“But I thought it was a matter of authenticated history that the Cardinal was actually enticed here, and disappeared!” exclaimed the girl.  “I should have thought that the Glencardine papers would have referred to it,” she added, recollecting what Walter had told her.

“Well, they don’t; so why worry your head, dear, over a mere fable?  I have already gone very carefully into all the facts that are proved, and have come to the conclusion that the story of the torture of his Eminence is a fairy-tale, and that the supernatural Whispers have only been heard in imagination.”

She was silent.  She recollected that sound of murmuring voices.  It was certainly not imagination.

“But you’ll let me have the key of the cabinet, won’t you, dad?” she asked, glancing across to where stood a beautiful old Florentine cabinet of ebony inlaid with ivory, and reaching almost to the ceiling.

“Certainly, Gabrielle dear,” was the reply of the expressionless man.  “It is upstairs in my room.  You shall have it to-morrow.”

And then he lapsed again into silence, reflecting whether it were not best to secure certain parchment records from those drawers before his daughter investigated them.  There was a small roll of yellow parchment, tied with modern tape, which he was half-inclined to conceal from her curious gaze.  Truth to tell, they constituted a record of the torture and death of Cardinal Setoun much in the same manner as Walter Murie had described to her.  If she read that strange chronicle she might, he feared, be impelled to watch and endeavour to hear the fatal Whispers.

Strange though it was, yet those sounds were a subject which caused him daily apprehension.  Though he never referred to them save to ridicule every suggestion of their existence, or to attribute the weird noises to the wind, yet never a day passed but he sat calmly reflecting.  That one matter which his daughter knew above all others caused him the most serious thought and apprehension—­a fear which had become doubly increased since she had referred to the curious and apparently inexplicable phenomenon.  He, a refined, educated man of brilliant attainments, scouted the idea of any supernatural agency.  To those who had made mention of the Whispers—­among them his friend Murie, the Laird of Connachan; Lord Strathavon, from whom he had purchased the estate; and several of the neighbouring landowners—­he had always expressed a hope that one day he might be fortunate enough to hear the whispered counsel of the Evil One, and so decide for himself its true cause.  He pretended always to treat the affair with humorous incredulity, yet at heart he was sorely troubled.

If his young wife’s remarkable friendship with the man Flockart often caused him bitter thoughts, then the mysterious Whispers and the fatality so strangely connected with them were equally a source of constant inquietude.

A few days later Flockart, with clever cunning, seemed to alter his ingenious tactics completely, for suddenly he had commenced to bestir himself in Sir Henry’s interests.  One morning after breakfast, taking the Baronet by the arm, he led him for a stroll along the drive, down to the lodge-gates, and back, for the purpose, as he explained, of speaking with him in confidence.