"Mr. Mackinnon will think us very frivolous, Sadie. Suppose we change the subject and ask him to tell us something about India. Your British rule in India is so splendid! It stands, just like a great rock, immune from the assaults of criticism. I’m sure all this talk about sedition and unrest means nothing. Perhaps you can tell us about it." Very little did Malcolm Mackinnon know about British rule in India--as little indeed as any Tommy in the ranks. "Well, you see," he said with rather an awkward laugh. "I was only a bit of the system--don’t you know?--a small--very small spoke in the big wheel. My part was to make forced marches in the night and keep an open eye after stray bullets, and to be all ready when occasion rose." Sadie’s eyes positively glowed with excited interest. She loved the Army, investing it with colour and romance, and in Malcolm Mackinnon she pictured to herself a heroic figure--a replica of the fine old father, of whose valour the Glen had many tales to tell. But Vivien, the more discriminating of the two, had already decided in her own clear and quiet mind that the son of Achree occupied a lower moral plane than the daughter. Her instinct was very swift and fine, and the feeling of distrust born of that first meeting was never afterwards wholly dispelled. Sadie, with her elbows on the table, wagged her unconventional tongue and asked so many questions about their guest’s life in India that he gave her a very highly coloured version of the same, playing up to her for all he was worth and deepening her impression of the soldiery who had upheld Britain’s prestige all over the world. In the midst of this fascinating talk which proceeded almost entirely between Malcolm and Sadie, Vivien merely listening with an odd air of cool detachment which was almost critical, a servant entered the room with a message which she delivered to Sadie. Since Vivien’s return to her mother’s house she had taken a secondary place, and, though she resumed her own name, it was Sadie to whom were accorded the privileges of the elder daughter. "Please, Miss Sadie, Mrs. Rosmead would like very much to see Mr. Mackinnon before he goes if he will come to her room." Malcolm would have declined if he had had any excuse, but Sadie jumped up immediately, saying that she would show him the way. Vivien did not accompany them, and when, after a brief interview with the beautiful, white-haired old lady who had Vivien’s eyes, Sadie and he returned to the hall-place, she was nowhere to be seen. "Must you go, Mr. Mackinnon? I don’t know where Vivien is. She’s like that, poor dear. Her troubles have quite taken the life out of her. You’ll come again, won’t you? In the name of the whole Rosmead folks I make you free of your own house." She was so frankly kind and her eyes so beamed on him that Malcolm would not have been Malcolm had he not made quick response.