If the truth were told, Gabrielle had never looked upon any other man save Walter with the slightest thought of affection.  She loved him with the whole strength of her being.  During that twelve long months of absence he had been daily in her thoughts, and his constant letters she had read and re-read dozens of times.  She had, since she left school, met many eligible young men at houses to which her mother had grudgingly taken her—­young men who had been nice to her, flattered her, and flirted with her.  But she had treated them all with coquettish disdain, for in the world there was but one man who was her lover and her hero—­her old friend Walter Murie.

At this moment, as they were together in that cosy, well-furnished room, she became seized by a twinge of conscience.  She knew quite well that she was not treating him as she ought.  She had not been at all enthusiastic at his return, and she had inquired but little about his wanderings.  Indeed, she had treated him with a studied indifference, as though his life concerned her but little.  And yet if he only knew the truth, she thought; if he could only see that that cool, unresponsive attitude was forced upon her by circumstances; if he could only know how quickly her heart throbbed when he was present, and how dull and lonely all became when he was absent!

She loved him.  Ah, yes! as truly and devotedly as he loved her.  But between them there had fallen a dark, grim shadow—­one which, at all hazards and by every subterfuge, she must endeavour to hide.  She loved him, and could, therefore, never bear to hear his bitter reproaches or to witness his grief.  He worshipped her.  Would that he did not, she thought.  She must hide her secret from him as she was hiding it from all the world.

He was speaking.  She answered him calmly yet mechanically.  He wondered what strange thoughts were concealed beneath those clear, wide-open, child-like eyes which he was trying in vain to fathom.  What would he have thought had he known the terrible truth:  that she had calmly, and after long reflection, resolved to court death—­death by her own hand—­rather than face the exposure with which she had that previous night been threatened.

CHAPTER VII

CONTAINS CURIOUS CONFIDENCES

A week had gone by.  Stewart, the lean, thin-faced head-keeper, who spoke with such a strong accent that guests from the South often failed to understand him, and who never seemed to sleep, so vigilant was he over the Glencardine shootings, had reported the purchase of a couple of new pointers.

Therefore, one morning Lady Heyburn and her constant cavalier, Flockart, had walked across to the kennels close to the castle to inspect them.