She, however, regarded him with distinct distrust.  He was undeniably good-looking, nonchalant, and a thorough-going man of the world.  But his intimate friendship with Lady Heyburn prevented her from regarding him as a true friend.  Towards her he was ever most courteous, and paid her many little compliments.  He tied her flies, he fitted her rod, and if her line became entangled in the trees he always put matters right.  Not, however, that she could not do it all herself.  In her strong, high fishing-boots, her short skirts hemmed with leather, her burberry, and her dark-blue tam-o’-shanter set jauntily on her chestnut hair, she very often fished alone, and made quite respectable baskets.  To wade into the burn and disentangle her line from beneath a stone was to her quite a small occurrence, for she would never let either Stewart or any of the under-keepers accompany her.

Why Flockart had so suddenly sought her society she failed to discern.  Hitherto, though always extremely polite, he had treated her as a child, which she naturally resented.  At length, however, he seemed to have realised that she now possessed the average intelligence of a young woman.

He had never repeated those strange words he had uttered when, on the night of the ball at Connachan, he returned in secret to the castle and beckoned her out upon the lawn.  He had, indeed, never referred to his curious action.  Sometimes she wondered, so changed was his manner, whether he had actually forgotten the incident altogether.  He had showed himself in his true colours that night.  Whatever suspicions she had previously held were corroborated in that stroll across the lawn in the dark shadow.  His tactics had altered, it seemed, and their objective puzzled her.

“It must be very dull for you here, Miss Heyburn,” he remarked to her one bright morning as they were casting up-stream near one another.  They were standing not far from a rustic bridge in a deep, leafy glen, where the sunshine penetrated here and there through the canopy of leaves, beneath which the burn pursued its sinuous course towards the Earn.  The music of the rippling waters over the brown, moss-grown boulders mingled with the rustle of the leaves above, as now and then the soft wind swept up the narrow valley.  They were treading a carpet of wild-flowers, and the air was full of the delicious perfume of the summer day.  “You must be very dull, living here so much, and going up to town so very seldom,” he said.

“Oh dear no!” she laughed.  “You are quite mistaken.  I really enjoy a country life.  It’s so jolly after the confinement and rigorous rules of school.  One is free up here.  I can wear my old clothes, and go cycling, fishing, shooting, curling; in fact, I’m my own mistress.  That I shouldn’t be if I lived in London, and had to make calls, walk in the Park, go shopping, sit out concerts, and all that sort of thing.”

“But though you’re out, you never go anywhere.  Surely that’s unusual for one so active and—­well”—­he hesitated—­“I wonder whether I might be permitted to say so—­so good-looking as you are, Gabrielle.”