"I was wae for her, for I ken London through and through, and what a hole it is--bar for them that hae money and heaps o’ folk. In the Glen, see, ye can live withoot onybody and no be that ill aff, but London is--is fair hell unless ye hae folk; I’m sayin’ that, that kens. I telt her weel, though I was a prood woman to hae her in my hoose, and wad hae dune ony mortal thing for her. But it was not the hoose for her that had been brocht up in the Castle o’ Achree wi’ servants at her ca’. Her idea was to lodge wi’ me and work in the day-time, but she could get naething like that to do." Agnes paused, breathless, and dashed away something from her eye. "When I tell ye ye’ll maybe lauch, and maybe ye’ll greet. It’s what I felt mair like. The first place she gaed to was to a woman that wantit somebody to tak’ oot her pet dogs for an airin’ in the Park. Yes, she went after that--Miss Mackinnon of Achree!--she did! And that’ll show ye far better than I can tell ye what London is for the woman-body that has neither money nor folk." Drummond was silent, but the veins began to rise on his ruddy forehead, and his kind eyes flashed fire. "She didna think she wad tak’ that at seevin-an’-saxpence a week," pursued Agnes with merciless candour, "and syne she gaed to the Hans Crescent place to be a kind o’ companion-hoosekeeper to a leddy. O’ a’ the traps there is set in London for a woman-body--that’s the warst, for, look ye, Maister Drummond, a servant-lass kens what she is and what she has to dae, but when you’re that," she said, with a scornful snap of her fingers, "you’re neither fish nor flesh nor guid red herrin’. But gang she would. It seems that Mrs. Bodley-Chard--sic a name to begin wi’--but they’re a’ daft wi’ their double-barrelled names here!--was an auld wife married to a young man that had been her first man’s clerk. It was her money he was efter, and Miss Isla thocht he was tryin’ to get rid o’ her wi’ some pooshonous drug. Ye ken Miss Isla. Nae joukery-pawkery can live near whaur she is, and she began to fecht the scoondrel quietly-like, daein’ what she could for the puir woman. But at the end o’ three weeks she was dismissed at a moment’s notice, her money flung at her--like. She didna tak’ that, and she cam’ back here, whaur she’s been ever since. And she’s got naething to dae sin syne, and her money’s near dune, and--and she’s--weel, if ye see her, ye’ll ken what wey I was gaun to write to the Glen this very day." Drummond rose up from his chair, and he was like a man ready to fight the whole of London for Isla’s sake. "But what did she mean by it?" he said a little hoarsely. "There was no need----" "She seemed to think there was. Forby, she was not pu’in’ in the same boat wi’ Maister Malcolm--the Laird, I mean--and she has never written to him or heard frae him since she cam’. That I do ken." "Well, and where is she? I must see her and, if possible, take her back with me to the Glen."