er brown as the brown of dogs' eyes--deep pools, and a
hundred rapids and tiny cataracts filling the glen with their
singing. But Mr. and Mrs. Vanneck would walk far ahead of us on the
steep narrow paths, which were so slippery I had to let Basil help
me, and it was most embarrassing and futile to keep refusing him
all the time. He says we were meant for each other, but I know
better!

You remember, don't you, dear, I didn't want to take this trip? My
feeling must have been a presentiment.

At Culloden Moor I couldn't help crying a little over Prince
Charlie and his brave Highlanders, for I think no other battlefield
can keep its sadness and romantic pathos, and its effect upon the
mind as that does. You know it's almost within sight and sound of
the sea; and the voice of the wind among the pines--dark, straight
ranks of pines like soldiers in mourning, standing in a
bloodstained sea of heather--seemed to me like the wail of ghostly
pipes playing a Highland lament. Wandering among the wavy graves
and piled cairns of the different clans who gave their lives in
vain for Prince Charlie, I was with Basil all alone, for those
wretched Vannecks would go off by themselves, as usual, in the most
marked way. He made me wipe my eyes with his handkerchief, and then
folded it up to 'keep forever.' He does choose the strangest places
to make love, and always contrives the minute the others go away,
to bring the subject round to that. Luckily we are all four
together in the car, as the chauffeur drives, but even there he
looks at me, which is quite getting on my nerves. Yesterday I asked
to sit in front, saying I wanted more air. It was after leaving
Inverness; and I had the best of it, quite by accident. It was a
horrid road, almost the only bad one we've had; full of flat holes
which the chauffeur called 'pans,' and the others, in the back of
the car, nearly had their spines come through the tops of their
heads. Strange what a difference there is, sitting in the driver's
seat! The bumping lasted all the way to Drumnadrochit, where we
turned away from a long, straight loch to mount up into lovely
strange country; then plunged down a steep hill to Invercannich--a
charming place ringed round with lovely, mysterious-looking
mountain-peaks which seem to say '