Mrs. Vane shivered again, and, a sudden distaste to the whole business coming over her, made an excuse to escape; yet when, almost at the threshold, she met Marjory and Dr. Kennedy on their way to Peggy's entertainment, she paused with the lightest of laughs to tell them that the old woman was in one of her worst moods, and would make their hair stand on end. For her part she had had her fill of horrors, and intended to shock Mrs. Woodward by asking for a spoonful of brandy in her tea! It was a relief to joke over it for the time, even though in her heart she knew that she would have a _mauvais quart d'heure_ sooner or later; most likely later, when the time came for sleep and she would have to seek the aid of that bottle of chloral--for Mrs. Vane's mind was fragile as her body, and could not stand any great strain. She could handle the reins deftly, and drive her team gaily along the turnpike road, but she had never driven across country. So it was a further relief to meet the butler in the hall carrying a fresh teapot of tea into the drawing-room, while the footman followed decorously bearing eight cups on a tray. Lady Hooker, the former functionary replied, in answer to her inquiries, had driven over from the Forest to see her ladyship in a _châr-a-banc_, with seven other ladies, some children, and a piper playing on the box. He added the last item in tones of tolerant contempt, born of a dispute downstairs as to whether the musician should have his tea in the housekeeper's room or the servants' hall; the womenkind, dazzled by his gorgeous array, favouring the former, the menkind the latter, on the ground that fine feathers did not make fine birds, and that without them he was only Roderick the gillie's brother and a "hignorant 'ighland beast" to boot. Lady George's face relaxed even at the sight of another woman, seeing that that other was Mrs. Vane; for as she said afterwards, "It is nearly twenty miles, you know, and a bad road, so the horses were bound to have an hour's rest, and it requires a dreadful expenditure of tissue to make tea last an hour; yet, if you don't, you have to put on your boots in a hurry and begin the conservatories and the garden, which no one wants to see in the least. Really, in the country, it would be a charity to have a room where people could wait until the horses came round, or rather, till the coachman got tired of flirting with the maids, for in the end it comes to that, you know." To tell truth, there was cause for Lady George's welcome of reinforcements, for, despite the fact that the hall positively reeked of mackintoshes, the drawing-room was redolent of the shower-proof mantles worn by a bevy of ladies of the type so common on Mr. McBrayne's steamers; ladies whose conception of the Highlands and islands might be likened to a volume of Scott bound in waterproof!