"Worried? Poor child, she's the ghost of what she was a few days ago.
Half-drowned, too, when it happened, which made it worse for her."
"She must have had a narrow escape," Gimblet remarked. "What was the name of the man who pulled her out of the river?"
"Andy Campbell. He had been stalking with Mark McConachan."
"Was young Lord Ashiel with him?"
"No, he was on ahead. He saw Juliet in the distance, just going up to the waterfall, but he seems to have taken her for Miss Romaninov, which is odd, because they aren't in the least like one another, one being tall and the other short, in the first place, and one fair and the other dark in the second. He can't have looked very carefully. However, he was very positive about it till they both assured him that Julia Romaninov had turned and gone home some time before she had reached the top pool. And I certainly should have in her place. It doesn't amuse me scrambling over rocks and scratching my legs in bramble bushes. The path Andy came by goes along high above the water for half a mile. I hate walking on a height myself. And for most of that distance the river is not in sight. If he hadn't been thirsty and come down to the water-side for a drink at a spring near by, he would never have seen Miss Byrne floating down the stream, and she would have been in the loch pretty soon. It just shows how much better it is to drink water than whisky."
"It was lucky he did," said Gimblet. "Does the path pass in sight of the pool she fell into?"
"No. The banks are high there, and you can't see down into the pool unless you go to the very edge of the precipice. I did it once, to look at the waterfall, and I very nearly joined it. It's a nasty giddy place, though why one should feel inclined to throw oneself down I can't imagine; but it seems a natural instinct, and it's certainly easier to go down than up."
"It appears almost miraculous that she wasn't drowned," said Gimblet. "She certainly can have been in no fit state to bear the events that followed."
"No, indeed. She has lost everything: father, family and lover at one blow. You know Lord Ashiel said she was his daughter, and told her he'd made a will leaving everything to her. For that matter the lawyers say he didn't—not that I should ever believe anything a lawyer said. They always mean something you wouldn't expect from their words. They do it, I believe, to keep in practice for trials, you know, where they have to make the witnesses say what they don't mean, poor things. And what I shall have put into my mouth by them, if I'm called as a witness against poor David, doesn't bear thinking of. But the Lord knows what Ashiel did with the will, and, as I was saying, it can't be found."
"So I heard," said Gimblet "You talk of being called as a witness, Lady Ruth. Do you know anything about the case? Where were you when the shot was fired?"