her to travel alone about the country." "There's not much fear of any one kidnapping Grace and holding her to ransom." "I had so looked forward to surprising Andrew, and now my little plot is spoiled!" "It needn't be, dear Auntie: Grace may be depended on to make a dramatic entrance any time." "If you understood your cousin as I do you maybe will when you're my age you would see that just to-to spring her upon him is the way to secure his interest," said Miss Amelia, with a ludicrous movement to suggest the spring. Norah laughed. "You wicked, sly old aunt!" she exclaimed, pointing a denunciatory finger. "Have you ever thought, dear, that he may marry again?" asked Miss Amelia in a whisper. "So that's the purpose of your scheme!" said Norah. "You would never notice, you're much too young; and besides, you're so taken up with Mr. Maurice. But I've been observing Andrew now for months, and he's showing a great deal of sensibility. A great deal! I feel sure there's something going to happen. I feel it: I can't exactly tell you how. Don't ask me. It's but natural he should think of marrying again; he was so happy with poor Jean. He goes to church, and he looks about him; he's never off that horse unless he's curling. He's always here now when he knows we're to have visitors. I thought a while ago he was struck with Mabel Brooks. Have you noticed that at nearly every house he has called at lately there is sure to be a pretty daughter?" "What a suspicious aunt!" cried Norah gaily. "And Grace is to be flashed on him without a single word of warning! Well, I may tell you this -she knows a surprising lot about his LIVING AGE. VOL. LII. 2702 character, and she's ready to be fascinated." "Oh, as for that," said Miss Amelia complacently; "it isn't her I'm thinking of. Andrew may be odd, but with women he has always a fascination. I never could understand it. It's-it's in the family,-among the men, I mean. What I'm not so sure of is if your friend is likely to attract him. You never can tell with Andy." "Indeed you never can!" said Norah. "Hu-s-sh! here he comes." Sir Andrew came slowly down the stair with his mood of gay expectancy completely dissipated. The only sort of fun he had little taste for was the kind that made another look ridiculous; and he realized that the lady must in the circumstances experience a mauvais quart d'heure. That she would at once identify him he was certain, and she would reasonably feel that he had taken her at a mean advantage. Had he not been confident when he let her make himself the subject of her conversation that he should never meet her again he would not have indulged a spirit of fun that now seemed cruel, and sadly wanting anything like dignity. He was heartily ashamed of himself. He heard the laugh of Norah, and the imminent exposure terrified him. At the foot of the stair he paused a second, half inclined to fly from the ordeal; but he was a little too late. His aunt and cousin hearing him come, emerged from the sittingroom, and a moment after he was conscious of a thankful feeling of relief when he found a dinner set for three. What had come over his mysterious fare? "Dear me, we're very grand tonight!" said Aunt Amelia, looking with some surprise at his costume. It was rarely he conceded so much as a dinner-jacket to their private meals. Even Norah looked at him with curiosity. Herself the evening lights invariably made wonderfully pleasant to the eye. Lovely at any time, her loveliness, that seemed sometimes wild and hoydenish out-of-doors-perhaps at times a little too robust,-was added to enormously by the simplest arts of her looking-glass; her hair, arranged with artful artlessness, of itself appeared to give her a fresh identity; refinement, elegance, and poise were in the shoulders and the tilt of the head. Aunt Amelia plagiarized her taste in fabrics, colors, and the cut of things; but the right effect so seldom waits on the best intentions of our Aunt Amelias! "You haven't gone through the ice, have you?" she inquired. "No," said Sir Andrew, "that was only the luncheon," and glad of his respite he gleefully told of the lost pots. They gave no hint of the visitor; manifestly his first suspicions were correct, and they had plotted some surprise. Well, they would not be disappointed in one respect; the surprise was coming, though with a different complexion from what they had anticipated. Doubtless the lady had been tired and had gone to bed; when it was plain that for a little at least he was to be kept in the dark about her presence, he played up to the situation and asked no questions. His aunt betrayed an uneasy feeling of conspiracy; she chirruped with even more inconsequence than usual, or sat with long intervals of unaccustomed silence. Norah, too, had a sparkle in the eye that might have roused suspicion under any circumstances; the plot, he felt sure, was hers. "A glorious day!" he told them. "Ice perfect, Paterson was in splendid form." "And yourself?" asked Norah. "Oh, middling, middling!" said Sir Andrew, "not so well, but that I once came in for his frankest criticism-he said I was an idiot!" "Tehk! tehk!" said Aunt Amelia, shocked, "if you will mix up with vulgar people!" He laughed. "Vulgar! Dear aunt, there's nothing vulgar about Paterson -a delightful man, who is good enough to overlook my disadvantages in social intercourse as a landlord, and is even capable of most gentlemanly consideration. He leaves the best pools for us, keeps off the river when the fish turn red, and more than once you've had to thank him for a replenished larder." "With Mr. Beswick's pheasants," remarked Norah. "Mr. Beswick understands; I have made that right with him. I learned more wood-craft as a lad from Paterson than from all the gamekeepers. Our poacher's a survival of the antique world, and a sportsman; I never grudge him a dinner from the river or the wood; it's all he mulcts me in. And he's a pretty curler." "But he needn't be impertinent," said Miss Amelia. "You make far too free with him and his class." "It wasn't a bit impertinent; the shot he criticized was stupid. I admire his frankness. The truth is always wholesome; I agree to-night with Emerson; you remember, Norah, the man who omitted all commonplace and compliment in his conversation spoke to the conscience of every person he encountered and that with great insight and beauty? He was mad, it is true, or at any rate they thought him so, but to stand in true relations with men in an age of polite dissimulation is worth a fit of lunacy. You always prefer to know the truth, don't you, Norah?" He looked at her quizzingly. "Indeed, and I do nothing of the kind!" she answered promptly. "There's a great deal to be said for what we call politeness, even when it's dissimulation. The truths that hurt are the truths we know ourselves already." "It's a point we must discuss on the return of Reginald," said the baronet agreeably. "A poet could illuminate the subject. I had the most interesting exposition of the thing to-night, when I met a lady who talked to me about myself with the frankness of a child. A most exhilarating experience!" "It must have been if she told you all," said Norah, wondering. "Could she possibly be more frank than I?" "She was," replied Sir Andrew cheerfully. "In you, even at your most outspoken moments, there is some reserve -I've lately noticed it,"-here Norah flushed uneasily. "My latest friend was as frank as Paterson, quite artless: downright, literal, explicit. She spoke to me of myself as if I were— as if I were a post-boy." "You meet such dreadful people," said Miss Amelia helplessly. "Was she a lady?" asked his cousin. He reflected for a moment, staring at the table-cloth. "Upon my word," said he, "I never thought of that. In any case I couldn't have told, for it was in the dark, and I couldn't see her jewelry," and Miss Amelia stared with open mouth at his criterion of judgment. But Norah, who knew him better, smiled. "Do we know the daring creature?" she inquired. He fixed his eyes on her, and chuckled slyly, then looked around the room inquiringly. "You ought to," he answered. "It was your visitor; I drove her from Duntryne." "What is he saying, Norah?" asked Miss Amelia anxiously. "I wish you wouldn't mumble." "You drove our visitor here?" said Norah with uplifted eyebrows. "I had the honor," said Sir Andrew. "Where is she?" "And she discussed yourself with you! What charming equanimity!" "It's only fair to add that she was quite unconscious who I was," said the baronet; "I fear I owe her a most abject apology. Where is she? Who is she?" "I fancy she's having supper with the housekeeper," said Norah quietly. "Aunty, your marvellous nephew's dinner-jacket wasn't meant for us; he expected to be dining with Miss Skene's companion." CHAPTER X. Mrs. Powrie, the housekeeper of Fancy Farm, was a lady whose attitude to the frolic and ridiculous universe, was one, at the cheerfullest, of petulant acquiescence; had she heard that the end of the world was due on Saturday, she would have said no more than "There's a stupid caper for you!"" and gone and drawn her savings from the bank. Her views of men were not unkindly, but contemptuous; her standard of the sex being Peter Powrie, whom, speaking French unconsciously, she sometimes called "a gniaf! a perfect gniaf!" and she ought to know, since Peter was her husband. Not a bad man in the main; there were worse in the world, we agreed, even in censorious Schawfield, than Peter Powrie, and his wife herself would probably do any mortal thing to please the creature short of living with him, a trial she had ended half a dozen years ago when he sold her cornelian brooch and bought a pup. "You're lucky to be single, Miss Colquhoun," she remarked with a sigh that was half of feeling, half repletion, as she rose from the supper-table, wheeled her cosy arm-chair to the hearth, and poked the logs on the roaring fire of her private room, which (with a natural loathing of things canine) she had lost her temper more than once to hear the other servants call, in the common argot of the underlings, "pug's parlor." "I'm sure of it!" said the stranger, to whom, in less than half an hour's a mood acquaintance, she had, in evoked by the sense of understanding sympathy, laid bare her whole philosa life ophy, and roughly sketched of trial and incredible endurance. "There's nothing like independence. I've quite made up my mind I'll never marry." The middle-aged housekeeper looked at her slyly-at the enviably well-set youthful figure, the merry inviting hazel eyes, the refined and mobile face, the elegant apparel; and coughed a little dubiously. "Touch wood!" she advised, picking up a crochet-needle and stabbing it in her bosom, till she cleared a skene of cotton. "I used to think I felt like that myself, and still-and-on one winter day I went and married Peter Powrie. Men are all silly, but they have a way with them! I'm telling you about my husband since I know very well you'll have the full particulars before you're another day in Schawfield; we're a dreadful folk for clash! If you ever marry, Miss Colquhoun,-and it's like a sprain you can't tell sometimes how it happens-see and marry a nice old man with a little money by him. And above all, take my word for it, beware of a man either young or old that's daft for dogs!" The lady, whose identity was at the moment being indicated to Sir Andrew Schaw in the dining-room, much to his surprise and entertainment, put a pair of the smallest, slimmest feet on the fender, turned up the front of her outer skirt, as much to reveal the flounces of a green silk petticoat as for economy, and assuming a sober, syrupathetic aspect, asked if Mrs. Powrie had been long a widow. But "I'm not a widow at all," said Mrs. Powrie cheerfully. "That's the one vexation Peter ever spared me. I might as well be, for all the good I get of him. You've heard of men go ing to the dogs: mine went to them right enough-nothing in Peter Powrie's silly head but Dandie Dinmonts! He would travel a hundred miles to see a show of the tousy brutes, even if it cost him his situation. He's always losing his situation. As good a coachman as ever wore a hat with a cockade, but daft for Dandie Dinmonts! That's men-aye a want of some kind in them! With some it's drink, and with some it's temper, and with most it's the ran-dan generally, but with Peter Powrie it was nothing worse than dogs. I wish it had been horse! He couldn't put up with the neighborhood because the fashion here was all for Skyes and English terriers. People talk about love and jealousy!" continued Mrs. Powrie with a cynical laugh; "the green-eyed monster, as they call it in the 'Supplement,' never bothered me till Peter fell in love with the champion Dandie Dinmot, and him-that's Peter-at the age of fifty! For two years back he's been in a job in Fife, at hardly more than half his proper wages, just to be near his darling! I wonder sometimes what was the Almighty's notion making men. He must have done it for diversion." "His 'prentice han' he tried on man, and then he made the lasses O!" quoted Miss Colquhoun. "It's a mercy there are different kinds of them." "Have you ever in all your life met a single one you could be bothered with about the house, except for the sake of his wages?" asked the housekeeper, and Miss Colquhoun confessed that, except her father, she had not met any. "A father's different," said Mrs. Powrie. "He's bound to learn a little Perhaps gumption from his children. if Peter" She checked herself as a maid came into the room to clear the table; and sitting stately in her armchair, crocheting, gave Miss Colquhoun an opportunity to reflect how much of actual life, as in the novels, is taken up with the whim called love and the penny-dip or lottery called matrimony. She had, she realized, been talking nearly all that day of little else than men since she set out for Schawfield in the morning; there seemed to be something in the air to bring the subject ever uppermost. "What time do you expect your mistress in the morning?" asked Mrs. Powrie when they had the room to themselves again, and the other reddened, with a spitfire sparkle of the eyes. "Mistress!" she repeated, 'I don't have any; I'm Miss Skene's companion." "I hope she pays you decently forfor your company," retorted Mrs. Powrie dryly, clearing her throat. "It used to be always 'my maid' and 'my lady' in my days, and I'm afraid, at my age, I'll never learn the difference." "There's a great deal of difference, all the same," said Miss Colquhoun, "and I'm a Radical-right down Radical! I learned it from my father, and a poem I got at school, called Goldsmith's 'Deserted Vilage.' And a bit from Burns "Yon dreadful man! I canna stand him! What a carry-on!" interjected Mrs. Powrie. "A maid sells herself, body and soul, for thirty pounds a-year or less to a mistress who can bully her; I have too much temper and conceit of myself for that; I condescend to be Miss Skene's companion-it's an art; and reserve the right to be to be cheeky," and she smiled delightfully, the spitfire quenched in a flood of humorous selfsatisfaction. "I'm not an angel, but I'm just as good a woman as herself. I don't know French, like her, but she doesn't know how to cut a bodice; if I'm not so expensively dressed I'm at least as healthy and a good deal happier. Happy! I'm as happy as the day's long! And as outspoken as a sparrow!" "Dear! dear!" exclaimed Mrs. Powrie, "it's not in the housekeeper's room you should be at all, but in the diningroom." "No, thank you!" retorted Miss Colquhoun with emphasis. "I never like to be in any company where my presence would make it ill at ease. I was always one who liked a congenial air, and I never could sit to be patronized and hold my tongue." "You would never make Sir Andrew ill at ease," said Mrs. Powrie, "though you might make Miss Amelia; he takes folks as he takes his meat-the first that comes along, and an appetite for anything that's wholesome." "Why, that's just me!" cried Miss Colquhoun, and then she qualified it. "Unless they happen to be downright fools!" "That's where you're more particular than Sir Andrew! There's not many fools he can't put up with for a little-only the very vicious. He thought the world of my poor Peter. 'If there were no fools,' he says, 'how would wise men get a living? There's something in it, Miss-What did you say, now, your first name was?" "I didn't say," replied the other with a smile. "But it's-Penelope," and she blushed. "Penelope," repeated Mrs. Powrie, in a tone surprised and almost disapproving. "Tuts! what a pity! It'sit's so foreign! Give me a plain Scotch name like Kate or Margaret; I'm Agnes myself. But Penelope!-what in the world did they give you a name like that for?" "You may well ask! My father got it in a book; he's a clergyman." "Oh, ho! Indeed!" said Mrs. Powrie, with a new respectful tone, "I didn't know. The very best young ladies are so independent nowadays. I had a girl below me a year ago who |