"I met different folks--Donald Maclure and Long Sandy and Drummond seeking you. Only he didn’t come up when I told him that I thought you were about Lochearn. Did you see him?" "No. I suppose I was in Achree at the time. This was a lady--an extraordinary person in a purple frock. She spoke to me at the Darrach Bridge, and she had stopped Vivien Rosmead, too, and asked her questions about Achree." She saw Malcolm’s colour change and his eyes shift. "What did she say to you, Isla? I suppose she was one of these stray visitors at the hotel. Miss Macdougall has had some queer specimens this summer." "She said she was living at Strathyre, and she asked questions about the Mackinnons and Achree, as if she knew about them." "And did she say where she came from or what she wanted here?" asked Malcolm, and by this time he had walked away beyond the range of Isla’s eyes. "No. But I knew, Malcolm," said Isla clearly. "I don’t know whether I ought to tell you, but perhaps it will be better that you should know. She was the woman I met you with that day in the Edgeware Road--the woman you said you were seeking for Captain Larmer." CHAPTER XVIII GOODBYE TO GLENOGLE Half an hour later, from the window of the room where she was doing her packing, Isla saw Malcolm ride out to the road upon his bicycle. She did not need to watch the turn he took. She knew just as well as if she had been told that he was bound for Strathyre. It was beginning to grow dusk, but the September evenings are long in Glenogle, and it would be a night of full moon. Isla’s thoughts were rather bitter as she made busy with her scanty wardrobe, laying aside every superfluous article, because she did not wish her movements to be hampered with too much baggage. Busy with purely mechanical things as she was, her thoughts were free to tarry with the affairs of Achree. Had Malcolm been as other men--had there been no shadow on his past, no complications in his present, she could have wished for no better issue out of the tangle of their troubles than to see him win Vivien Rosmead. She was a sweet, gracious woman, a true gentlewoman, beautiful and rich--a combination not easily found in a wife. How Isla would have rejoiced to see her mistress of Achree, rearing bonnie children who would have loved her and called her Auntie Isla. It was what ought to have been, she said with a little passionate stamp of her foot upon the floor. And now that Malcolm was in deadly earnest she did not doubt for a moment that he desired to be worthy for Vivien’s sake, but spectres blocked the way. The most imminent and the most terrifying was the woman in the purple frock. Could anything on earth ever explain her away?