"It’s the swearin’, Miss Isla. I haf not been used to it, an’ I will not stand it--not even from Maister Malcolm, an’ Diarmid laughin’ in the back, like, when I wass ordered to put away the things. Please to tell me who iss to wait on the Laird--iss it to be me or iss it to be Diarmid?" "And, supposing it should be you, eh, Margaret?" asked Isla, and the smile did not leave her lips. "Go away down and see what there is in the larder, for we shall need something to eat a little later. And then come up and help me to clear this room. If Mr. Malcolm does not want it I’ll take it myself, for it would be a shame to let it stand empty." Margaret, a little ashamed perhaps and glad of the offered opportunity to recover herself, went out of the room. The smile still lingering on her lips, Isla began to look over the things which had been brought down from the attic room. The squabble between Margaret and Diarmid was quite a timely diversion, for it had taken the edge off what might otherwise have been a painful moment, and she thought how like children the two were in their slight knowledge of real care. Pondering thus, she pulled open the upper drawers of the tallboys that stood between the windows, and she saw that they were full of small stuff belonging to Malcolm--papers and photographs and books and toilet articles mingled in inextricable confusion. Margaret had certainly carried the things down, but she had not made the smallest attempt at putting them in order. Isla took out an armful and carried them to the bed, thinking that when Margaret returned the simplest way would be to get her to bring a couple of trays, on which the small things could be laid, ready for carrying up the attic stair. As she let a little heap fall loosely on the white coverlet a bundle of photographs fell apart, and one looked up at her with an insolent, half-defiant stare. She grew hot all over and then cold, recognizing in the bold, handsome face that of the woman whom she had seen Malcolm with in the street off the Edgeware Road. He had said she was a friend of George Larmer’s; if so, why was her photograph here among Malcolm’s most treasured possessions? CHAPTER XVI THE PURPLE LADY The little menage on the Moor of Creagh was a mistake from the beginning, and was bound, in the very nature of things, to have a quick and disastrous end. This, it must be at once said, was not altogether the fault of Malcolm, though Isla thought it was. Her fine nature had been soured by her experiences, and the hard side of her developed by the responsibilities which she had had to shoulder in her young girlhood, when her heart ought to have been at play.