one or two distant questions on
her attendant, but the woman knew nothing. There seemed to be no sort
of question that she could answer.

In a few days more the desire for some conversation with somebody became
very pressing, and Lady Carse was not in the habit of denying herself
anything she wished for. Still, her pride pulled the other way. The
plan she thought of was to sit apparently musing or asleep by the fire
while her attendant swept the floor of her room, and suddenly to run
downstairs while the door was open. This she did one day, when she was
pretty sure she had heard an unusual sound of horses' feet below. If
Mr Forster should be going without her seeing him it would be dreadful.
If he should have arrived after an absence this would afford a pretext
for renewing intercourse with him. So she watched her moment, sprang to
the door, and was down the stair before her attendant could utter a cry
of warning to those below.

Lady Carse stood on the last stair, gazing into the little kitchen,
which occupied the ground floor of the tower. Two or three people
turned and gazed at her, as startled, perhaps, as herself; and she _was_
startled, for one of them was Lord Lovat.

Mr Forster recovered himself, bowed, and said that perhaps she found
herself able to travel; in which case, he was at her service.

"O dear, no!" she said. She had no intention whatever of travelling
further. She had heard an arrival of horsemen, and had merely come down
to know if there was any news from Edinburgh.

Lord Lovat bowed, said he had just arrived from town, and would be happy
to wait on her upstairs with any tidings that she might enquire for.

"By no means," she said, haughtily. She would wait for tidings rather
than learn them from Lord Lovat. She turned, and went upstairs again,
stung by hearing Lord Lovat's hateful laugh behind her as she went.

As she sat by the fire, devouring her shame and wrath, her attendant
came up with a handful of newspapers, and Lord Lovat's compliments, and
he had sent her the latest Edinburgh news to read, as she did not wish
to hear it from him. She snatched the papers, meaning to thrust them
into the fire in token of contempt for the sender; but a longing to read
them came over her, and she might convey sufficient contempt by throwing
them on the bed--and this she accordingly did.

She watched them, however, as a cat does a mouse. The woman seemed to
have no intention of going down