“I do wish you’d tell me what it is that’s troubling you so,” he said.  “Ever since I returned from abroad you’ve not been yourself.  It’s no use denying it, you know.”

“I haven’t felt well, perhaps.  I think it must be the weather,” she assured him.

But he, viewing the facts in the light of what he had noticed at their almost daily clandestine meetings, knew that she was concealing something from him.

Before his departure on that journey to Japan she had always been so very frank and open.  Nowadays, however, she seemed to have entirely changed.  Her love for him was just the same—­that he knew; it was her unusual manner, so full of fear and vague apprehension, which caused him so many hours of grave reflection.

With her woman’s cleverness, she succeeded in changing the topic of conversation, and presently they rose to join his mother at the tea-table in the drawing-room.

Half-an-hour later, while they were idling in the hall together, she suddenly exclaimed, “Walter, you’re great on Scottish history, so I want some information from you.  I’m studying the legends and traditions of our place, Glencardine.  What do you happen to know about them?”

“Well,” he laughed, “there are dozens of weird tales about the old castle.  I remember reading quite a lot of extraordinary stories in some book or other about three years ago.  I found it in the library here.”

“Oh! do tell me all about it,” she urged instantly.  “Weird legends always fascinate me.  Of course I know just the outlines of its history.  It’s the tales told by the country-folk in which I’m so deeply interested.”

“You mean the apparition of the Lady in Green, and all that?”

“Yes; and the Whispers.”

He started quickly at her words, and asked, “What do you know about them, dear?  I hope you haven’t heard them?”

She smiled, with a frantic effort at unconcern, saying, “And what harm, pray, would they have done me, even if I had?”

“Well,” he said, “they are only heard by those whose days are numbered; at least, so say the folk about here.”

“Of course, it’s only a fable,” she laughed.  “The people of the Ochils are so very superstitious.”

“I believe the fatal result of listening to those mysterious Whispers has been proved in more than one instance,” remarked the young man quite seriously.  “For myself, I do not believe in any supernatural agency.  I merely tell you what the people hereabouts believe.  Nobody from this neighbourhood could ever be induced to visit your ruins on a moonlit night.”

“That’s just why I want to know the origin of the unexplained phenomenon.”

“How can I tell you?”

“But you know—­I mean you’ve heard the legend, haven’t you?”

“Yes,” was his reply.  “The story of the Whispers of Glencardine is well known all through Perthshire.  Hasn’t your father ever told you?”