“Take that to the gardener’s wife.  If you agree with her about the price, you can have the cock and the two pullets.”

Mrs. Inchbare opened her lips—­no doubt to express the utmost extremity of human gratitude.  Before she had said three words, Lady Lundie’s impatience to reach the end which she had kept in view from the time when Mrs. Glenarm had left the house burst the bounds which had successfully restrained it thus far.  Stopping the landlady without ceremony, she fairly forced the conversation to the subject of Anne Silvester’s proceedings at the Craig Fernie inn.

“How are you getting on at the hotel, Mrs. Inchbare?  Plenty of tourists, I suppose, at this time of year?”

“Full, my leddy (praise Providence), frae the basement to the ceiling.”

“You had a visitor, I think, some time since of whom I know something?  A person—­” She paused, and put a strong constraint on herself.  There was no alternative but to yield to the hard necessity of making her inquiry intelligible.  “A lady,” she added, “who came to you about the middle of last month.”

“Could yer leddyship condescend on her name?”

Lady Lundie put a still stronger constraint on herself.  “Silvester,” she said, sharply.

“Presairve us a’!” cried Mrs. Inchbare.  “It will never be the same that cam’ driftin’ in by hersel’—­wi’ a bit bag in her hand, and a husband left daidling an hour or mair on the road behind her?”

“I have no doubt it is the same.”

“Will she be a freend o’ yer leddyship’s?” asked Mrs. Inchbare, feeling her ground cautiously.

“Certainly not!” said Lady Lundie.  “I felt a passing curiosity about her—­nothing more.”

Mrs. Inchbare looked relieved.  “To tell ye truth, my leddy, there was nae love lost between us.  She had a maisterfu’ temper o’ her ain—­and I was weel pleased when I’d seen the last of her.”

“I can quite understand that, Mrs. Inchbare—­I know something of her temper myself.  Did I understand you to say that she came to your hotel alone, and that her husband joined her shortly afterward?”

“E’en sae, yer leddyship.  I was no’ free to gi’ her house-room in the hottle till her husband daidled in at her heels and answered for her.”

“I fancy I must have seen her husband,” said Lady Lundie.  “What sort of a man was he?”

Mrs. Inchbare replied in much the same words which she had used in answering the similar question put by Sir Patrick.

“Eh! he was ower young for the like o’ her. A pratty man, my leddy—­betwixt tall and short; wi’ bonny brown eyes and cheeks, and fine coal-blaik hair.  A nice douce-spoken lad.  I hae naething to say against him—­except that he cam’ late one day, and took leg-bail betimes the next morning, and left madam behind, a load on my hands.”

The answer produced precisely the same effect on Lady Lundie which it had produced on Sir Patrick.  She, also, felt that it was too vaguely like too many young men of no uncommon humor and complexion to be relied on.  But her ladyship possessed one immense advantage over her brother-in-law in attempting to arrive at the truth. She suspected Arnold—­and it was possible, in her case, to assist Mrs. Inchbare’s memory by hints contributed from her own superior resources of experience and observation.