful city in the world, and one of the most historic, after Rome. I knew if I didn't give her this impression Somerled would, and wickedly I wished her to be primed by me before he got his chance. The only trouble was that I hadn't enough time to make her see fully all the glorious contrasts which ought to strike the mind at first sight of Edinburgh, where Yesterday and To-day gaze at and criticise each other across a gulf material and imaginary. Even though Somerled brought the Dragon down to snail's pace, I couldn't do the subject justice, with my best eloquence snatched at random from notebooks. Mrs. James would keep interrupting with quotations from "the doctor's" famous unfinished MSS. I would almost have preferred the silent Vedder as a chaperon. But there was some comfort in the certainty that Somerled was envying me the place to which I'd been appointed by himself. As he was driving through traffic, and couldn't glance round, he was unable to see how Barrie's eyes wandered from the points I indicated to others which she selected for herself.

My dramatic announcement, that where now rises the solid gray mass of old Edinburgh once crouched the wattled houses of the first inhabitants, scarcely caught her attention. She would gaze dreamily at Arthur's Seat, because Mrs. James had just unfolded a meretricious legend to the effect that King Arthur used to sit there and watch his troops. And the dark crag of the Castle, with its thousand years of history, its crowning walls and towers, its chasms of purple shadow, riveted her fancy when I would have discoursed on the modern charm of Princes Street—that "half a street" so much more splendid than any whole street ever planned.

"The doctor told me, I remember," said Mrs. James, "that at the end of the eighteenth century, when they wanted to build the new Edinburgh, they had to bribe people by giving them large tracts of land in order to make them move out of the old town, or they wouldn't budge. Sometimes a quarter of what they presented to one man in those days is worth a hundred thousand pounds now."

In spite of the girl's excited admiration of the goddess-town, her first question on getting out of the car was to Somerled about her mother. "I think, if she stops at a hotel, she's likely to choose this one," he said. "That's why I've brought you here."

"Thank you," she answered. "Thank you for everything." Then it was my turn to envy him.

She was pale, her face drained of colour, and extraordinarily spiritual as she stood in the big hall, waiting to hear what Somerled would be told at the desk. He came back soon, and announced that Mrs. Ballantree MacDonald had engaged a suite at this hotel, but it was not known whether she would arrive that night or on Monday morning.

"Meanwhile, I've taken a room for you adjoining Mrs. James, as usual," Somerled said. "When your mother arrives and you have met, she can make any new arrangement for you she chooses."

"And you—will go on—with the others?" asked Barrie, catching her breath in that engaging way she has when she is excited and trying to control emotion.

"I shall go on—sooner or later," replied Somerled. "But—I shall have a look round Edinburgh first, and see what has happened to my old haunts."

I thought her face brightened.

"Aline and I must 'do' Edinburgh too, of course," said I.

She smiled, but as if she were thinking of something else. And it was then that suddenly, for the first time, I felt capable of developing into an able-bodied villain—in fact, committing any crime which could transfer from him to me the kind of look she had given Somerled.

"I must of course go back to Carlisle and my work, as soon as I have paid my respects to Mrs. Ballantree MacDonald," remarked Mrs. James.

"We'll talk of all that to-morrow," said Somerled, who, I suppose, engaged her at so much a thousand words—I mean, so much a day—as chaperon for his "ward." "Whatever happens, you must see Edinburgh while you're here. And besides, it's on the cards that I may be able to give you a pleasant little surprise before you leave Scotland. I rather hoped for details of it to-day; but there's nothing interesting in the mail they handed me at the desk" (he said this like a native-born American), "so we must have patience till to-morrow."

"A surprise!" echoed Mrs. James, looking quite pretty and young, as she surprisingly does sometimes. "Does Barrie know?"

"No," said Somerled. "Barrie doesn't know."

There was just time to go to our new rooms and make ourselves respectable for church, no light thing in Scotland. Aline and the Vannecks hadn't turned up yet, but, knowing them and knowing Blunderbore, I thought nothing strange of the delay. Aline's game was, of course, to make Somerled jealous of George Vanneck, her old and well-worn chattel, whom she at heart despises, and to seem not too eager for his (Somerled's) society, while I, attached to his party by special arrangement, could protect her interests—and my own.

Somerled had ordered Vedder to wait with the Dragon when the luggage had been taken down, and thus we saved ourselves some minutes which we should have lost in walking. We left the car as soon as possible, however, and plunged into the beauty and squalor of the High Street on foot. I annexed Barrie as a companion, and Somerled did not fight for her. Quietly he contented, or seemed to content, himself with Mrs. James, and my impression was confirmed that, whether he wanted Barrie or not, he was deliberately standing aside in my favour, giving me my "chance"—perhaps to test Barrie or me—or both. Who could tell? Not I. Somerled is hard to read, even for a professional character-vivisectionist.

"Are you too much excited, and taken up with thoughts of your mother, to care about all this?" I asked the girl.

She admitted that she was excited, and perhaps a little absent-minded; but "all this," as I called it, was too wonderful not to capture her interest in spite of everything.

"Think of Queen Mary and her four Maries, and Darnley, and Rizzio, and Bothwell, and John Knox passing along as we pass now, on their way up to Holyrood?" said I.

"Yes. Oh, yes! I do think of them," she answered obediently, her eyes straying into the shadows of wynd or close, or tracing out the detail of some carved gargoyle on an old facade.

"Only you think of yourself more——"

"Not myself exactly. But——"

"What then?"

"Well—one thinks of queer things in a place like this, full of romances and—and love stories. I was wondering——"

"Yes. Don't be afraid to tell me. We're fellow-authors, you know—brother and sister of the pen."

"That's it! Brother and sister, aren't we? How nice!"

"Of the pen," I amended hastily.

"Story writers must know all about love," she hesitated.

"We do," I encouraged her to go on.

"Then how, if you were writing a story (I'm thinking I may want to do one), would you make a girl sure whether she'd fallen in love with somebody?"

"I should make her," I answered cautiously, with an earthquake in my heart, "I should make her feel—er—a sort of electric thrill when he touched her, or looked into her eyes. I should make her feel that nothing was worth doing unless the man was with her."

"I know!" the girl murmured. "She would feel, wouldn't she, as if he must be there—as if she just couldn't go on living if he weren't."

"That's it," I said. "You've described it graphically."

She regarded me with sudden suspicion. "Thank you very much," she replied primly. "I'll take your advice and have it like that in my story, if I ever write it. What a wonderful old street this is! It's full of ghosts of kings and queens, and noblemen and great ladies, and soldiers and robbers, every one of them more important than the people we see."

I couldn't tempt her back to the dangerous subject and soon I prudently ceased to try. But she had given me what I've heard described as a "nasty jar." Barrie MacDonald wouldn't have appealed to Basil Norman for a definition of love if she'd thought of him as a man and not a brother! The side of me nearest my heart hated Somerled, marching on ahead, looking singularly attractive and gallant, much too interesting for a mere millionaire. And the side of me which has telephonic communication with my brain liked and approved of him, understanding how and why his personality made a strong appeal to most women. "You've had pretty well everything you've asked life to give you so far," I said to his back, "but this girl isn't your kind of girl. It's my sister you ought to want."

Suddenly, as we drew near to the crowned church of St. Giles—the old High Kirk—there came to our ears the skirling of pipes. Barrie started and stopped. Somerled glanced round quickly, his eyes keen. Would she prove her Highland blood? Would her heart beat for the pipes? That was the question in his look.

The girl was taken by surprise. We others knew what we had come for, and what to expect. She had no idea, except that she was being conducted decently to church.

At the first wail of the pipes the blood of her ancestors sprang to her face. She clasped her hands together, listening in silence to the barbaric music, her lips apart, her eyes aglow. And all this for the call of the pipes! Not yet had she caught her first glimpse of the pipers; but an instant later the tall figures came swinging proudly into sight, plaids swaying like tartan tassels, kilts moving with that wave-about-to-break rhythm given to their garments only by inspired pipers.

Even I felt a thrill as if each nerve in my body were a string drawn suddenly taut, but I was gloomily conscious that the Celtic souls of Somerled and Barrie felt more than I was capable of feeling, a mysterious something which drew the two together at this instant. Physically, I stood between them, but I knew that my body was no obstacle to the lightning flash between their spirits.

Not a word said one of us as the goodly company of soldiers swept by in a rich-coloured cloud of their own music. But when all had disappeared into the church, Somerled and Barrie looked at each other. His eyes praised her for a braw and bonnie lassie who had responded in fine style to her first-heard pipes, her first-seen kilt; yet his lips had nothing to say but, "Well, what do you think of them?"

"Think?" echoed Barrie. "I think it's perfectly unbelievable how any girl can ever marry a man who isn't a Highlander and has no right to the kilt!"

There was one for Somerled and one against me; but it only got my blood up. Many a girl says a certain thing, and does another when her time comes.

"If I were rich," she went on, "I'd live in a castle in the Highlands, and I'd have it full, simply swarming, with pipers, playing me awake in the morning and to sleep at night."

"I should like you to see your own castle of Dunelin at Dhrum. There are plenty of pipers there. I've kept them all on, meaning them to play for me some day," said Somerled, who had just then forgotten, I think, the existence of myself and Mrs. James, and failed to observe that in the distance all Miss Barribel MacDonald's missing young men were assembling, as if to the call of the blood—the soldier from Carlisle, who had collected a friend, and the American contingent of four.

"My own castle?" Barrie repeated.

"You know what I mean. It would be yours if you'd been a boy. As you aren't——"

"It's yours!" laughed she.

"Not by right of blood. Only by right of money."

"Well, that's the sovereign right," she insisted, pleased with her own pun.

Then the victims of our miniature Circe arrived in the foreground, shook hands, bandied jokes, and became the most prominent figures in the picture. For the first time I was glad to see them, nor did I bear the youths ill-will for separating me from our beneficent enchantress in the stately church with historic banners. They had separated her from Somerled as well.

After service was over, we stopped only for a look at the stones which mark in the pavement the old Heart of Midlothian, and then hurried back to the hotel, escaping the Americans, but clung to by Douglas and his cousin, another Douglas, who hospitably bade us all to visit him at all his houses. He mentioned several, dotted about in various parts of the country; but when he heard that Miss MacDonald was retiring from the party in a day or two, he ceased to press the general invitation.

There was news of Mrs. Bal at the Caledonian. A maid had arrived who thought that her mistress would not follow until the evening: Somerled asked Barrie, therefore—rather wistfully, I thought—if she would care to go out again in the afternoon. "It will make the time pass for you," he added. I sympathized with him against my will. It was to be his last day of "guardianship," yet he was generous enough to invite me; and not only that, but to let me sit in the car with Barrie and Mrs. James, on the way to Arthur's Seat. After this effort, however, human nature had its way, and he kept her to himself for the rest of the afternoon. It was the first time he had done this since I fastened myself upon the party. To-day, it was evidently by deliberate intention, not accident. It was as if he said to himself, "These last hours shall be mine." And I wondered if indeed he actually meant them to be last hours. For my part, I certainly meant nothing of the sort. Mrs. Bal, or no Mrs. Bal, Aline or no Aline, Book or no Book, I didn't intend to walk out of Barrie's life without trying to win a foothold in it for the future.

If I had an opinion on such matters, I should have said, up to a week ago, that I didn't approve of marriage for a girl under twenty, as she couldn't possibly know her own mind; but Barrie is the kind of exception to prove any rule. She ought to have a man to take care of her.

Before five we started back, for Mrs. James thought Barrie needed a nap. It appeared that she hadn't slept the night before, owing to the excitement of suspense; and now "her eyes must be bright for their first look at her mother."

Drawn up at the pavement in front of the hotel as we slowed down was a big blue car, and another smaller one close behind, both of the same make, and evidently belonging to the same people. We had to choose between waiting for them to disgorge passengers and unload luggage, or get out at a distance from the entrance. We took the latter course, but at the hotel door Barrie stopped us. She wore no veil; and though it was to Somerled, not me, she spoke, I could see that her face was pale, her eyes dilated.

"Do you think that can be my mother arriving?" she asked in a low voice.

He looked back at the lady who, at this instant, was springing from the blue car to the pavement, her hand in that of a man who offered unnecessary help. It was a tall figure in a long cloak the colour of a duck's egg, and it gave the effect of willowy slimness despite the disguising mantle. A close-fitting toque of greenish grayish blue covered the small head, and the face was practically invisible behind a thick veil of the same mystic colour; but as the lady turned her long throat for a look at the other car, there was a glimpse of banded red hair under the toque, and a curl or two at the nape of the neck.

The two women in the smaller car also had red hair. They were not veiled, and their neat black hats and jackets somehow advertised them unmistakably as ladies' maids. Neither was pretty, in spite of her flaming crown of glory; and neither was young.

The remembrance of an "interview" with Mrs. Bal which I had read in some paper flashed back to my mind. She had told the reporter that "only red-haired servants could understand the moods of a red-haired mistress," and that, after disastrous experiences with "dull creatures who had no temperament themselves, and couldn't live with any one who had," she decided to engage only red-haired maids.

Perhaps Somerled knew of this idiosyncrasy, or else he recognized the tall form in spite of its wrappings, for he said, "Yes, I think very likely it is your mother, Barrie. But we can't be sure; and in any case I strongly advise you not to try and speak to her here in the street."

"Oh, I won't till she gets her veil off," said Barrie breathlessly, "but I must wait and see her come into the hall. I——"

Somerled gently but firmly drew the girl into the hotel. Mrs. James and I followed. Evidently Somerled wanted to persuade Barrie that it would be better to keep out of the lady's way as she entered, and meet later, if indeed this were Mrs. Ballantree MacDonald; but the girl seemed hardly to hear his murmured arguments. She did yield far enough to let him lead her a little aside, but she took up her stand again where she could see the blue figure enter. She did not speak, or insist upon her own way, yet I think it would have been impossible to move her without using brute force. Somerled realized that nothing was to be done with the child for the moment, and accordingly did nothing, except to stand beside her. Mrs. James and I took our places mechanically on the girl's other side, though no word passed between us.

Never had I seen Barrie so beautiful. Though a brilliant colour burned on her cheeks, she looked curiously spiritual. Her lovely body seemed a crystal lamp through which shone the light of an eager soul.

A minute of this silent suspense, and the lady in the blue-gray cloak came in, followed by the two red-haired maids carrying such valued possessions as no hotel porter must be allowed to touch: little handbags, gold monogrammed; a long coat of blue Russian fox; silk-covered air cushions, and delicately bound books. Behind came employes of the hotel, bearing rugs and other luggage; but the big man who had helped the lady from the car did not appear. We had seen his back only, yet the impression lingered in my mind that he was no servant, but a gentleman, a personage of worldly as well as physical magnitude.

The lady went toward the desk, then paused, and with an imperious and impatient little gesture directed one of her maids to untie her thick blue veil. The knot was loosened with a skilful touch, and the face of Mrs. Ballantree MacDonald was revealed. For a moment or two we saw it only in profile, as she talked with the people at the desk, and bade the elder of her two women write in the visitors' book. Then, as she turned away to go to the lift, we were favoured with the full blaze of her celebrated beauty.

It is three years since I saw her last, in America, but she has not changed, unless to look younger. She might not be a day over twenty-five, and her figure is as slender, as spirited, and as graceful as a girl's. She advanced more or less in our direction, though without seeing us, and her walk was peculiarly attractive—slightly self-conscious and suggestive of the actress, perhaps, but light as a smoke wreath. If she makes up off the stage, she is so skilful that she beats Nature at Nature's own game. Her complexion, with the gray-blue veil flowing in folds on either side her face, looked pearly, and the rippling lines of her red hair glittered like new copper. It was impossible she should not know that every one in the big hall was gazing at her; but such was her self-control, gained in long experience as a beauty and popular favourite, that she seemed not to see any one. Hers was not a morose remoteness, however. That might have offended admirers and kept money out of the theatre. It was the radiant unawareness of a passing sunbeam.

A few more seconds and this charming figure, framed in floating clouds of chiffon, would have reached the door of the lift, to be wafted out of sight like a pantomime fairy. But Barrie could no longer be held within bounds, for the great moment of her life had come. She darted away from us, her figure as tall, more youthful, more willowy, and more charming than the other, though singularly like in movement and in outline. The resemblance between the beautiful woman and the beautiful girl produced the effect of contrast, and ruthlessly dug a chasm of years between them. Suddenly, as they stood face to face, Mrs. Bal—who had been young as morning—reached the rich maturity of summer noon.

The thing Somerled would have prevented had happened; but the reins were out of his hands, and it would do more harm than good to snatch at them. None of us moved, but we were nearer than any one else to the mother and daughter, near enough to hear every word they said to each other.

"Oh, mother, it's I—your daughter Barrie, come to find you," the girl faltered. "You know—Barribel. You named me. I've run away from Grandma——"

"My goodness—gracious!" gasped Mrs. Bal, her brown eyes immense. In her groping bewilderment, her blank amaze, she looked younger again, her rather full face very round, almost childish, her dimples deepening in the peachy flush of her cheeks. She stared at Barrie as if the girl were a doll come alive—an extremely complicated, elaborate, embarrassing doll, copied from herself and let loose upon the world. And Barrie did not take her eyes from the beautiful, surprised face for an instant. In her wistful suspense she scarcely breathed. "Oh, do love me—do be glad to see me!" her soul implored through its wide-open windows.

The silence, falling after Mrs. Bal's astonished gasp, lasted but an instant, though it seemed long to us who waited. To others at a distance, others who knew nothing of the story, whose sight and hearing were not morbidly sharpened, the little scene probably meant no more than a surprise meeting between the well-known actress and a very pretty girl enough like her to be a sister. But to us who did know the story—and something of Mrs. Bal—the pause was like the pause in court while the jury is absent.

Mrs. Bal was thinking, observing, making up her mind. Suddenly she broke out laughing—a nervous, yet impish laugh, and seized the girl by both hands. At the same time she bent forward—not down, for Barrie is as tall as she—kissed the girl on both cheeks, and whispered something.

It was a brief whisper. She could have said no more than half a dozen words, but they stupefied Barrie. She threw back her head, almost as if to avoid a blow. Tears sprang to her eyes, and she pressed her lips together in a spasmodic effort at self-control. The bright rose-red of excitement was drained from her face; but she did not draw away from her mother, who still held the girl's hands. All she did was to turn her head with a bird-like quickness and fling one glance at Somerled.

I don't know whether or not she meant it as a call. Probably she didn't herself know what she meant. Only, she was in need of help, of comfort, and involuntarily turned to the strongest, most dependable personality in her small world. I would have given all my faculty as a writer—my dearest possession—to have been in Somerled's place—to have had her appealing to me while her air-castle crumbled.

He went to her at once, and spoke to Mrs. Bal, who had not seen him till that instant. She blushed slightly at sight of him, I noticed; and I wondered whether she had flirted, or tried to flirt, in the past with the artist-millionaire. It was impossible to guess whether she were pleased or displeased, but evidently his appearance on the scene was ruffling in one way or another to the lady's emotions. "This is a surprise!" I heard her say, in a softer, fuller tone than she had had time to put into her first sharp exclamation at sight of Barrie.

Then both voices dropped. The two talked together while the girl stood by in silence, pale and expectant, depending on Somerled. Mrs. Bal said something which made Somerled laugh—one of his cynical laughs, such as I hadn't heard from him lately. Not once had he looked at Barrie. All his attention was for the mother. She asked a question. Answering it, he indicated Mrs. James and me.

"Oh, please introduce them!" Mrs. Bal commanded pleasantly.

This was a signal for us to approach.

"Mr. Basil Norman," she said. "You are the author, of course. How nice to meet you! Of course I read your books. And your sister who collaborates—where is she?"

"I don't know yet whether she's arrived or not," I explained. "I meant to ask at the desk——"

"I want to know her. Please tell her so. And this is Mrs. James. Why, yes, of course! I remember you—in the days of my captivity." She laughed a childlike, impish laugh. (Barrie has one rather like it, but more spontaneous, less effective.) "You haven't changed."

"Oh, thank you, dear Mrs. MacDonald," exclaimed the little woman, radiant with pleasure—for I've found out that her two great desires are to keep her youthful looks, and to be intellectually worthy of the vanished doctor. "I'm sure you are not in the least altered, though it must be seventeen years——"

"Oh, my dear Mrs. James, don't—please don't!" cried Mrs. Bal, laughing and dimpling, and holding up both gloved hands in mock prayer. "Don't mention the number of years. This is getting to be simply awful. Shock after shock!" She laughed again, glancing roguishly at Barrie. "I want you all to come to my sitting-room—this very minute—to hold a council of war. It's most necessary. You dear, pretty child"—this adorably to her daughter—"how much more mischief have you done already? How many people have you let into the ghastly secret?"

Barrie hung her head, and looked down. She must have known that sympathetic eyes were on her, and have wished to avoid them. "There's only Mrs. West and—and—I suppose her friends the Vannecks—and Mr. Douglas—a Lieutenant Douglas——"

"Horror! Their name is legion. What a scrape. Well, I must appeal to their mercy. Please come up with me, everybody, and we'll talk it over and see what's to be done. There isn't a moment to lose."

By this time I began to guess what she was driving at, though the dazed expression of Mrs. James told me that she was still in the dark.

We got into the lift and were shot up to the next floor, nothing being said on the way except a conventional word or two about the motoring weather. "I came in a friend's car—I'll tell you all about it," Mrs. Bal added as she led the way to her rooms.

The two maids had arrived on the scene already. Doors were open; luggage was being taken in under the direction of the red-haired ones; but in the large sitting-room there was no sign of confusion. Quantities of flowers adorned it, in tall glass vases and gilded baskets tied with ribbons. Signed photographs of royalties and generals and judges, the latest aviators and successful explorers, all in monogrammed silver frames, were scattered on mantel and tables and piano-top. There were plump cushions of old brocade on the several sofas and lounges. The largest table had a strip of rare Persian embroidery laid across it, and was graced rather than laden with novels, boxes of sweets, and silver bonbonnieres. Evidently the maid who had come in advance had had her hands full!

"I must have pretty things to give me a home feeling. Touring would be too horrid without that," she laughed. (Mrs. Bal laughs often in private life; what clever woman with dimples does not?) "Now, sit down, and let us discuss this desperate situation. But first—come here, Barribel. I want to look at you."

Barrie came. Mrs. Bal caught the girl's hands, and held her out at arm's length.

"You pretty creature!" she exclaimed. "Oh!" and she threw an appeal to us. "To think I should be the mother of THAT! Isn't it simply appalling? But I can't be, you know. I can't be her mother. Now can I? I've told her already—I had to decide in a flash. I admire her immensely, and we're going to be fond of each other and the greatest chums. But we must be sisters."

Then I knew what she had whispered to make Barrie start and blanch. She had said, "I won't be your mother." And Barrie had turned involuntarily to Somerled because she had felt herself unwanted and her heart was breaking.

All this was preparing me for a career of villainy, though I must say in self-defence that it was Aline who lit the match. "The woman tempted me, and I did eat!"

"Come and sit by me, lovely doll," said Mrs. Bal, pulling the girl down beside her on the most cushiony and comfortable sofa. "So you are the baby! I haven't forgotten you. I've thought of you a lot—really a lot. But you never seemed mine, you know. They wouldn't let me feel you belonged to me. They were so good! Of course I had to leave you for—for them to take care of. They thought they knew everything about babies. I dare say they were right. I had to escape. I couldn't have lived with them another day, in that awful house. But I've been oh, so proper, and good, really. Even they could have hardly been shocked. And I've hired three red-haired watch-dogs. But it isn't only myself I want to talk about—it's you. I do think you're the prettiest thing I ever saw—though I oughtn't to say so, perhaps, because I believe we're alike. Aren't we, Somerled?"

"In some ways, not in others," dryly returned the gentleman addressed.

"Oh, I know the differences are in her favour—Diogenes! All the more reason why I can't possibly own her for a daughter. My yearly profits would go down a hundred per cent. And although she's perfectly darling, and I'm going to love her—as a sister—she couldn't have come to me at a worse moment."

"Oh—why?" pleaded Barrie, speaking for the first time.

"Because—you may as well hear this, all of you, since I've called you to a council of war. I want you to realize"—and she gave each of us a look in turn: a lovely, characteristic "Mrs. Bal" look—"that I'm on my knees to you. I've thrown myself on your mercy. You've got to help me out. The truth is"—she began taking off her gloves and looking down at her own hands, her rings sparkling as the pink and white fingers were bared—"the truth is, I'm a little—a tiny little bit—tired of acting. I'd like to leave the stage in a blaze of glory while everybody wants me and there's no one to take my place. There's only one trouble—I'm so horribly extravagant. I always have been. I'm afraid I always shall be. I make heaps of money, but I can't save. If I say good-bye to the theatre, I shall want millions. I don't feel I can rub along on less. So that means—I shall have to marry somebody else's millions, for I haven't got the ghost of one of my own."

As she explained her position she looked deliberately past Somerled and out at the window. This made me sure that a vague suspicion of mine was founded on fact. Mrs. Bal had angled for Somerled, and he had been one of her few failures. She couldn't be pleased at encountering him again as her daughter's self-appointed guardian and champion. It seemed to me that the situation complicated itself, to Somerled's disadvantage; therefore—it might be—to the advantage of the next nearest man, myself.

"There is some one," Mrs. Bal went on, with a slight but lessening constraint, "who—rather likes me, and I rather like him—better than I can remember liking anybody. He's got lots of money. His name is Morgan Bennett. Somerled—you know him."

"Yes," said Somerled. "I thought his back looked familiar."

So the big fellow who helped Mrs. Bal out of the blue car (also big, in proportion to the size of the owner and his fortune) was Morgan P. Bennett of New York, the Tin Trust millionaire. Somerled's puny horde of millions dwindle into humble insignificance beside Morgan Bennett's pile. If Somerled has made two millions out of his mines and successful speculations, and a few extra thousands out of his pictures, M. P. Bennett has made twenty millions out of tin—and unlimited cheek. He is so big that his pet name in Wall Street used to be "The Little Tin Soldier."

"He has been—dangling lately," Mrs. Bal went on. "Oh, nothing settled! I confess I wish it were. I mean to take him if he asks me, and I think he will. You wouldn't believe it, but he's a shy man with women. I do believe he's frightened to propose. He's bought a house in London, in my favourite square. And now he's taken a shooting-lodge in Forfarshire—such an amusing place: a huge round house with as many eyes as in a peacock's tail, all staring cheerfully, and high chimneys grouped together like bundles of asparagus. I've just been staying there with his sister, Mrs. Payne, whom I believe he imported from America on purpose to play gooseberry. You know—or perhaps you don't—I tried my new play for the first time in Dundee, just one night, and it went gorgeously. This house of his isn't far off, and I was motored back and forth for rehearsals and so on, while the company stayed in town. I simply fell in love with the place; and he's trying to buy it—to please me, I hope. There's a round porter's lodge and a round garage: and the round house stands on a round lawn with a round road running round it like a belt, so that it all seems the centre of a round world with the sun moving round it. He brought me from there to Edinburgh to-day, and two of my maids in another car. He won't stop here in the same hotel with me, of course, but he'll drop in now and then—naturally—and he's taken his box at the theatre for the whole week. We must arrange this sister business before he calls. I've confessed to him that I'm twenty-nine, and it's perfectly true. I've been twenty-nine for several years. But he'd hardly believe me so old. And what should I do—I ask you all—if a grown-up—oh, but an extremely grown-up—daughter suddenly loomed over my horizon? Even if I put back her clock to fifteen instead of—never mind!—I couldn't manage to be less than thirty-one, and that with the greatest difficulty. Now you see how I am placed."

"Shall I go away and—and save you all the bother?" asked Barrie, in a very small voice.

"Oh, no, no, dear child; nothing of the sort, of course," protested Mrs. Bal, patting the hands which Barrie held tightly clasped together in her lap. "You mustn't be naughty and misunderstand. I don't want to lose you like that, now you've taken all the trouble to find me—with the help of our good Somerled. But—will you be a sister to me?—as popular men have to say in Leap Year."

"I'll do whatever you want me to do," Barrie answered in the same little voice, like that of a chidden child. "Am I—would you like me to stay with you here, or——"

"Why, I suppose"—Mrs. Bal showed that she was startled—"I suppose we must fix up a place for you—for a few days. But I don't see how you can go with me on tour. It wouldn't be good for you at all. The best way is for us to have a nice little visit together, and get acquainted with each other, and then perhaps I'd better send you to—er—to my flat in London, or—to boarding-school, or somewhere. I quite understand you wouldn't go back to your grandmother at any price, would you?"

"I'd rather do that than be a trouble to you," said Barrie. "Only, I don't think she'd take me back. But I could try——"

"Certainly Mrs. Ballantree MacDonald won't hear of your going back to live in Carlisle, I'm sure," said Somerled, looking somehow formidable to reckon with as his eyes met Mrs. Bal's. Then, to the girl's mother: "I am connected with her father's family in a way, you know, and I took advantage of the connection to make Mrs. MacDonald's acquaintance at Hillard House, after I'd met—her granddaughter. The arrangement between us was that I should play guardian pro tem. So if you want any advice about—Miss MacDonald's future, perhaps you'll be good enough to let me help you."

"Thanks, oh, thanks! I accept gratefully," replied Mrs. Bal, who had no doubt already heard downstairs some few words explaining Barrie's presence with our party in Scotland. "And you'll tell everybody she's my sister, won't you?"

"I'll not say anything to the contrary," he promised grimly.

"And you, Mr. Norman? You, dear Mrs. James?"

"I'll protect the secret with my life," said I, laughing. If I were a woman, I should have been hysterical by this time.

"I'll keep my mouth shut," replied Mrs. James, with pitying eyes that said to the girl, "If I were your mother, dear child, young as I like to look, I'd be proud to own you!"

"What about your American victims?" I inquired of Barrie.

Mrs. Bal pricked up her ears. "What victims?" she asked before her daughter had time to speak.

"Four young men who have prostrated themselves under Miss MacDonald's chariot," I explained. "All who see her do this." In adding the little tribute I meant well; but I saw in an instant that I'd been tactless. Mrs. Bal regarded the girl reflectively; and that uncomfortable faculty I have for reading people's thoughts told me she was repeating to herself, "Ah, so all the men who see this child fall in love with her, do they? H'm!"

"They—I never talked to them about—about having a—mother," Barrie stammered.

"And this Mr. Douglas?" Mrs. Bal asked. "Is he too a 'victim?'"

"He appears to be something of the sort," I was obliged to answer, as she appealed to me. "The Douglas Heart, you know! And he has a cousin with whom he's staying——"

"Oh, do, dear Mr. Norman, like an angel of mercy 'square' them for me, will you, and all the others who know?" Mrs. Bal implored, ostentatiously ignoring Somerled, who had too evidently gone over to the younger generation. "Your sister, too—and her friends? Will you go and see if they have come, and if they have, bring them here—or plead my cause eloquently, or something?"

"I'll go at once," I agreed, rising. On principle, I disliked and despised the gorgeous, selfish creature; but there was that in me which longed to please her, and delighted in being chosen as her defender, over the head of Somerled, so to speak. I was not sorry to escape from the scene which Barrie's pale face and o'er-bright eyes made very trying; also I was really anxious to find out if Aline had come. If she had not, I should begin to worry about her and the poor old car—to say nothing of the tribe of Vanneck.

As I went out, I heard Mrs. Bal exclaim, "Oh, by the way, if she's to be my sister, she can't be a MacDonald, She'll have to take the name of Ballantree. It was my maiden name, you know."

A disagreeable surprise awaited me outside. I learned that, while we'd been out after luncheon, my sister and the Vannecks had come, but that Aline had had a mishap. She'd been wearing a motor-mask veil, according to her custom, in order to protect her complexion. The talc front over her face had been damaged in the morning's storm, and somehow her eyes were injured. I should have received the news sooner had I gone to the desk instead of following Mrs. Ballantree MacDonald upstairs.

Off I hurried to Aline's room, where I found Mrs. Vanneck with my sister, and an oculist whom George had hurried out to fetch. The poor girl was suffering, and a good deal frightened, though we tried to console her. As she went to the window to be examined by the specialist, I could see that her face and hair and lilac silk blouse were covered with a powder of talc, which sparkled like diamond dust. Her eyes and lids were full of the stuff, it proved, and she cried with nervousness and pain as the oculist proceeded to get it all out.

It was impossible to speak to her of Barrie and Mrs. Ballantree MacDonald, but I told Maud Vanneck, who, though mildly horrified, promised for herself and her brothers that the secret should not be revealed.

When I returned to Mrs. Bal's sitting-room, I found Somerled and Mrs. James gone. Barrie was alone with her newly found—sister, and a more forlorn little figure than our young goddess it would be hard to imagine. Andromeda chained to her rock could not have looked more dismally deserted by her friends. A room had been taken for her, and she was now transformed into Miss Barribel Ballantree. "What a good thing I wouldn't let her be called Barbara after me," said Mrs. Bal. "We should have had to change her whole name, and that would have been really awkward!"

I should have retired at once, when my errand was done, but Mrs. Bal would not let me go. I think, for one thing, she wasn't at ease with Barrie alone; and for another, she wanted to see if I too were a victim of this young person who might perhaps turn out a formidable rival as well as an inconvenient daughter. Barrie evidently wished me to stay; and I made no effort to conceal my real feeling for the girl from either of them. I thought that now was the time to let myself go. Barrie was inwardly yearning for comfort and love, and I opened the door of my heart for her to see that it and all within were hers. I was on the spot, and Somerled wasn't; so I hoped that Barrie might be thankful even for her "brother of the pen." Mrs. Bal's bright, observant eyes saw and understood.

Presently she announced that she was rather tired, and would lie down, as there would be rehearsing to-morrow in the theatre; and though she'd opened in Dundee, she would be almost as nervous in Edinburgh as on a first night. Her maid was rung for. The eldest and reddest one came. Barrie and I went out together, I longing for a few words in the corridor, or at least a friendly pressure of the hand. But I saw that she was in no condition to be spoken to. The reaction was coming on, and I let her go at once. She almost ran down the passage to a room not far away, and slammed the door.

* * * * *

Neither Mrs. Bal nor Barrie appeared again that evening. Presumably they had dinner together in Mrs. Bal's quarters; and the heather moon shone as through a glass darkly for the rest of us. Aline was ordered to keep her room for the next few days, which settled our plans—or hers, at all events. And we were a party of men dining that night, the two Vannecks and Somerled and I, for Mrs. James "had a headache," and Maud kept Aline company.

The great Somerled was reflective if not morose. I wondered what his schemes were concerning Barrie, for I imagined uneasily that he was working with some idea; and if I didn't mean to sit still and let him cage the dove while it fluttered homeless and forlorn, I must come out of my corner into the open to fight for it.

After dinner Aline sent for me, and her message included Somerled, if he could "spare her a few minutes." He could and did with a good grace. We went together to the small sitting-room, which looked dull compared with Mrs. Bal's decorated background, though George Vanneck and I had done our best, on an Edinburgh Sunday, in the way of roses. Somerled had forgotten to incarnate his sympathy in flower form, and I read remorse in his eyes as they fell upon Aline, piteous and prostrate.

Electric light was not permitted, and the room was lit only by a few green-shaded candles which made the invalid ethereally pale. She reclined on a sofa and wore her best tea-gown, or whatever women call those loose classic-looking robes nowadays. It was white, and becoming. She had built up a wall of cushions, against which she leaned, and her hair was done in two long plaits under a fetching lace cap which gave her a Marie Antoinette effect. This hair-arrangement interested me scientifically, because when I breakfast with Aline in our private sitting-room at a hotel, she often has her hair hanging down, and it has never looked so long nor so thick as it did on this occasion. She must have had some clever way of plumping it out. Her eyes being tender and inflamed had temporarily lost their beauty, so she had tied over them a folded lace handkerchief or small scarf.

"You look like a model for a classic figure of Justice," said Somerled—"all but your smart Paris cap."

"Why, was Justice blind? I thought that was Love," said Maud Vanneck, gayly airing her ignorance. I couldn't help thinking—nor could Somerled, I'm sure—that Aline looked more like Love-in-a-mist than stern Justice; but I feared that he had definitely ceased to regard her from the love point of view, if ever he'd inclined to it.

Aline, who had heard nothing yet about Mrs. Bal, was anxious for the story. I saw that Somerled desired me to speak, but I threw the responsibility on him. I wanted to know how he would tell the story; but I might have guessed that he would be as laconic, as non-committal as possible, and that, much as he might yearn to do so, he would not criticise Barrie's mother.

"I think she admired her daughter," he said quietly, "but being what she is, and looking no more than twenty-five, what can one expect? Of course the sister fraud will be found out sooner or later; but the important thing in Mrs. Bal's mind seems to be that it shall be later."

"Is it right for us to help her deceive poor Mr. Bennett?" asked Maud Vanneck, who is a person of earnest convictions.

I chuckled at hearing the big chap called "poor," perhaps for the first time in his life; and even Somerled smiled.

"None of us are pledging ourselves to lie for the lady," said he. "We simply hold our tongues. If Bennett asks Mrs. Bal to be his wife, he's not the sharp man of affairs he's supposed to be if he expects to find her a mirror of truth. When he discovers that she has a grown-up daughter he'll shrug his shoulders, and perhaps never even let her know she's been found out. I'm not very well acquainted with Bennett, but I've met him a few times, and his most agreeable social quality seems to me his strong, rather rough sense of humour. I expect he'll see the funny side of being hoodwinked by Mrs. Bal. And a few years more or less on her age—what do they matter to him? He's forty-five; and on the whole he couldn't get a wife to suit him better."

"I have a sneaking sympathy with Mrs. Bal," confessed Aline, in her gentlest voice. "She's conquered all of you men, and has no further fear of you; but I feel that she's trembling in her shoes because of Maud and me. I should love to reassure her and let her know that we're not cats."

"Shall I take her a message?" I suggested, trying not to seem too eager. "I'm sure she'd like to get it."

Aline smiled indulgently. "Poor boy, doesn't he want me to say 'yes?' It's too late this evening, I'm afraid; but call on her and Barrie early to-morrow morning, and ask if she'd care to drop in on the poor invalid, on her way to rehearsal. I'd better see Mrs. Bal alone. She may want to say things she wouldn't wish Barrie to hear—don't you think so, Mr. Somerled? And, by the way, now your little ward is—more or less—safe in other hands, have you settled your future plans?"

"I expect to have something mapped out to-morrow," Somerled answered.

"You'll go on with your trip—your rest cure—I suppose, as you meant to when we—that is, before you were saddled with all this responsibility?"

"I've been looking forward to Edinburgh, from the first," said he, evasively.

Aline saw that she would get no more satisfaction, and ceased to risk irritating him; but after her guests had bidden her good-night, she kept me for a talk.

Of course she made me describe the scene between Barrie and her mother, but she was more interested to know how Somerled had looked, what he had said and done, than in my opinion of Mrs. Bal.

"What do you think he means to do?" she appealed to me, desperately. "Do you think he's so infatuated with Barrie that he'll offer to take the girl off her mother's hands and marry her?"

"I've been studying Somerled for both our sakes," I said. "What I think is, he's been telling himself the girl is too young and all that, and ought to have a chance to meet a lot of other men. Yet he's seen how she unconsciously attracts every male creature who comes along, and that it's a danger for her if——"

"Unconsciously attracts! But I forgot, you're infatuated too. And she doesn't attract everybody. George Vanneck hardly considers her pretty. He can't bear this rising generation of long-legged young colts, he says; and he calls her hair carrots."

"We'll cross George off the list. It's long enough without him, and increasing with leaps and bounds. There'll probably be more names on it by to-morrow night" (evidently I have a prophetic soul). "But to go back to Somerled. Of course he foresaw something of what happened to-day: but Barrie's face when Mrs. Bal suggested being a sister to her was enough to turn a man of marble into a man of fire; and I don't think Somerled's resolutions up to that point were as hard even as sandstone. He must see now, as I do, that there'll be no place for the poor child with her mother, whether Mrs. Bal marries a millionaire or goes gayly on with her career as an actress. What is to become of a girl like Barrie, left to her own devices, with every man—well, let's say every second man—who passes, stopping to flirt if not to propose? My fear is that Somerled's resolutions are turning round the other way, and that he's contemplating himself as permanent guardian—if Barrie'll take him."

"Take him! She'll snap at him. She shows her feelings in the most disgusting way. Oh, my dear boy! I apologize. But I have feelings too—as you know only too well."

"I'm afraid she is getting to like him," I said, "but I persuade myself, anyhow, that she's more in love with love in general than with Somerled in particular. She's under the influence of the heather moon."

"I'm not going to let her have Somerled!" Aline cried out sharply. "I can't bear it. Can you?"

"I'm an idiot about the girl," I admitted. "I get worse every day. The more flies that collect round the honey the more I want it myself. I didn't know I was that sort of person, but I am. The worst of it is, she calls me her brother, which is fatal."

"No, it isn't. It shan't be," said Aline. "I shall get her for you."

"Thank you very much," said I.

"I'm not joking. An idea is on its way to me. I've been seeing it dimly for days, but its success depended a good deal on Mrs. Bal. Now, her being afraid of me makes it easier. I can't lie here idle, with all this going on—yet I can't let him see me as I am. My eyes look hideous. They're pink, like an albino's. Otherwise I wouldn't listen to the oculist. But I must do something. I begin to see what I can do, if you'll go on helping me and yourself, and not be a fool."

"I won't be more of a fool than Nature made me," I assured her, "though I may be a fool to love that girl."

"No, for you can make her care. Of course you can. She's hardly more than a child."

"You were married at eighteen," I reminded my sister. "At least you always tell people you were."

"If you were a woman, you'd be a thorough cat! It's true—I wasn't much more, but I was mature in mind. I'd seen the world. Barrie MacDonald will make you happy. You'll play together all your lives, and she can take my place, helping you to write stories. It will be quite a romance for the newspapers. And when she's out of sight, out of mind with Ian Somerled, he'll realize that she wasn't the right one. He'll come back to me, and see that I was always meant for him."

"A woman's instinct is often right. Also many a heart is caught in the rebound," said I, falling back on proverbs. And in this way, with the talc that entered Aline's eyes, malice entered our hearts. Thus we took up our parts of (alleged) villain and villainess.

* * * * *

Next morning, as early as I dared, I sent to ask if I might give Mrs. Ballantree MacDonald a message from my sister. Word came back that she would see me at once. Five minutes later I was knocking at the door of her sitting-room, and, obeying her "Come in," found myself in the presence of a Vision. She was in one of those tea-gown arrangements like Aline's, only more so. She had a cap which, I fear, would have made Aline's look, as they expressively say on the other side, "like thirty cents." And if Morgan P. Bennett had seen the beautiful Barbara then, he would have proposed without hesitating another second. That is, he would have done so if Barrie hadn't come in before he began. She did come while I was giving Aline's message to Mrs. Bal, and though she looked as if she hadn't slept, to me she was more lovable than ever. I tried to convince myself that Aline was right; that this girl and I were made for each other; that, if I could take her away from Somerled, she and I were bound to be happy together forever after.

Mrs. Bal explained that she was later than usual because she had not had a good night, and her chief maid, in reality a trained nurse, had been giving her electric massage.

"Now I feel equal," she added, "to tackling the world, the flesh, et le diable. Mrs. West is the world. Morgan Bennett's the flesh(he weighs two hundred pounds!) and—I shall be the devil. I always am at a rehearsal. But the mood shan't come on while I'm with your sister. Now I must go and get dressed. I'll not be fifteen minutes. Really! You don't know what I can do in the flying line, when I choose. You may stay and amuse—my little sister."

I knew better than to ask questions. If the girl wanted sympathy she could find it in my eyes, but she would resent pity. I praised Mrs. Bal, and found that I'd struck the right note.

"Yes!" Barrie exclaimed. "Isn't mother—I mean Barbara—gloriously beautiful? She wants me to call her Barbara, and I shall love it. I shall love to do whatever she wants me to do, I'm sure, because she's such a darling. Everybody must want to do what she wants them to do, whether it's right or wrong—though she wouldn't want anything she thought wrong, of course. Just fancy, she's given me heaps of pretty things. I begged her not, but she would make me take them—a string of pearls, and this ring—my very first!" (How I wish that I had put her "very first" ring—or kiss—on the finger she displayed!) "And two bangles—and she's going to pay back Sir S.—I mean Mr. Somerled" (so she has her own name for him!)—"the money he lent me for my father's brooch. Barbara doesn't want the brooch. I'm to keep it. And she says she'll give me an allowance—but she expects Grandma to leave me everything in her will. I don't—and I'd rather not, though moth——Barbara thinks I shall some day be quite well off. I fancied we were very poor, but Barbara says Grandma must have got back nearly all that was lost, by saving."

I guess that the girl was making talk to show me how well satisfied she was with everything; but whenever she met my eyes she looked away, to interest herself in some photograph or ornament.

In less than the promised fifteen minutes Mrs. Bal appeared again, very lovely and ridiculously young in a short blue serge dress, with a turned down collar that showed her firm white throat. I was allowed to remain with Barrie while "Barbara" went up to see my sister; and the ice being broken between us, we chatted comfortably of everyday things, I unreasonably happy because I had got in ahead of Somerled for once. It began to seem like a game of chess between us; I—directed by Aline—playing against Somerled. If Aline upstairs were at this minute making the move she planned, it would be check to his queen, Barrie of course being queen.

The only questions I ventured to ask the girl, and those in a casual way, were, "Had she heard from or seen Somerled since yesterday afternoon? And what was the programme for her, during this week of the new play in Edinburgh?"

Her answers were that she had neither seen nor heard from Somerled, and that she didn't know what she was to do during the week. She hoped to see something of Edinburgh. She supposed we—and Mr. Somerled—would soon be leaving for the west or north. But she had written Mr. Douglas, by Barbara's request, and he was very nice. He might be counted on to show her things. He was invited to call this afternoon with his cousin. Jack Morrison had written asking to come too, and Barbara said that he might do so—bringing his three friends. She—Barrie—must be very, very careful always to say "Barbara" and never—the other. She could quite understand now how the darling felt, though it had seemed queer at first.

By and by Mrs. Bal returned, and I saw by the light in her eyes and the colour on her cheeks that the conversation with Aline had been interesting. Hardly had she arrived and begun demanding from her various maids various things wanted at the theatre, when Somerled sent up to beg a moment's talk with her.

"Tell the gentleman I shall be delighted," she said to the hotel servant: and I saw that she was smiling the impish smile which Barrie has inherited.

"So glad you came before I got away!" she exclaimed, shaking hands with Somerled. "Five minutes more and I should have missed you. I'm due at the theatre now. The poor wretches are rehearsing without me, but I must turn up for a scene, at eleven!"

"I won't keep you five minutes," said Somerled, quietly. "I only want to ask if you'll let Barrie—provided she'd like it—" he glanced at the girl, whose eyes brightened—"take a few excursions with her friend Mrs. James and me, in my car this week. You'll be busy and——"

"I should have been delighted, and I'm sure Barrie would," broke in Mrs. Bal, "but you're just too late. A new thing for you, isn't it? I've been having the most charming visit with Mrs. West, who is better, but must keep to her rooms for two or three days. Her car will be eating its head off unless it's used, and I've promised that her friends the Vannecks—such nice people! I met them in Mrs. West's sitting-room—and Mr. Norman shall have Barrie for—probably—the very excursions you have in mind. Too bad! But first come, first served! You've all been so good to this girl, one hardly knows how to choose between you. But I thought Mrs. James was going home at once? I understood from Barrie that she said so last night?"

"She has decided to stay until the little surprise I'm trying to arrange for her, comes off—or on. She doesn't know what it is, but she pays me the compliment of taking it on trust. She'll be disappointed at having to give up the motor runs she was looking forward to with Barrie."

"You've plenty of old friends in Edinburgh, I'm sure," suggested Mrs. Bal, "and you can make up a party to console dear Mrs. James for the loss of Barrie."

"I don't believe Mrs. James can be induced to take any excursions without Barrie," said Somerled: which meant that he didn't intend to leave Edinburgh while the girl was in it and at the mercy of her erratic parent. I thought he was anxious Barrie should understand that he was not going to desert her. Perhaps she did understand, for she is quick in penetration; but her own pride, and loyalty to Mrs. Bal, kept her from showing that she felt need of protection, or even that she supposed Somerled to be offering it. She did show, however, that it grieved her to refuse his invitation. She took the "tip" he gave and put it all upon Mrs. James: how sorry she was not to do any more sight-seeing with dear Mrs. James. But I knew that the name in her heart was not the name on her tongue.

Aline had scored. I wanted to know just how, and how far, but I determined not to leave Barrie with Somerled. I needn't have worried, however, for Mrs. Bal and I had the same thought. She asked if Barrie would like to go to the theatre with her and watch a rehearsal. Naturally, Barrie said yes, and Somerled and I saw them off in the smaller of the two motor-cars which Morgan Bennett had placed at Mrs. Bal's service for the Edinburgh week. As for Bennett himself, he was apparently "lying low," by her wish or his own; but I expected to see him at the theatre that night. Of course, we were all going to turn out in full force for "The Nelly Affair." Somerled had taken a box, he told me, and proceeded to invite the whole party; but there also Aline had got in ahead. During Mrs. Bal's call upon her, they had arranged that the Vannecks and I should sit with Barrie in stalls offered by the Star. Mrs. Bal had (she assured us fluently, before starting off in her car) intended asking Somerled and Mrs. James too, and stalls were provided for them. But as he had already engaged a box, she would give the seats to the two Douglases. Perhaps he—Somerled—would have room in his box for those nice American boys, of whom Barrie seemed so fond?

Aline was eagerly waiting for me to come back and congratulate her upon her great success. She wanted to tell me everything; but her desire to talk was nothing compared with my yearning to hear.

"It's all right," she began. "I've made a bargain with Mrs. Bal. I told her you were in love with Barrie. That's the way I broke the ice, after I'd paid her compliments and she'd sympathized about my eyes. I said I'd keep her secret, and answer for the Vannecks, if she'd give you a chance with Barrie."

"By Jove!" I grumbled. "You didn't mince matters between you! Anything said about Somerled?"

"Why, I told her that the child was fancying herself in love with Ian, and behaving rather foolishly. And I said that Ian was naturally flattered, but that he was the last man to marry a baby like Barrie; and if we didn't act quickly, the poor little girl might suffer. You must have noticed, Basil, that Mrs. Bal doesn't like Ian Somerled."

"I've noticed that she takes an impish delight in thwarting him."

"That's because he once thwarted her. She admitted as much. Or, at least she said she asked him to paint her portrait, and he did paint it. When the picture was finished, he gave it to her, and didn't even make himself a copy."

"Well," I replied, puzzled, "I don't see anything in that to upset her. Even for a beauty like Mrs. Bal it's a compliment to be painted by Somerled. And surely it was a mark of regard to make her a present of the picture, when he can get from a thousand to five thousand pounds for anything he chooses to do."

"Oh, you man," exclaimed Aline. "And you pretend to be a student of women's characters! Of course Mrs. Bal was furious because he didn't beg to do her portrait and then make two, one for her, and one for himself. Fancy my having to explain! And besides, there must have been more than that in the affair. She wouldn't have asked him to paint the picture if she hadn't wanted to see him often alone, and make him fall in love with her. His giving her the portrait was a kind of defiance, to show her that he didn't care that for the original."

"Oh, well, if you think so!" said I.

"Mrs. Bal thinks so. And she's enchanted to get her revenge. Not that she'd have chosen this way, because, of course, it's a sickening thing to have Ian and all these men know that she's old enough to be the mother of a grown-up daughter—and to be obliged to throw herself on their mercy to help her out of the scrape. She laughs and pretends it's a joke, but she simply hates it. I hinted to her that if you married the girl there'd be no talk ever about Barrie being Mrs. Ballantree MacDonald's daughter. That should be forgotten, I said, though they could correspond with each other and be good friends. Barrie would live in Canada with you, and be out of Mrs. Bal's life altogether. And I impressed it upon her that your ideal existence was a quiet country place. It was the same as telling her that she'd be rid of Barrie by giving her to you. Whereas, if the girl should marry Ian, Somerled's wife would always be before the public eye, and everybody would be sure to find out all about her. Mrs. Bal caught my meaning, you may be sure; and she promised me that Barrie should go everywhere with us, or rather, with you and the Vannecks, till I can get about. Anyhow, nowhere with Ian. Now, you see, I've done all I can for you."

"And for yourself," I was mean enough to add, for the thought of what we were doing together was not a good thought, and it brought out the worst of me.

"I haven't any one to work for my interests. You have," she retorted; and as I'd no mind for further recrimination I begged her pardon, thanked her gratefully, and proceeded to tell all that had happened in Mrs. Bal's room. It was not pleasant for Aline to hear how prompt Somerled had been in trying to relieve Mrs. Bal of her burden; but there was consolation in his disappointment.

"Do I look very horrid?" she questioned anxiously, "or do you think I might ask him to take pity on me for a little while this afternoon, and sit here when you're all out sight-seeing?"

I reassured her, saying that her eyes looked no worse than if she'd been indulging in a "good cry." She decided, however, that if Somerled came she would bandage them again and continue to resemble Justice. I didn't ruffle her feelings by remarking that morally the resemblance would be a parody.

When Maud Vanneck and I went, soon after luncheon, to ask if Barrie would walk in Princes Street, with perhaps a stroll along the High Street, and on to Holyrood or the Castle, I found Mrs. James in Mrs. Bal's sitting-room with the two Douglases and the four Americans. The mother and daughter had returned late from rehearsal, and had just finished luncheon. Mrs. Bal had a letter in her hand, which had evidently arrived with a box of orchids, probably a tribute from Bennett; and the lady's desire to get us out of the way suggested the imminent arrival of a caller worth keeping to herself.

Finally, it was arranged that we should all go out together, the Douglases assuring the rest of us that they could open doors which would be shut to strangers.

"Where's Somerled?" I asked Mrs. James, in case he were condescending to lie in wait somewhere.

"When I saw him last," she replied, "he'd got an immense pile of foreign letters, and several cablegrams. It looked as if he'd enough to occupy him the whole afternoon. Important business I suppose; yet in spite of all, I believe he's been concerning himself with some surprise for me. He may perhaps have news I shall like to hear when I get back. I expect he's been telling some friend about those Stuart chairs I want to sell, and thinks he's got me a buyer."

The Douglases took us to see the Scotsman building, and the secret, inner workings of a great newspaper. We descended from marble halls to vast underground regions, the lair of a monster immeasurably more powerful than the Minotaur who ramped and raved under the Palace of Crete. The roar of this modern Minotaur was as the noise of Niagara broken by stormy bursts of thunder. It stunned the intelligence; it shrivelled the organs of speech like a dried kernel rattling impotently in an old nutshell. It filled the world and made human happenings, such as individual lives and deaths, seem of no more importance than the snapping of thumb and finger in front of a cataract. I couldn't have lived in the tumult long and kept my wits; but we heard of an employe who, when some tooth or nail in the enormous monster smote him, could not bear to stop away long enough to complete his cure, because he was unable to bear the "awful stillness" of the hospital. Persons of impregnable nerve-power let us deeper and deeper into the bowels of the earth, showing us the dragon's brood, and his terrible wife whose business it is not only to print the newspaper, but to cut its sheets, and eventually to lay them like eggs, at the rate of thousands a minute: a most appalling creature she, who so battered my brain with her accomplishments and the wild cackle she made over them, that weakly I let Barrie be snatched from me by Donald Douglas.

In the roar and rush and riot I was incapable of caring, though vaguely I recalled the fact that I had come out with the sole object of annexing the girl's society. Vaguely too, though only vaguely, I resented the Douglas method; but I had my revenge almost before I recovered sense enough to want it. There came, I know not why or how (perhaps one of the masters decreed it, to strike our ears with the contrast), a sudden unexpected lull. It was only a comparative lull, and it lasted no more than a few seconds; but there was time enough to hear Douglas yell into Barrie's ear, "I must have you for my own."

The next instant he was purple through his soldier-tan. He knew the dragon and the dragon's wicked wife had betrayed him, as he took advantage of their domestic clamour to speak in a crowd as though he were alone with his love in the desert. What Barrie answered, or if she had breath to answer, none of us could guess, though all, especially the four Americans, were bursting with anxiety to know. Later, however, when we went up to the Castle (anything but the Castle, with its thousand years of history, would have been an anticlimax after that wonderful dragon cave), Donald Douglas walked meekly with his cousin, leaving Barrie to Jack Morrison. As for me, I had temporarily lost my individuality, and with that roar still echoing through my brain, vibrating through my nerves, I was glad to crawl along, talking to nobody, and picking up dropped or untied bits of myself as I went. For the moment, frankly I didn't care how many men proposed to Barrie, or whether she accepted them all. But afterward, it was different. It occurred to me that Jack Morrison was not only a handsome and gallant fellow, but said to be very rich, at least as rich as Somerled, and ten years younger. Aline and I might be mistaken about the girl's feelings for Ian. Very likely it was no more than a romantic sort of gratitude; and though I absolved the child from the smallest taint of mercenary motive, it was almost impossible that a sleepless night had not given her some wise counsel. She was too sensitive and quick-witted a girl, I reflected, not to have seen that she could not go on living with her mother, and that it was a necessity to find a niche somewhere. All these young men saw this also, though they knew no more than the fact that they were prayed to consider Mrs. Bal an elder sister of "Miss Ballantree," therefore they were hastening to offer her sheltering niches, more or less desirable. In other circumstances, they would have waited a few days, long enough at least for Barrie to know which was which, and get their features and some of their characteristics ticketed with the right labels; but as it was, each saw he had no time to waste if he didn't want his friend or foe to get in ahead of him. While we were at the Castle, looking at Mons Meg (which recalled Thrieve) and the banqueting-hall of armour with its faded banners and fadeless memories; gaping at the mysterious place over the entrance door where, in a bricked-up alcove, a baby skeleton was found wrapped in cloth of gold embroidered with a royal monogram; walking through the wainscoted room where Mary of Guise died; gazing at the long mislaid crown of Bruce ("the Honours of Scotland"); seeing sweet Queen Margaret's Chapel where the Black Rood lay till it went in state down the hill to make Holyrood holy; peering at the wall-stairway down which the Douglas boys were dragged after the "black dinner"; admiring the kilted soldiers; and drinking in the view over hill and valley and mountains, towns and nestling villages, the vast, colourful checkerboard of beautiful Mary Stuart's journeys, flights and fightings: while beholding treasures and splendours which are as the red drops of Scotland's heart's blood, man after man took his place at Barrie's side and became her cicerone. Each talked with her awhile, and after a few brief minutes allowed a change of partners, the discarded one humbly retiring to Mrs. James's side. It was really funny; or at least so it seemed until enough self-assertion came back to admit of my entering the lists. Then I promptly lost my sense of humour, and had no wish to look for it. I wanted only to look at Barrie, who was unusually flushed and bright of eye.

By this time there wasn't much left to tell her about the Castle or the Castle Rock. When I began to work off my erudition by mentioning the name of Edwin, for whom Edinburgh was named, and who made it a royal borough in the eleventh century, she said:

"Oh, Mr. Douglas's cousin, the other Douglas, told me that!"

When I related the tale of that gallant Francis who was able to lead Sir Thomas Randolph and thirty soldiers up the perilous rocks to surprise the Castle at night, having learned the way when sweethearting down in the Grass-market, Barrie confessed that she had heard the story already. Jack Morrison had found it in some old book he had bought at the shop under John Knox's house, in the High Street. There was no use trying to work up or classify historic thrills for her in this vast heart of Scotland; she had been given them all, with generous additional thrills from private hearts, Scottish and American.

"Has every single one of those chaps proposed to you?" I flung the question in her face. "You might tell your Mentor."

"Oh, not Donald Douglas's cousin!" she answered hastily. "He's engaged to some one in the Highlands."

"Good heavens, then all the rest have done it, in a bunch!"

"I think you're horrid!" she said indignantly. "I've always heard that girls don't tell such things to any one."

"They do to their brothers—of the pen, if they have any such. Besides, you don't need to tell. I'm a regular Sherlock Holmes where people I—like, are concerned, and I know what's been happening to you this afternoon. A manna-rain of proposals, in the wilderness of Edinburgh Castle. Many girls would have accepted them all, and then sorted them out to see which they liked best; but I have a shrewd idea from the look of the gentlemen's backs that they are now one and all your adopted brethren."

"It's almost wicked to joke on such a subject," Barrie reproached me, trying not to laugh, "and it's not nice of you to make fun of them, just because you consider yourself superior, as an author who is always analyzing people's minds and motives. It's not as if they were so much in love with me that they had to propose in a hurry for their own sakes. It's not that at all; but only because they thought it wouldn't be very convenient for—Barbara to have me live with her, travelling about so much, or if she should marry. So they felt as if something ought to be done for me, you know, as soon as possible."

"Sainted, unselfish young men!" I murmured. "But I don't consider myself superior, as it happens. I'd do the same thing in a minute if I thought there were the faintest chance of your giving me an answer different from theirs. Is there?"

"Don't talk nonsense!" she exclaimed. "But of course, I'm happy to say, I know you don't mean it."

"Well, if you're happy to say that, I'll leave you your fond illusions for the present," I returned. "But, as girl to man, tell me; don't you rather like being proposed to?"

"It's very exciting," she admitted. "I never expected, somehow, that such a thing could happen to me."

"Oh, didn't you? Why not?"

"Well, there's my red hair, which I always thought was fatal, until I saw my mother's portrait—and heard Mr. Somerled say he liked painting red-haired women."

"Red hair can be fatal, though not in the way you appear to mean," said I. "Which thrilled you more, the Castle or the proposals?"

"Oh, the Castle, of course!" she answered scornfully. "After the first one or two, they seemed like interruptions."

All five of my rivals (there might have been six, had it not been for the girl in the Highlands) having had their medicine, I was allowed almost as much as I wanted of Barrie's society during the walk down from the Castle Rock, and to Holyrood. Together she and I walked through that most romantic royal house of all the world; and long as I may live, never shall I forget those hours. Chestnut-tressed Mary herself could not have been lovelier than the red-haired girl who walked beside me, and when the royal beauty came on a day of chill, northern haar, to her Scottish realm, she was only a year older than this child we all love but think too young for love. Yet already, at nineteen, Mary was a King's widow, and had been Queen of France.

It was of Barrie's romance, Barrie's future, I thought most, as we wandered side by side through the haunted rooms where Mary danced and loved and suffered, where her grandson Charles I of England came, and left his ruby Coronation ring for remembrance, and where Prince Charlie, her far-off descendant, made hearts flutter at the great ball given in his honour. But it was the past which had all Barrie's thoughts, unless she sent a few to the man who had stayed at home reading his letters, instead of following in her train.

We looked at Queen Mary's bed with its tattered splendour of brocade: the box filled with relics of her short reign in Holyrood: her neat embroideries, her tear bottle, and Darnley's glove, which Barrie thought Mary would not like to have kept with the other things: and then, having saved the best for the last, I took the girl up to the little supper-room where Rizzio was murdered. Barrie gazed at everything in silence: and now we could both be silent when we liked, for the chastened ones had meekly trooped off to show Mrs. James the Abbey, or Royal Chapel, where Mary and Darnley were married, and where a hundred things had happened, things connected with others whose romances were as poignant if less well remembered here, than hers.

We had come up the secret stairway in the wall, because I wanted Barrie to miss no thrill this place could give; but it was not the thought of the murder-scene which most caught her imagination. She listened to my dramatic version of the tragedy of the room, and of the dark closet where Rizzio tried to hide, and shuddered a little; but soon she was drawn, as if beckoned by an unseen hand, to the bevelled mirror with scalloped edge, which Mary brought with her to Scotland from France, a dim oval full of memories, may be, of dear, dead days at Amboise and Chenonceaux.

"What does that poor piece of blurred glass make you think of so intently?" I asked, when Barrie had stood silently staring down the veiled vista of mystery for many minutes. "You look like a young modern Cassandra, crystal gazing."

"So I am!" the girl almost whispered. "I'm trying to see something in the mirror—the things she saw in it—or to see her eyes looking into mine. If anything can be haunted, it is this mirror. Think of what has passed before it. But do you know, I don't believe it has ever really intelligently seen anything since the day Queen Mary went away from Holyrood. I feel she ran here, to take one last look into her mirror, and to bid it farewell as she bade farewell to France, gazing and gazing as the land faded from her sight forever. Then, when she'd gone, the glass she loved grew dim as it is now, and blind because it could no longer give back the brightness of her eyes. There's nothing left in it now but sad dreams and memories of the past."

"Did you ever," I asked, "go down into the cellar at midnight on All Hallow E'en with a candle and a mirror and wish to see the face of your future husband?"

"No, indeed," Barrie answered emphatically; "we had no such tricks at Hillard House."

"Now, in this mirror, if any in the world, you might be able to see such a vision, not only at midnight, but on an ordinary afternoon, like this for instance," said I. "Suppose you stop thinking of Queen Mary for a minute and concentrate on yourself. Wish with all your heart for the face of the man you'll love, the man you'll marry, to appear under this clouded surface of glass."

Barrie looked somewhat impressed by my mysterious tone as well as the overwhelming romance of her surroundings. She put her face close to the mirror, and I was about to profit by the situation I'd led up to when some one stepped between us and looked over the girl's shoulder. It was Somerled, who must have come in just in time to overhear my advice, and take advantage of it for himself. But he could not wholly blot me out of the mirror. Both our faces were there, to be seen by Barrie, "as in a glass darkly." She gave a little cry of surprise, and wheeled round to smile at Somerled.

"You came after all!" she exclaimed, forgetting or pretending to forget the solemn rite which had engaged us. But I must admit I was in a mood to be almost superstitious about it. I had prophesied to the girl that she would see reflected the face of the man she was destined to love and marry. An instant later she had seen two faces, Somerled's and mine. Would she love one man, and marry the other? Or would only one of these two men count in her life?

Perhaps Queen Mary's mirror knew. It looked capable of knowing—and keeping—any secret of the human heart.

* * * * *

That night—oh, my prophetic soul!—Morgan Bennett saw Barrie at the theatre, and looked at her through his opera-glasses almost as often as he looked at Mrs. Bal in her gay, exciting comedy-drama, "The Nelly Affair." The play had been written for the actress and suited her exactly. In fact its whole success was made by her magnetic personality, her beauty, and her dresses. She scarcely left the stage, and had something to do or say every minute, yet I noticed that she found opportunities to observe where Bennett's eyes were straying. As for Barrie, she saw nothing, heard nothing, thought of nothing, but her mother, glorious Barbara, who for this evening was Nelly Blake, a girl of eighteen, seeming not a day older. Barrie, in a white dress, with her hair in two long braids (Mrs. Bal thought she was too young to wear it done up), sat among us in an ecstasy. Was ever any one so beautiful, so clever, so altogether marvellous as darling Barbara? This was as it should be; and we who knew the girl, knowing that she had never before seen a play, nor the inside of a theatre, thought her pathetic; but Morgan Bennett, who did not know her, merely thought her pretty and wondered how he could get to know her. The very flash of his opera-glasses was interested and eager; and when I proudly took the girl behind the scenes to compliment Mrs. Bal after the first act, I was far from surprised to see Bennett appear almost immediately in the same mystic region. Barrie and I were with Barbara in a little room which she intended to use as a boudoir for the week of her engagement; and when an employe of the theatre announced Mr. Bennett, she looked annoyed. For an instant she hesitated visibly; but as he was probably aware that she had visitors, there was no good excuse for sending him away. Part of Mrs. Bal's success with men consists in knowing what kind of snubs they will meekly endure from a lovely spoiled woman, what kind they neither forget nor forgive. She sent word to Mr. Bennett that he might come in.

He accepted the invitation promptly, and Barbara, with quick presence of mind, introduced him to her little "sister Barribel."

"Barribel! That's a pretty name," he said, shaking hands with Barrie, his eyes on her face. "Miss Barribel Ballantree, I suppose."

"You may suppose so!" returned Mrs. Bal, laughing.

"I saw this young lady sitting out in front," he went on, instead of congratulating the actress at once on the success of the first act, which had "gone" splendidly with the large audience. "I said to myself there must be a relationship between you two: and I was wondering."

"Well, you needn't bother to wonder any more," broke in Mrs. Bal, very gay but slightly shrill. "I must have spoken to you about Barrie?"

"'Barrie' is what you call her?" said he, smiling at the girl. "That's a very nice pet name, and suits her, somehow. You surely never spoke of your sister to me. I shouldn't have forgotten." He added the last words with a look intended as a compliment for Barrie; and any woman wishing to monopolize his attention exclusively might have been pardoned for thinking that he had looked at her more than often enough in the circumstances. In his big way he is attractive, to certain types of women, very attractive indeed, and I could understand that his millions might not be his only charm for Mrs. Bal. He has eyes which can be fierce as an eagle's; the strong, almost cruel jaw of the predestined millionaire who will mount to success at any cost; a pleasure-loving mouth, and—when he is pleased—a boyish smile. When he is severely displeased, I shouldn't care to be there to see him, especially if he were displeased with me. But I suspect Mrs. Bal to be one of those women who could not love a man unless she were afraid of him. In that may have lain the secret of Somerled's former fascination for her, if it existed.

"If I've forgotten to mention Barrie, it's because I'm always talking about you, when we're together," Mrs. Bal excused herself with dainty impertinence of the sort Bennett will stand from her. "If it isn't about you, it's about your motors—or some affair of yours."

"I thought you, and your affairs were generally the subject of our conversations," retorted the big man, still looking more at the young girl than at the woman. "Miss Ballantree is your affair——"

"She has only just become so," Barbara hurried to explain. "Her grandmother, who thoroughly disapproves of me and all actresses, has kept the child shut up in a moated grange all her life. It's a wonder I didn't forget her existence! She had begun to seem like a sort of dream-sister, until she suddenly dropped in on me yesterday, and announced that she'd run away from home. I'm simply enchanted to have the darling with me, for my own sake, or I should be if I hadn't such a beautiful, unselfish nature that I find I worry myself into fits about her when she's out of my sight. To-night I couldn't half act, because I was thinking about her all the time, and wondering what on earth I could do to make her happy. I foresee I shan't be able to study or rehearse or anything, while she's getting into mischief in a big hotel. I shall send her away though to-morrow, for a few days, with some very dear friends of hers, who will give her a good time until I settle down and feel at home with this new play—in which, by the way, you don't seem to take the slightest interest. You haven't said a word about it, or how it went, or how I acted."

"You know better than that——" Bennett was beginning when Barrie (to whom, despite his size, he was a figure of no importance) broke in without being aware that he was speaking.

"Oh, Barbara, you won't make me go to-morrow; You promised——"

"If she promised, we must make her stick to her promise," said Bennett, forgiving the interruption, and perhaps willing to tease Mrs. Bal.

The beautiful Barbara, however, had gathered together her scattered wits, and was too wise to show that she was being teased. "I know, I meant to keep you with me this Edinburgh week anyhow," she answered the girl. "But, sweetest, you won't want to hold me to the promise, no matter what Mr. Bennett or any one else says, if I tell you that I'm worrying over your being here? I don't feel it's the right thing for you. And it's certain Grandma will change her will if she hears you're living with me. It's a miracle I didn't dry up in my part to-night from sheer anxiety and absent-mindedness. You'd hate me to fail through you, dear one, I know."

"Oh, yes—anything but that," Barrie exclaimed, tears in her eyes.

Alas, if only some other name than that of M. P. Bennett had added itself to her list of admirers, all might have been well for Barrie with sister Barbara, at least for a little while! As it was, the girl's fate was sealed. So much the better for me: yet my fool of a heart ached for her disappointment, instead of leaping for joy at my own good luck.

Mrs. Bal looked at the girl with an odd expression on her charming face, painted for the stage. There was compunction, if not remorse, in the big brown eyes, but there was no relenting. She liked Barrie and enjoyed her childish adoration, but she loved herself, and she wanted to "land" Morgan Bennett. The girl would have to be sacrificed; still, those rising tears gave Barbara pain to see. She would really have been glad to make Barrie happy, if the creature's youth and beauty had not been an hourly peril for her.

"Don't look so disconsolate, dear," she said. "You're going to have a glorious time. And if wet eyelashes are a compliment to me, they're just the opposite to Mr. Norman."

"Is it Mr. Norman the novelist?" Bennett wanted to know.

"Yes. And he's going to let Barrie help him with a story—or else he's putting her into one, I'm not quite sure which."

Barbara threw him this bit of information with a sweetly casual air, but it was one of the cleverest things she ever did, on the stage or off. Somehow, with a smile that flashed over us all with a special meaning for each—affection for Barrie, a benediction for me, and a secret understanding for Bennett—she contrived to convey to him the idea that her little sister was already bespoken. No use his being led away by rosebud innocence! It was engaged, and if he were wise he would be true to his love for the full-blown rose.

"Just think, pet, what an honour to be taken about by such famous people as Basil Norman and Aline West," she went on, "and to have them for your best friends. You'd have had a horrid dull time with them gone, for I should have had to leave you alone a lot. And next week, when they bring you back to me at Glasgow, your future will be all beautifully arranged."

"But Mrs. West isn't well enough to go to-morrow——" Barrie pleaded.

"No. But Mrs. Vanneck will chaperon you for a few days. You ought to be frightfully happy, seeing Scotland with those you love while your poor Barbara works for her daily bread. And now you must go out in front again with Mr. Norman, if you don't want to miss the beginning of the second act. Mr. Bennett has seen it, so he can stop with me five minutes if he likes, till my call."

Barrie had been at rehearsal, and would no doubt have been quite willing to miss any part of the play not graced by Mrs. Bal's presence on the stage; but short as was the time since she made her mother's acquaintance, she had learned to know the lady well enough to realize when she was not wanted. She went with me like a lamb resigned to the slaughter; and so, I was sure, would she start with us next day. But just here, I think, is the place to write down what had meanwhile happened to Mrs. James. If it hadn't been for that happening, perhaps we should not, after all, have snatched the girl away so easily from Somerled. And the funny thing was—for it had its funny side, as even he must have seen—the funny thing was, that all was his own fault. When he planned that wonderful surprise for Mrs. James, he little thought it would be the means of stealing his trump card from him. Generous he may be, and is, I must admit; but it's not likely that he would have been unselfish enough to put himself in a hole for Mrs. James's happiness, especially as he could have got just as much credit from Barrie by waiting a few weeks—say, until the end of the "heather moon."

To have brought in the "surprise" in its proper order, I should have worked it into my notes between our sight-seeing expedition in the afternoon, and the theatre in the evening, for it was common property by that time. We all knew (from Mrs. James, not from himself), what a noble, magnificent, wonderful, glorious, altogether pluperfect fellow Somerled was, to have interested himself in her behalf, and to have given her such happiness as all her friends had thought her mad to dream of through the dreary years.

Always, it seems, she believed that her husband, who disappeared seventeen years ago, was alive, and only waiting for success to crown his ambitions, before returning to her. Everybody else thought he had drowned himself, because of some professional trouble. But Mrs. James's faith has been the great romance of her life; and Barrie (or the little woman herself, I don't know which) told Somerled the story the day they left Carlisle in his car. Some details caught his attention, and made him wonder if Mrs. James's instinct were not more right than other people's reason.

When Somerled went to America as a boy, he travelled in the steerage. On board the same ship was a man calling himself James Richard, a man of something over thirty, in whom Somerled became interested. They made friends, though they gave each other no intimate confidences; and James Richard made one or two remarks which suggested that he had been a doctor. Evidently he was a man of culture, interested in many things, including chemistry and Scottish history. After landing in New York the two met occasionally by appointment, and the older man spoke of an invention which, if he could get the help of some millionaire to perfect it, ought to make his fame and fortune, and revolutionize anaesthetics; but Somerled had thought little of this at the time. So many men he met in those days had queer fads by means of which they hoped to achieve glory. Soon, even before he himself reached success, Somerled and James Richard drifted apart. The rising artist forgot the ship-acquaintance with whom, owing to the difference in their ages and interests, he had never had more than casual acquaintance. It was not until he heard the story of Mrs. James's husband, the clever doctor who loved Scottish history and had invented a new anaesthetic just before disappearing seventeen years ago, that he remembered his shipmate, James Richard. Then he recalled his appearance; and the descriptions tallied. A scar on the forehead was a distinguishing mark with the man supposed to have drowned himself and the man who had travelled to America in the steerage. Somerled cabled at once to New York, instructing a firm of private detectives to trace James Richard, an Englishman, probably a doctor, who had landed in New York from a certain ship on a certain date.