art a topic of his own in opposition to
his patron's, he could have captured the interest of the gathering in a
sentence.

But Simon MacTaggart was for once not in the mood for the small change
of conversation. Some weighty thought possessed him that gave his eye a
remote quality even when he seemed to be sharing the general attention
in the conversation, and it was as much resentment at the summons from
his abstraction and his mood as a general disinclination to laugh at a
wretch's misery on the bidding of the wretch's wife, that made him so
curt to Mrs. Petullo's advances. To him the dinner seemed preposterously
unending. More than once his hand went to his fob with an unconscious
response to his interest in the passage of the time; with difficulty he
clenched his teeth upon the yawns that followed his forced smiles at the
murmured pleasantries of the humble bailies and town councillors in
his midst, who dared only venture on a joke of their own, and that
discreetly muffled, when there was a pause in the conversation of the
Duke and the Judges. And to the woman at his shoulder (the one on his
left--the wife of the Provost, a little fair-haired doll with a giggling
appreciation of the importance of her situation in such grand company,
and a half-frightened gladness at being so near MacTaggart) he seemed
more mysterious and wonderful than ever. Mrs. Petullo, without looking
at his half-averted face, knew by the mere magnetic current from his
cold shoulder that of her he was just now weary, that with his company
as a whole he was bored, and that some interest beyond that noisy hall
engaged his abstracted thought.

"No," the Duke was saying; "the murderer has not been discovered, nor
indeed have we the most important evidence that there was a murder at
all--for the body itself is as yet a mere matter of rumour, though of
its existence there is no reasonable ground for doubt. It was carried
off, as I am informed, by the Macfarlanes, whose anxiety to hush the
affair is our main proof that they were on no honest expedition when
this happened. But an affair like that gets bruited abroad: it came to
us from Cairndhu that the corpse of a Macfarlane was carried past in
the gloaming by some of his friends, anxious to get it smuggled through
Ard-kinglas with as little public notice as possible."

"_Acta exteriora indicant interiora seceta_, to somewhat misapply a
well-kent maxim. The _res gesto_ show, I think, that it was a murd