"You put things very plain, Marrion," she said, "but you always were a sensible girl; and, being what you are, your grandfather's granddaughter--you--you belong to Drummuir, as it were." When she had passed on whistling and calling to her dogs, Marrion Paul stood echoing those last words in her heart. Yes, she belonged to Drummuir; but over and above that inherited loyalty there was a passion of protection for Duke himself. He must not be harmed in any way. Was there indeed anything between him and the painted woman she was serving? Before she wakened her for the dainty supper at ten o'clock that evening Marrion stood looking at the sleeping face, all its charm of _espièglerie_ gone, the mouth cruel, the lines about the eyes hard and set. No, whatever came, that woman should not have the spoiling of Duke's life! Not that there could be much fear since he was leaving the next day. CHAPTER IX No danger! The thought--such an ill-considered thought, it seemed--recurred to Marrion Paul as she held a slip of crumpled paper in her hand and read its slight contents over and over again. She had found it on the floor of the room where Andrew Fraser had packed up his master's spare things. There had been heaps of other papers on the floor, when, during the time that Fantine Le Grand was on duty with the old lord, Marrion, more to still thought than from necessity, had set herself the task of clearing up and making tidy; but this one showed her Duke's handwriting, and, half mechanically, she had reached down to pick it up. And then? Women, as a rule, have not nearly so hard and fast a rule of conventional honour as men on such points, so she had smoothed it out and read-- Evidently a memorandum made to help out a memory excellent in its way, but random, careless. "Write for rooms at Cross-keys. Order trap from Crow; 9.30, copse by avenue gate." She drew in her breath and considered, her thoughts punctuated by the rapid beating of her heart. The Cross-keys? That was the inn where the south coach stopped, and where the ferry road branched off; she could almost see it from her window across the estuary on the edge of the moorland. What did Marmaduke want with rooms there? And the trap from the Crow? That was the little inn down in the back purlieus of the town. For whom was that trap wanted? And why not order from the big posting hotel as usual? Then in an instant a solution flashed upon her. Marmaduke had not really gone by the afternoon coach; or, if he had, so far, was to return that night to the Cross-keys, and the trap was to take Fantine Le Grand to him by the bridge road! The beating of her heart steadied itself. She folded up the paper and put it in her pocket, her vehement determination, somehow or another, to frustrate this plan almost forgotten for the time in wonder at the chance which had brought to her this knowledge.