“Care?” echoed Lord Stair. “I care for none of it—you, my lord, behave according to your nature. I am your guest. We will let the matter of the papers pass. After all I should not have expected otherwise, and I am not ashamed of what I have written.” Breadalbane was quiet, slightly discomfited by the magnificent manner and person of the man whose reckless imprudence his cunning despised. Lord Stair rose, sweeping the petals in a cloud onto the floor; bowed, and passed into the ball-room. The gavotte was over, the company stood about in little knots; as Lord Stair passed he heard fragments of their converse; it seemed that they talked of nothing save Glencoe, Glencoe and the impending commission. Johnstone was there, his fellow-minister and rival; he crossed the room to make some smiling remarks to him upon the current topic. “Ye have some enemy at work, my lord,” said Johnstone with a pleasant spite. Lord Stair gazed at him in a disdainful silence, but the words pierced the armor of his splendid scorn. Had not Breadalbane said the same? Some secret enemy working his ruin. He thought it over gloomily; it was part of the curse over the Dalrymples, perchance, part of the bitter curse that at last, after he had stifled the miseries of his personal tragedies with brilliant, mighty success, he should be pulled to ruin by some unknown enemy. He had seated himself in front of one of the great mirrors and gazed frowningly at the company; his wife passed with Tom Wharton; he took no heed of her save to wonder bitterly what she would do were he ruined, if such a wild thing happened and he was brought low. What would she do? He thought grimly that her company would not trouble him in that case; doubtless she would be glad of the scandal of his disgrace to cover the scandal of her desertion; the thin chain that held her would be snapped, when the world turned on him so would she; he was sure of it, and he reflected how easily his fortunes, his name, his honor could be pulled to the dust if Tweeddale and his faction triumphed. But his arrogance dismissed even the shadow of humiliation; he had been howled at, reviled, threatened before; this storm would pass as others had done; he had weathered too much for a paltry matter such as this Glencoe affair to overthrow him. With the calm of his conscious pride he looked round on the brilliant crowd. He was well aware that most of them were his ill-wishers, he would not have been to the trouble of turning his head to conciliate one of them; they might say what they would of him, he would stoop to neither justification nor defense. As the music recommenced, his wife advanced into the recess. She seemed agitated and to hesitate, and paused looking at him strangely. “The things they say!” she breathed quickly. “Have you heard?”