Sallie had been far too happily occupied since she had come to Loquhariot to have been conscious of the wheels within wheels revolving about her there.

She could scarcely at once accustom herself to look upon the great, grey, age-old castle as her home; but there was Janet M'Kissock always eager to help her in that respect, with endless stories of bygone days which made the place seem always more familiar and friendly to her. She grew, by degrees, to know and love it almost as if she had lived there all her life.

It was much more difficult to grasp the idea that the whole of the beautiful white world beyond its windows was also hers, and hers alone; from the rugged, snow-clad mountains towering behind and on either hand, even to the Small Isles, like bergs in the sun amid the smoking seas in that turbulent weather. But Slyne missed no opportunity to impress that important fact upon her. And she was finding it always easier to forget her unhappy past, to enjoy the marvellous present and the most inspiriting part in it, to leave the over-difficult future to evolve itself.

The men and women about the place were all devoted to her. She had very soon won the staunch good-will of the cottagers at the cliff-foot. And her soft sway was everywhere undisputed, although Slyne had at first been inclined to contest it himself. But he soon seemed to realise that it would be best, in the meantime, to order events from the background and in her voice.

He had shown some disposition, too, to question the extent of the liberty she might now assume to herself. But he had not pressed that point unduly either, and they continued on that footing of pleasant comradeship which he had been at such ceaseless pains to promote. His debonair courtesy to her, his easy deference to most of her wishes, were very different indeed from his off-hand manner of former days. And she could not but be grateful to him, in the meantime, for the almost over-ample fulfilment of his original promise.

Regarding her pledge to him, he had said nothing more, although she spent long afternoons and evenings in his company when the weather was at its worst, while Mr. Jobling was away. Captain Dove left the two of them very much to themselves, and Slyne had offered to teach her to play billiards, to pass the time.

She would have been entirely content, indeed, but for the hardship her coming had entailed on Justin Carthew. She had met him more than once out of doors, and he had always seemed pleased to see her, but—it was of common report that he was a poor man, and she could not help feeling that he had shown himself very much more generous to her than she to him. She found comfort, however, in the conclusion that circumstances were quite beyond her control, and that he would understand better by and by the complications through which she had had to find her way as best she could.

She had gone down to the village on the afternoon when the Olive Branch arrived in the loch, and she walked back as far as the castle with Carthew. The reappearance of that ill-omened craft had alarmed her more than a little, and she could see that Carthew was becoming always more sorely puzzled. But he had promised her to await events without question for three short months; and he was keeping his promise loyally. She could have told him nothing, in any case.

She met Slyne in the hall, on her way indoors, and he reassured her as to her perfect safety from any further risk of evil-doing by Captain Dove. He pointed out, too, that the steamer's crew was too scanty now to cope with the force he could call to her aid from the village in case the old man should attempt to make any mischief, which was most unlikely. And she went on to her own cosy quarters, quite content again.

She was changing her outdoor dress for one of her pretty Parisian tea-gowns, when word was brought her that the Duchess of Dawn and Lord Ingoldsby had come across the mountains to pay her a call.

She remembered Lord Ingoldsby, and wondered what could have brought him to Loquhariot. The idea of entertaining a duchess dismayed her a little; she had no notion at all what the conventions called for under circumstances so unusual in her own experience—although Slyne had been at some pains to explain a number of other conventions to her. But she went along to the blue drawing-room at once, and was relieved to find Slyne there before her, unconcernedly chatting with a very beautiful young woman in a sadly splashed habit, her back to the fire, booted feet a little apart, hunting-crop in clasped hands, laughter in her clear eyes; while Lord Ingoldsby, looking much less imbecile and more of a man in his travel-soiled riding-kit, stood listening gloomily.

His face cleared at sight of Sallie, however. "Here's Lady Josceline, Aunt Jane," he cried, and the duchess, after a single swift, appraising glance at her, came forward with outstretched hands and kissed her without any more ado.

"Oh! my dear," said the duchess impulsively, "you can't imagine what a relief you are. Ingoldsby has been simply raving about you, and—I was so anxious, don't you know. But I don't blame him now.

"I've seen you before, too—one night at the Savoy. If I had only known then who you were—But some one said you were a Miss Harris! You've kept it all such a close secret! We wouldn't have known even now if we hadn't heard, quite by chance, that the beacon had been lighted one night. And we've been wondering ever since—So you must tell me all about everything now, if you will." And she drew Sallie down beside her on a low couch at one side of the white marble fireplace, leaving the two men to their own devices while she went on to explain herself no less volubly.

"It was madness, of course, to cross the Pass in weather like this, but—Ingoldsby would give me no peace; and I've been so curious myself to find out who could be here. I'm your nearest neighbour, you know, although Castle Dawn is ten miles away; those are worse than twenty anywhere else. So, when the rain stopped this forenoon we set out—and here we are, covered with mud! The road's in a dreadful state, but you must come over and stay with me as soon as the bridges are mended. We're going to be great friends. I knew your father—although I'm not quite so old as you might imagine from that, for I wasn't out of short petticoats the last time he spoke to me. And, as for being the aunt of that scapegrace there, he's five years older than I am in years—and fifty in—"

"Don't be too rough on a fellah, Aunt Jane!" interrupted her noble nephew, who had been regarding Sallie with fixed vacuity through his eye-glass. "An' don't you believe all you hear about me, Lady Josceline: I'm not so black as I'm painted, at any rate."

"He's been simply raving about you," the duchess declared again, in a laughing whisper. "I couldn't imagine what had brought him down to Dawn in midwinter, until he confided in me that he had been searching the wide world for you ever since he met you first: and he imagined that you might, after all, be here, at home."

She had a great many questions to ask Sallie then, questions which Sallie, in such a situation, might have found it very difficult to answer but for Jasper Slyne's sharp ears and tactful tongue. And the duchess was not slow to understand.

"Of course you can't confide in me yet," she declared laughingly. "But some day you must tell me all your adventures. Your home-coming after all these years will make a nine days' wonder once the papers get to hear of it."

A servant came in to light the lamps, and Slyne sauntered to a window before the curtains were drawn.

"It's snowing again, Ingoldsby," said he. "You won't get back to Dawn to-night."

The duchess looked a little alarmed, but was soon laughing again.

"All right," she agreed, in response to Sallie's prompt proffer of hospitality. "I'll be most happy to stay over-night—and so will Ingoldsby, I'm sure."

"I'll go and let Mrs. M'Kissock know," Slyne volunteered. "Will you look into the gun-room when you pass, Lady Josceline?"

"Is old Janet still here?" the duchess asked as he left the room. "I must have a chat with her. She and I used to be great friends before—when Torquil St. Just was still alive and my mother would bring me over to Loquhariot when she came to call on yours. I was Jane Gairloch in those days."

Lord Ingoldsby sat listening very patiently for a time while they talked to each other, and then he became possessed by a strangled cough—to which the duchess paid no attention.

"You might give a fellah a chance, Aunt Jane," he at length suggested desperately, and she rose from the couch with a most penitent expression.

"Bless my heart, child!" she said. "I had almost forgotten—But—I'll go and talk to old Janet now." And she disappeared without other apology.

Sallie looked surprised. But Lord Ingoldsby, having cleared his throat again, claimed her attention.

"You've no idea, Lady Josceline," he said hurriedly, "what a deuce of a bÂt I've been in for nearly a fortnight. I was afraid I'd never find you again. And, now that I've found you, don't y'know, what I want to say to you is—It's very difficult to express—But I mean—What I'm trying to tell you is that I thought we might maybe make a match of it. Will you marry me, Lady Josceline?"

Sallie looked still more surprised. But she was not slow in answering such a preposterous question.

"I can't," she said, concisely.

"But why not?" he cried. "For heaven's sake! don't go so fast. Give me time to—"

"Time couldn't make any difference," she said, seeing that he was very much in earnest. "I can't—"

"But—why not?" he insisted. "Is—is there some one else already? It's not that fellah I met in Monte Carlo with you, I'm sure; he's such a rank outsider—you couldn't care for him, I'm sure. And why not give me just a chance to show you—

"There's nothing I wouldn't do for you, Lady Josceline. Give me just a chance."

"I can't," she repeated for the third time, and he stared at her as if in abject despair.

"Why can't you?" he demanded in a difficult, husky voice.

She could scarcely answer that question, a question which he had no right to ask. But—she felt sorry for him in his very obvious disappointment.

"If you care to ask Captain Dove, perhaps he will tell you," she said, unable to think of any other safe way out of that difficulty, and not caring very much what Captain Dove might say.

But Lord Ingoldsby was not so easily to be got rid of. He stayed where he was, arguing and imploring by turns until his youthful aunt appeared again, looking somewhat serious; she seemed to take in the situation between them at a shrewd glance.

He left the room then for a little, and when he returned Sallie and the duchess were on the point of retiring.

"I'm going to have a hot bath and a rest before dinner, Ingoldsby," his aunt informed him.

"Your rooms will be ready now, too," Sallie added, unwilling to be left alone there with him again. And he went off, very glumly, under convoy of a servant, toward the bachelor apartments in the Warder's Tower.

Sallie saw the duchess settled in the suite which had been prepared for her, and having provided her with a plentiful choice of evening frocks, went on to the gun-room, to see what Slyne wanted with her.

Captain Dove and he were seated on either side of the fireplace, and looked round rather uncertainly as she came into the room.

"I've made the duchess quite comfortable, Jasper," she said with a smile, "and she's been exceedingly nice to me. I hope you'll look as well after Lord Ingoldsby."

"I've told them to give him the run of my wardrobe," Slyne answered indifferently. "So he'll be all right.

"And—what I wanted to say to you, Sallie, is that—I've just heard—All my hard work for you has been successful at last," he stammered, in a changed voice. "The claim I made for you has been allowed by the law. We're all going up to London to-morrow to get matters finally settled, and then—you'll be Countess of Jura in your own right."

He paused, effectively. Captain Dove was glancing from one to the other of them with judicial gravity.

"So that you can keep your promise to me now, without any further delay," said Slyne. "I want you to tell the others at dinner to-night—that you've chosen me for your husband."

The happy light in her eyes died out instantly. A faint frown furrowed her smooth white forehead. Her curved lips trembled a little. The old unhappiness and dread were plucking at her heart again. But she did not shirk the issue.

"But you agreed to wait—for three months, Jasper," she said in a low, pleading voice.

"That was only in case it took so long to fix things up for you," he lied easily. "Our signed agreement makes that quite clear, and it's absolutely binding, you know. Mr. Jobling will tell you that—and he's a lawyer."

She was gazing at him with something very like horror in her wide eyes.

"Was that in the paper I signed?" she asked breathlessly. But her lips had grown set and resolute. "I thought—"

"You must have misunderstood me, then," Slyne interrupted with assumed impatience. "But—you signed it of your own free will, before responsible witnesses. I've kept my part of our bargain; and now—you must keep yours, or the law will make you."

Her heart was beating almost painfully. To her, in her ignorance, the law was merely an instrument of injustice. She believed herself to be bound without hope of release by the document she had signed, and that the same inexorable law which had, only the other day, ruined Justin Carthew to raise her up in his place, would now force her to abide by whatever was written above her disastrous signature. The whole fair fabric of that wonderful new world to which she had so recently gained admittance had in these minutes come tumbling about her ears. And the crash of its falling palaces left her helpless and stupefied. She looked dizzily round at Captain Dove. But his features were quite unreadable.

"There's another point, Sallie," said Slyne, all his quick wits at work again as he saw the impression his words had made, determined to hammer home every argument that might weigh with her in her ignorance, "another point that I'd never have mentioned if you had been prepared to deal fairly with me after all I've done for you."

She shivered at that further thrust; she, who had never dealt unfairly with either friend or enemy.

"Even without your promise, you're mine—by right of purchase. You were Captain Dove's property before, as you know very well. He bought you and paid for you. And he sold you to me, to save you from a worse master.

"You can't say now that you didn't know what was ahead of you, for I told you, in Genoa. And I gave you a last chance, too, before we left Monte Carlo, to draw back and go your own way with him. Now you're doubly mine. Ask him, if you don't believe me."

The girl glanced in agonised appeal at the old man sitting motionless in his chair, his eyes on the ground. But Captain Dove merely nodded, like some mechanical figure.

Slyne scowled, as if at an end of his patience, and, striding across to the door, locked it, pocketing the key.

"However," said he, "I'm not going to argue with you. I've evidently wasted my time in treating you reasonably. Now, there are only two courses open to you. You can come my way, with me, or—"

He crossed the room again and pulled back the loose panel in the wainscot, pointed to the dark cavity it had concealed.

"There's a boat from the Olive Branch at the water-gate at the end of this passage. You're perfectly free to go back on board with Captain Dove, and—if you do, I wish you joy of your choice. I'm maybe not much of a catch as a husband, but—" He left the inference unspoken, significantly, daring her to go back to that dreadful fate by hinting at which he had once before forced her to change her mind.

Captain Dove got on to his feet with a puzzled scowl. Slyne had turned aside, to light a couple of candles, as if in preparation for a descent underground.

Captain Dove slowly drew the back of one hand across his mouth and from behind it whispered a few words to Sallie. "Humour him just now," he advised with suppressed vehemence. "I'll see you safe."

"Well?" Slyne demanded and came toward her. "Which is it to be? Time's up."

His hands hung open but tense at his sides. His teeth were set between parted lips, his knees bent a little as he braced himself to spring at her wrists before she could make any movement in self-defence. Captain Dove had stepped up behind her and she did not doubt that, unless she fell in with their wishes, they meant now to overpower her and carry her off.

She did not move for a moment, but her clouded eyes slowly cleared, and Slyne, studying her features intently, relaxed his own strained attitude a little as if in fore-knowledge of final success.

Sallie's expression of utter despair had given place to one of resignation, almost of peace. She had made up her mind to have done with the seemingly endless, unequal struggle.

"Very well, Jasper," she said slowly at last, in a very hurtful voice. "You may tell the others—whatever you like—at dinner to-night, if you'll wait till then."

Captain Dove drew back and returned to his chair, as if satisfied for the moment. Slyne's dogged glance had dropped before the tragedy in her eyes.

"You can surely trust me, Sallie," he said, "after all I've done for you. And, listen! I'm not trying to rush you, either. If you'll tell the others at dinner to-night just that you take me for your husband—I'll wait till the end of the three months for our real wedding in church."

She could not quite understand what he really wanted, and looked her perplexity. But her mind was made up. She meant to keep any promise she might have made him, whether in writing or otherwise, and even mistakenly.

"Will you let me go now?" she begged brokenly, and he went to open the door for her.

"You'll say nothing about it to anyone till—the time comes," he stipulated before he would turn the key, and to that also she agreed with a nod, not trusting herself to speak.

She was very thankful that she met no one on her way to her own rooms, for her eyes were wet. She had never felt so utterly forlorn and friendless as now. There was no one in whom she might safely confide, no one who could help her safely past the promise into which she had been tricked, that promise to which, she did not doubt, the law would hold her firmly. And, in any case, she could not have gone back on board the Olive Branch—to a fate even worse.

Ambrizette was awaiting her, to dress her for dinner, but, on a sudden impulse, she sat down at the escritoire in her boudoir to write a few hurried lines to Carthew. She thought she would like to see him again, before—

Her letter ready, she bade Ambrizette ring the bell. It was the maid Mairi who answered it, and, when Sallie looked up again, she saw that the girl was silently crying.

"What's the matter, Mairi?" she asked in her gentle voice, forgetting her own cruel cares for the moment, and at that the half-hysterical maid broke into a storm of unintelligible explanations in Gaelic, with here and there a broken sentence that Sallie could understand.

Her heavy-hearted mistress rose and put a protecting arm about her.

"You must tell me what the trouble is," said Sallie softly, "and I'll try to help you. What is it that has gone wrong?"

"Ochon—ochon—ochanorie!" the girl sobbed. "It is for your ladyship—not for me—and I was not to tell you, whatever. But—it is not right at all that I must not speak. Your ladyship should be told in time—it is that the White Lady has come to the castle again—and—there will be doom to follow before daylight. Ochon, ochon!"

Sallie shivered in spite of herself, as she recalled the uncanny legend which Mr. Jobling had related on the evening of their arrival. She had scarcely thought of it since, but now—

"Who has seen the White Lady, Mairi?" she asked patiently, and the girl grew a little calmer.

"I, with my own eyes, your ladyship," she declared. "It was at a turn of the passage not far from Mistress M'Kissock's room. And I did not run from it, moreover. I stood and watched till it disappeared, for I was afraid to move. And Mistress M'Kissock will say that it is all havers and nonsense, but I am sure. For it was seen in the woods as well, on the way to the hut that was Lord St. Just's, and Donuil Mohr, the forester, it was who saw it there."

Sallie sighed. She did not know what to think of it all, she who had so much else to think about. But she comforted the distressed Mairi, and presently sent her off on her errand, dry-eyed at last, and with word for the other servants that her ladyship was not in the least afraid of any such shadow seen in the dusk.

Sallie had almost forgotten the matter, indeed, before Ambrizette—much exercised in her mind by her beloved mistress's very evident and unusual preoccupation—had finished brushing out her beautiful hair and heaped it about her bent head in a heavy red-gold crown. When her toilette was quite complete, she looked wistfully round the luxurious rooms in which she had dreamed such happy dreams, and then went quietly through, a tall, slender, white-robed figure herself in the firelight, to one of the windows that look down Loch Jura and out to sea. She stopped there, and stayed for a time gazing out at the silver sheen of the ripple among which the Small Isles were set. The snow had ceased for the moment, but it looked as if there were more to come.

She looked directly downward, at the quiet village below. There was only a single light visible, and that at the inn. It was suddenly extinguished and Sallie turned away from the window.

"I wonder—I think he will come," she told herself, if a little doubtfully, as she passed through her boudoir again on her way to rejoin her guests; she paused for an instant to throw two warm, white arms about Ambrizette watching her as she went, out of dog-like eyes with a world of dumb devotion in them.

"I think he will come," she encouraged herself as she entered the distant drawing-room. "He promised—

"Oh, Mr. Herries!"

She had stopped, a little startled, at sight of the solitary figure before the fire. But it was none other than the old factor, a very cadaverous spectacle in evening clothes much too ample for one so emaciated, who came forward with a hasty apology for his intrusion.

"I'm quite well again now," he assured her, in reply to her anxious questions, "and—I thought I would risk taking the liberty—if you will grant me permission to sit at table with you to-night. I always had that privilege with the earl."

Sallie thought she knew his real reason for being there, and it touched her sore heart to think that he was so eager to be at her side, sick or well, while the strange portent of which Mairi had told her was still impending.

"Do you really believe in the White Lady, Mr. Herries?" she asked with a little laugh that was half a sigh, as she put her hands into his and so set him down on a chair.

"I couldn't exactly say either yes or no," the old man answered with native caution. "But, at any rate, I've never seen—any such nonsense myself."

"I don't," declared Sallie, with simple conviction, and, turning as some one else entered the room, "He will come," said she to herself.