"No," answered Wat, sullenly enough, as he lifted her to the ground, not knowing what else to say. "Then meet me at the head of the wood on my way home," whispered the lady, as she disengaged herself from his arm, and turned with a smiling face to Roger McGhie. "And this is your sweet daughter," she murmured, caressingly, to Kate, who stood by with drooping eyelids, but who, nevertheless, had lost no shade of the colloquy between Wat Gordon and her father's guest. The Lady Wellwood took the girl's hand, which lay cold and unresponsive in her plump white fingers. "A pretty maid--you will be a beauty one day, my dear," she added, with the condescension of one who knows she has as yet nothing to fear from younger rivals. To this Kate answered nothing. For her flatterer was a woman. Had the Duchess of Wellwood been a man and condescended to this sort of left-handed praise, Kate would have flashed her eyes and said, "I have not seldom been told that I am one already." Whereupon he would have amended his sentence. As it was, Kate said nothing, but only hardened her heart and wondered what the great court lady had found to whisper to the man who, during these last months, had daily been avowing himself her lover. And though Kate was conscious that her heart sat secure and untouched on its virgin throne, it had, nevertheless, been not unpleasant to listen to the lad. For of a surety Wat Gordon told his tale wondrously well. Roger McGhie conducted the lady gallantly through the garden walks towards the house. But she had not gone far when she professed herself overcome by the heat, and desired to be permitted to sit down on a rustic seat. She was faint, she said; yet, even as she said it, the keen eye of Kate McGhie noted that her color remained warm and high. "A tass of water--nay, no wine," she called after the Laird of Balmaghie; "I thank you for your courtesy." And Kate's father hastened away a little stiffly to bring it. She knew that his Sunday shoes irked him. It served him right, she thought. At his age he ought to know better--but there remained the more important matter of the under-gardener. "Come and sit by me, pretty one," said the Lady Wellwood, cooingly, to Kate. The "pretty one" would infinitely rather have set herself down by the side of an adder sunning itself on a bank than shared the woodland seat with the bold horsewoman of Grenoch. "Ah! sly one," she said, "I warrant you knew that your under-gardener there, that handsome lad, was not the landward man he seemed." She shook her finger reproachfully at her companion as she spoke. Kate blushed hotly, and then straightway fell to despising herself for doing it almost as much as she hated my lady for making her. Lady Wellwood watched her covertly out of the corner of her eyes. She cultivated a droop of the left eyelid on purpose.