She glanced at me quickly, and I saw in her dark eyes a look of suspicion.  Then she flushed slightly, and laughing uneasily said, in a blank, hard voice—­

“It’s very good of you, Mr. Gregg, to wish me all sorts of such pleasant things.”

“And when is the happy event to take place?”

“The date is not exactly fixed—­early next year, I believe,” and I thought she sighed.

“And you will probably spend a good deal of time yachting?” I suggested, my eyes fixed upon her in order to watch the result of my pointed remark.  But she controlled herself perfectly.

“I love the sea,” she responded briefly, and her eyes were set straight before her.

“Mr. Woodroffe has gone up to town, your mother says.”

“Yes.  He received a wire, and had to leave immediately.  It was an awful bore, for we had arranged to go for a picnic to Dundrennan Abbey yesterday.”

“But he’ll be back here again, won’t he?”

“I really don’t know.  It seems quite uncertain.  I had a letter this morning which said he might have to go over to Hamburg on business, instead of coming up to us again.”

There was disappointment in her voice, and yet at the same time I could not fail to recognize how the man to whom she was engaged had fled from Scotland because of my presence.

How I longed to ask her point-blank what she really knew of the yachtsman who was shrouded in so much mystery.  Yet by betraying any undue anxiety I should certainly negative all my efforts to solve the puzzling enigma, therefore I was compelled to remain content with asking ingeniously disguised questions and drawing my own conclusions from her answers.

As we passed along those graveled walks it somehow became vividly impressed upon me that her marriage was being forced upon her by her parents.  Her manner was that of one who was concealing some strange and terrible secret which she feared might be revealed.  There was a distant look of unutterable terror in those dark eyes as though she existed in some constant and ever-present dread.  Of course she told me nothing of her own feelings or affections, yet I recognized in both her words and her bearing a curious apathy—­a want of the real enthusiasm of affection.  Woodroffe, much her senior, was her father’s friend, and it therefore seemed to me more than likely that Leithcourt was pressing a matrimonial alliance upon his daughter for some ulterior motive.  In the mad hurry for place, power, and wealth, men relentlessly sell their daughters in the matrimonial market, and ambitious mothers scheme and intrigue for their own aggrandizement at sacrifice of their daughter’s happiness more often than the public ever dream.  Tragedy is, alas! written upon the face of many a bride whose portrait appears in the fashion-papers and whose toilette is so faithfully chronicled in the paragraph beneath.  Indeed, the girl in Society who is allowed her own