le behind you," said Lady Lundie, "and you will
find some writing paper inside. Give me a sheet of it--and the pencil
out of the tray."

Eagerly watched by Mrs. Inchbare, she wrote an order to the
poultry-woman, and held it out with a gracious smile.

"Take that to the gardener's wife. If you agree with her about the
price, you can have the cock and the two pullets."

Mrs. Inchbare opened her lips--no doubt to express the utmost extremity
of human gratitude. Before she had said three words, Lady Lundie's
impatience to reach the end which she had kept in view from the
time when Mrs. Glenarm had left the house burst the bounds which had
successfully restrained it thus far. Stopping the landlady without
ceremony, she fairly forced the conversation to the subject of Anne
Silvester's proceedings at the Craig Fernie inn.

"How are you getting on at the hotel, Mrs. Inchbare? Plenty of tourists,
I suppose, at this time of year?"

"Full, my leddy (praise Providence), frae the basement to the ceiling."

"You had a visitor, I think, some time since of whom I know something? A
person--" She paused, and put a strong constraint on herself. There was
no alternative but to yield to the hard necessity of making her inquiry
intelligible. "A lady," she added, "who came to you about the middle of
last month."

"Could yer leddyship condescend on her name?"

Lady Lundie put a still stronger constraint on herself. "Silvester," she
said, sharply.

"Presairve us a'!" cried Mrs. Inchbare. "It will never be the same that
cam' driftin' in by hersel'--wi' a bit bag in her hand, and a husband
left daidling an hour or mair on the road behind her?"

"I have no doubt it is the same."

"Will she be a freend o' yer leddyship's?" asked Mrs. Inchbare, feeling
her ground cautiously.

"Certainly not!" said Lady Lundie. "I felt a passing curiosity about
her--nothing more."

Mrs. Inchbare looked relieved. "To tell ye truth, my leddy, there was
nae love lost between us. She had a maisterfu' temper o' her ain--and I
was weel pleased when I'd seen the last of her."

"I can quite understand that, Mrs. Inchbare--I know something of her
temper myself. Did I understand you to say that she came to your hotel
alone, and that her husband joined her shortly afterward?"

"E'en sae, yer leddyship. I was no' free to gi' her house-room in the
hottle till her husband daidled in at her heels and answered for her."

"I fancy I must have seen her husband," sa