"You don't mean," cried Doris, "that there is anybody in the whole world who frightens Lady Dunstable?"
"As she frightens us? Yes!—on this one day of the year we are all avenged. Rachel, metaphorically, sits on a stool and tries to please. To put off 'the Duke' by telephone!—what a horrid indignity! But I've just inflicted it."
Mattie Field smiled, and was just going away when she was arrested by a timid question from Doris.
"Please—shall Arthur go down to Pitlochry and engage a room for Miss
Wigram?"
Miss Field turned in amusement.
"A room! Why, it's all ready! She is your lady-in-waiting."
And taking Doris by the arm she led her to inspect a spacious apartment on the other side of a passage, where the Lady Alice or Lady Mary without whom Royal Highnesses do not move about the world was generally put up.
"I feel like Christopher Sly," said Doris, surveying the scene, with her hands in her jacket pockets. "So will she. But never mind!"
* * * * *
Events flowed on. Lord and Lady Dunstable came back by tea-time,
bringing with them the solicitor, who was also the chief factor of their
Scotch estate. Lord Dunstable looked old and wearied. He came to find
Doris on the lawn, pressing her hand with murmured words of thanks.