"Aunt Betty, what took Neil to London?" quoth Kitty with a severe expression on her piquant face. "You and he are keeping me in the dark. It isn’t fair." "Neil has his reasons, my dear, and they are good ones, depend on it." "But you can’t go to London by yourself, auntie! The thing’s outrageous! It can’t be contemplated for a moment. I must go with you to take care of you." "No, I’ll take Lisbeth, and I must go and arrange matters with her now." Lady Betty was now seventy-four, but she was as straight and supple as a young birch tree. She carried a stick--not because she needed it, but because it was her whim to do so and because it had been given to her by an old sweetheart for a wager. She had never parted with it. It was her faithful companion by day, and at night it stood in a handy corner by her bed. Lady Betty had never married. But had any married wife a life so full of romance? This is not Lady Betty’s story, however. She sniffed a love story afar off and rose to it with the keen scent of a war-horse for the fray. There she would be in her element--keen, shrewd, sympathetic, and full of common-sense. Neil had made no mistake in sending that telegram. He knew the hour had come, and the woman. Aunt Betty was as gay as a young girl over her preparations, which were so elaborate that Kitty felt called upon to remonstrate. "Mind your own business, my dear. I know mine. A lassie like you can afford to rise and run. A woman like me must uphold the dignity of her age and position. Neil has not said what he wants me for. I must be prepared for any emergency." Kitty was speechless, consumed with curiosity and inordinately jealous. She travelled to Stirling, however, to put her aunt on the London train, and on the way back drove to Achree to acquaint the inmates with the astounding news of Lady Betty’s departure for London, that gave her one hour’s rare enjoyment and partly consoled her for being left behind. Lady Betty arrived at Euston as fresh and gay as when she had left Garrion in the raw of the winter morning, driving down Balquhidder in a blast of half-frozen rain. And Neil was on the platform to greet her, overjoyed at sight of her clever old face. "You are a brick, Aunt Betty. But I knew you would come. How did you get rid of Kitty?" "Not easily, my lad. But I did manage it. Lisbeth is here. Where are we going, and where can she ride? We want to talk together in the cab, you and I." "I have a brougham waiting. It’s quite fair, and Lisbeth can go on the box. We are going to Brown’s Hotel." Lady Betty nodded an approval. She was known at Brown’s. In the old days, when she had been a figure in London society, she had often spent a season there. "It’s Isla Mackinnon, of course. Where is she?" "She’s with an old servant of Achree living in a place off the Edgeware Road, from which you will fetch her to-morrow," said Neil quietly. "And do what with her?" "That’s for you to say."