It was on the tip of her tongue to explain how, on the previous night, she had actually listened to the Whispers. But she refrained. She recognised that, though he would not admit it, he was nevertheless superstitious of ill results following the hearing of those weird whisperings. So she made eager pretence of wishing to know the historical facts of the incident referred to by the gamekeeper. "No," exclaimed the blind man softly but firmly, taking her hand and stroking her arm tenderly, as was his habit when he wished to persuade her. "No, Gabrielle dear," he said; "we will change the subject now. Do not bother your head about absurd country legends of that sort. There are so many concerning Glencardine and its lords that a whole volume might be filled with them." "But I want to know all about this particular one, dad," she said. "From me you will never know, my dear," was his answer, as his gray, serious face was upturned to hers. "You have never heard the Whispers, and I sincerely hope that you never will." CHAPTER XIII WHAT FLOCKART FORESAW The following afternoon was glaring and breathless. Gabrielle had taken Stokes, with May Spencer (a girl friend visiting her mother), and driven the "sixteen" over to Connachan with a message from her mother--an invitation to Lady Murie and her party to luncheon and tennis on the following day. It was three o'clock, the hour when silence is upon a summer house-party in the country. Beneath the blazing sun Glencardine lay amid its rose-gardens, its cut beech-hedges, and its bowers of greenery. The palpitating heat was terrible--the hottest day that summer. At the end of the long, handsome drawing-room, with its pale blue carpet and silk-covered furniture, Lady Heyburn was lolling lazily in her chair near the wide, bright steel grate, with her inseparable friend, James Flockart, standing before her. The striped blinds outside the three long, open windows subdued the sun-glare, yet the very odour of the cut flowers in the room seemed oppressive, while without could be heard the busy hum of insect life. The Baronet's handsome wife looked cool and comfortable in her gown of white embroidered muslin, her head thrown back upon the silken cushion, and her eyes raised to those of the man, who was idly smoking a cigarette, at her side. "The thing grows more and more inexplicable," he was saying to her in a low, strained voice. "All the inquiries I've caused to be made in London and in Paris have led to a negative result." "We shall only know the truth when we get a peep of those papers in Henry's safe, my dear friend," was the woman's reply. "And that's a pretty difficult job. You don't know where the old fellow keeps the key?" "I only wish I did. Gabrielle knows, no doubt." "Then you ought to compel her to divulge," he urged. "Once we get hold of that key for half-an-hour, we could learn a lot." "A lot that would be useful to you, eh?" remarked the woman, with a meaning smile.