And indeed, there being two peats, Sheila thought she might as well try an experiment with one.  She crumbled down some pieces, put them on a plate, lit them, and placed the plate outside the open window, on the sill.  Presently a new, sweet, half-forgotten fragrance came floating in, and Sheila almost forgot the success of the experiment in the half-delighted, half-sad reminiscences called up by the scent of the peat.  Mairi failed to see how any one could willfully smoke a house—­any one, that is to say, who did not save the smoke for his thatch.  And who was so particular as Sheila had been about having the clothes come in from the washing dried so that they should not retain this very odor that seemed now to delight her?

At last the room was finished, and Sheila contemplated it with much satisfaction.  The table was laid, and on the white cloth stood the bottles most familiar to Borva.  The peat-smoke still lingered in the air:  she could not have wished anything to be better.

Then she went off to look after the luncheon, and Mairi was permitted to go down and explore the mysteries of the kitchen.  The servants were not accustomed to this interference and oversight, and might have resented it, only that Sheila had proved a very good mistress to them, and had shown, too, that she would have her own way when she wanted it.  Suddenly, as Sheila was explaining to Mairi the use of some particular piece of mechanism, she heard a sound that made her heart jump.  It was now but half-past one, and yet that was surely her husband’s foot in the hall.  For a moment she was too bewildered to know what to do.  She heard him go straight into the very room she had been decorating, the door of which she had left open.  Then, as she went up stairs, with her heart still beating fast, the first thing that met her eye was a tartan shawl belonging to Mairi that had been accidentally left in the passage.  Her husband must have seen it.

“Sheila, what nonsense is this?” he said.

He was evidently in a hurry, and yet she could not answer:  her heart was throbbing too quickly.

“Look here,” he said:  “I wish you’d give up this grotto-making till to-morrow.  Mrs. Kavanagh, Mrs. Lorraine and Lord Arthur Redmond are coming here to luncheon at two.  I suppose you can get something decent for them.  What is the matter?  What is the meaning of all this?”

And then his eyes rested on the tartan shawl, which he had really not noticed before.

“Who is in the house?” he said.  “Have you asked some washerwoman to lunch?”

Sheila managed at last to say, “It is Mairi come from Stornoway.  I was thinking you would be surprised to see her when you came in.”

“And these preparations are for her?”

Sheila said nothing:  there was that in the tone of her husband’s voice which was gradually bringing her to herself, and giving her quite sufficient firmness.

“And now that this girl has come up, I suppose you mean to introduce her to all your friends; and I suppose you expect those people who are coming in half an hour to sit down at table with a kitchen-maid?”