an was anxious to see the Herons before any newspaper report should
reach them; and he therefore hurried the seaman up to Strathleckie after
a hasty breakfast at the hotel. But at Strathleckie, disappointment
awaited him. Everybody was out--except the baby and the servants. The
whole party had gone to spend a long day at the house of a friend: they
would not be back till evening.

Rupert was forced to resign himself to the delay. The man, Mason, was
regaled in the servants' hall, and was there regarded as a kind of hero;
but Vivian had no such distraction of mind. He had nothing to do: he had
reasons of his own for neither walking out nor trying to read. He leaned
back in an arm-chair, with his back to the light, and closed his eyes.
From time to time he sighed heavily.

He felt himself quite sufficiently at home to ask for anything that he
wanted; and the glass of wine and biscuit which formed his luncheon were
brought to him in the study, the room that seemed to him best fitted for
the communication that he would have to make. He had been there for two
or three hours, and the short winter day was already beginning to grow
dim, when the door opened, and a footstep made itself heard upon the
threshold.

It was a woman's step. It paused, advanced, then paused again as if in
doubt. Vivian rose from his chair, and held out both hands. "Kitty," he
said. "Kitty, is it you?"

"Yes, it is I," she said. Her voice had lost its ring; there was a
tonelessness about it which convinced Rupert that she had already heard
what he had come to tell.

"I thought you had gone with the others," he said, "but I am glad to
find you here. I can tell you first--alone. I have sad news, Kitty. Why
don't you come and shake hands with me, dear, as you always do? I want
to have your little hand in mine while I tell you the story."

He was standing near the arm-chair, from which he had risen, with his
hand extended still. There was a look of appeal, almost a look of
helplessness, about him, which Kitty did not altogether understand. She
came forward and touched his hand very lightly, and then would have
withdrawn it had his fingers not closed upon it with a firm, yet gentle
grasp.

"I think I know what you have come to say," she answered, not struggling
to draw her hand away, but surrendering it as if it were not worth while
to consider such a trifle. "I read it all in the newspapers this
morning. The others do not know."

"You did not tell