When Janet was shown into the cloak-room her troubles began. Should she take off her hat, or not? She looked about to see if the ladies had left their hats. None were to be seen. Yet she had never seen ladies in the evening, except bareheaded. After long consideration she resolved to keep her hat on. But when she was in the doorway to go up to the drawing-room she saw a lady coming through the outer door with a shawl of soft gauzy wool over her head. Janet shrank back instantly and turned cold with the thought of her escape. With trembling hands she took off her hat and pinned her veil to it as she had once seen her mistress do. The lady came in, bustling a little like one who knows she is late. "It is cold to-night," she said affably to the shy girl standing in the doorway, but without looking at her. "Yes, ma'am," said Janet, and the next moment she could have bitten her tongue out for the mistake. "Oh, how I wish I had never come," she said a score of times to herself as she went up the stairs. But it was too late to turn back. "What name?" said the daintily-capped maiden, with the curl of her nostril a little more accentuated. For a moment Janet was so taken aback that she could not even remember her own name. "Janet," she stammered; "Janet—from Bailie Holden's." The maid's face broadened into a smile, at sight of which poor Janet's lip quivered, and for a moment she thought that she must burst out crying. Scarcely was she able to keep back the welling tears. But the door was a little open, and she saw Miss Celie, whom she already knew and loved. The sight of that pleasant face, dimpling and flashing all over with bright kindness, reassured her. "Say 'Janet Urquhart'!" she said, with a little faltering return of assurance in her voice. And the trim maid-servant, with a strong protest in her tone, announced in accents of terrifying distinctness, "Miss Janet Urquhart." Then she shut the door, and Janet was left standing aghast and speechless in the bright humming place. "I would not have done it," soliloquised the indignant maid outside, "unless my place had depended on it." But within Celie Tennant's drawing-room, poor silly little Janet of Inverness was being most pleasantly and charmingly entertained by her hostess. Celie had, in fact, asked only a few of her most intimate friends, whom she could trust with the momentous secret of the loves and sorrows of Cleaver's boy. The fascinating cousin from the tented field was there, ready for love or war. But it was to Donald Iverach that the principal work of the evening had been allotted.