"Why are you not with the Munros?" he said abruptly. "With Munro's eye for a pretty young woman, too!" "The Munros took me to Norway this summer. Sir Douglas is kindness itself, and so is Lady Munro; but Miss Simpson is my cousin." He laughed again, the same discordant laugh. "Drink your wine, Miss Maclean," he said, "and I will spin you a bit of a yarn. Maybe some of it will be news to you. "A great many years before you were bora, my grandfather was the laird of all this property. Your father's people, the Macleans, were tenants on the estate--respectable, well-to-do tenants, in a small way. Your grandfather was a remarkable man, cut out for success from his cradle,--always at the top of his class at school, don't you know? always keen to know what made the wheels go round, always ready to touch his hat to the ladies. His only brother, Sandy, was a ne'er-do-weel who never came to anything, but your grandfather soon became a rich man. There were two sisters, and each took after one of the brothers, so to say. Margaret was a fine, strapping, fair-spoken wench; Ann was a poor fusionless thing, who married the first man that asked her. Margaret never married. The best grain often stands. "Your grandfather had, let me see, three children--two boys and a girl. A boy and girl died. It was a sad story--you'll know all about it?--fine healthy children, too! But your father was a chip of the old block. He had a first-rate education, and then he went to India and made a great name for himself. I never knew a man like him. People opened their hearts and homes to him wherever he went. Not a door that was closed to him, and yet he never forgot an old friend. Well, the first time he came home, like the gentleman he was, he must needs look up his people here. Most of them were dead. Sandy had gone to Australia; there were only Ann's children, Rachel Simpson and her sister Jane. Jane had married a small shopkeeper, and had a boy and girl of her own. They were very poor, so he made each of them a yearly allowance. "Well, he was visiting with his young wife at a house not a hundred miles from here, and the two of them were the life of the party. I know all about it, because I came to stay at the house myself a day or two before they left. After they had gone--_after they had gone_, mark ye!--who should come to call at the house in all their war-paint but Rachel Simpson and her sister! And, by Jove! they were a queerish couple. Rachel had notions of her own about dress in those days, I can tell you." Mona blushed crimson. No one who knew Rachel could have much doubt that the story was true.