Gabrielle, on leaving her father, went out for a long walk alone, away over the heather-clad hills.  For hours she went on—­Jock, her Aberdeen terrier, toddling at her side, in her hand a stout ash-stick—­regardless of the muddy roads or the wet weather.  It was grey, damp, and dismal, one of those days which in the Highlands are often so very cheerless and dispiriting.  Yet on, and still on, she went, her mind full of the events of the previous night; full, also, of the dread secret which prevented her from exposing her father’s false friend.  In order to save her father, should she sacrifice herself—­sacrifice her own life?  That was the one problem before her.

She saw nothing; she heeded nothing.  Hunger or fatigue troubled her not.  Indeed, she took no notice of where her footsteps led her.  Beyond Crieff she wandered, along the river-bank a short distance, ascending a hill, where a wild and wonderful view spread before her.  There she sat down upon a big boulder to rest.

Her hair blown by the chill wind, she sat staring straight before her, thinking—­ever thinking.  She had not seen Lady Heyburn that day.  She had seen no one.

At six o’clock that morning she had written a long letter to Walter Murie.  She had not mentioned the midnight incident, but she had, with many expressions of regret, pointed out the futility of any further affection between them.  She had not attempted to excuse herself.  She merely told him that she considered herself unworthy of his love, and because of that, and that alone, she had decided to break off their engagement.

A dozen times she had reread the letter after she had completed it.  Surely it was the letter of a heart-broken and desperate woman.  Would he take it in the spirit in which it was meant, she wondered.  She loved him—­ah, loved him better than any one else in all the world!  But she now saw that it was useless to masquerade any longer.  The blow had fallen, and it had crushed her.  She was powerless to resist, powerless to deny the false charge against her, powerless to tell the truth.

That letter, which she knew must come as a cruel blow to Walter, she had given to the postman with her own hands, and it was now on its way south.  As she sat on the summit of that heather-clad hill she was wondering what effect her written words would have upon him.  He had loved her so devotedly ever since they had been children together!  Well she knew how strong was his passion for her, how his life was at her disposal.  She knew that on reading those despairing lines of hers he would be staggered.  She recalled the dear face of her soul-mate, his hot kisses, his soft terms of endearment, and alone there, with none to witness her bitter grief, she burst into a flood of tears.

The sad greyness of the landscape was in keeping with her own great sorrow.  She had lost all that was dear to her; and, young as she was, with hardly any experience of the world and its ways, she was already the victim of grim circumstance, broken by the grief of a self-renounced love gnawing at her true heart.