They exchanged an affectionate embrace.  Lady Lundie was left alone.

Her ladyship resigned herself to meditation, with frowning brow and close-shut lips.  She looked her full age, and a year or two more, as she lay thinking, with her head on her hand, and her elbow on the pillow.  After committing herself to the physician (and to the red lavender draught) the commonest regard for consistency made it necessary that she should keep her bed for that day.  And yet it was essential that the proposed inquiries should be instantly set on foot.  On the one hand, the problem was not an easy one to solve; on the other, her ladyship was not an easy one to beat.  How to send for the landlady at Craig Fernie, without exciting any special suspicion or remark—­was the question before her.  In less than five minutes she had looked back into her memory of current events at Windygates—­and had solved it.

Her first proceeding was to ring the bell for her maid.

“I am afraid I frightened you, Hopkins.  The state of my nerves.  Mrs. Glenarm was a little sudden with some news that surprised me.  I am better now—­and able to attend to the household matters.  There is a mistake in the butcher’s account.  Send the cook here.”

She took up the domestic ledger and the kitchen report; corrected the butcher; cautioned the cook; and disposed of all arrears of domestic business before Hopkins was summoned again.  Having, in this way, dextrously prevented the woman from connecting any thing that her mistress said or did, after Mrs. Glenarm’s departure, with any thing that might have passed during Mrs. Glenarm’s visit, Lady Lundie felt herself at liberty to pave the way for the investigation on which she was determined to enter before she slept that night.

“So much for the indoor arrangements,” she said.  “You must be my prime minister, Hopkins, while I lie helpless here.  Is there any thing wanted by the people out of doors?  The coachman?  The gardener?”

“I have just seen the gardener, my lady.  He came with last week’s accounts.  I told him he couldn’t see your ladyship to-day.”

“Quite right.  Had he any report to make?”

“No, my lady.”

“Surely, there was something I wanted to say to him—­or to somebody else?  My memorandum-book, Hopkins.  In the basket, on that chair.  Why wasn’t the basket placed by my bedside?”

Hopkins brought the memorandum-book.  Lady Lundie consulted it (without the slightest necessity), with the same masterly gravity exhibited by the doctor when he wrote her prescription (without the slightest necessity also).

“Here it is,” she said, recovering the lost remembrance.  “Not the gardener, but the gardener’s wife.  A memorandum to speak to her about Mrs. Inchbare.  Observe, Hopkins, the association of ideas.  Mrs. Inchbare is associated with the poultry; the poultry are associated with the gardener’s wife; the gardener’s wife is associated with the gardener—­and so the gardener gets into my head.  Do you see it?  I am always trying to improve your mind.  You do see it?  Very well.  Now about Mrs. Inchbare?  Has she been here again?”