Viscount Stair looked up sideways with a sudden complete drop of his indifferent manner. “You fool,” he said, “you are not in a position you can play with—you have three countries full of enemies and not one friend that I know of—except the King, and what could he do for you if all Scotland started to pull you down? Ye have discovered this plot (more by good fortune than by your own wits), and you would fling away the credit of it for—what? Some rag of sentiment.” “I have not said so,” retorted Sir John sullenly. “Bah!” The Viscount made a grimace. “Why did you delay so long in sending them to Kensington? Believe me, you cannot afford to lose these chances of serving the country: if your enemies find one handle against you—you fall far more quickly than you climbed, my dear son.” “My lord, my lord!” cried the Master of Stair, “the tenure of my office is not so slight.” “You think not?” smiled his father. “I do not now know you could have justified yourself if you had kept those papers back and it had been discovered. It would have looked like complicity with the Jacobites.” Sir John lifted his head impatiently. “Am I not the only man about the Court whose hands are clean from that charge?” he cried. “Complicity with the Jacobites! I know no man could dare accuse me.” “And I know a hundred,” returned his father. “Arrogance is strangely blind—it stands on a hill and heeds not how the foundations are being sapped till it falls on its face in the mire. And nothing is more pitiable than fallen arrogance.” “Sir—you speak as if I was a boy to be taught by your parables,” cried Sir John wrathfully. “I say that by this act of yours you have made me dishonor my word—” Then his angry thoughts flashed to what Delia knew and he turned to his father. “It may ruin my plans with the Macdonalds.” “Better lose the Macdonalds than the Jacobites,” answered the Viscount calmly. “And who knows of your Highland schemes?” Maddened and fuming, Sir John’s fury fixed itself on the unknown person who had betrayed him; had Delia known nothing of his scheme he would not have had to degrade himself by a bargain he was powerless to carry out. “Yea, who knows?” he demanded. “I only knew myself this morning that the Macdonalds had taken the oath, and already I am betrayed—now, in the name of God, who is it?” The Viscount was cool and sneering again. “You are absolutely incoherent,” he remarked. “But if any one has betrayed your schemes it is, of course, your dutiful wife.” The Master looked round sharply. “I do not think,” he said bitterly, “that she has either the wit or the spirit; and she does not know.” “It is you who do not know,” smiled the Viscount. “She spies on you, listens at doors.” Sir John flared into violence. “She would not dare—I cannot believe, and if I did—” “Ask her,” interrupted his father. “She has a silly habit of speaking the truth—the result I believe of her bad education. She is a marvelously ignorant woman.”