On her way to the West Wing she could not but notice the change which had come over the place. A pleasant atmosphere of ordered activity seemed to pervade the vast building. There were men as well as women-servants busy everywhere. Light and warmth and life had put to flight the darkness and desolation which had come down with the dusk on its emptiness. She gave herself up for the moment to a delicious, childish sensation of snugness and safety there. And when she at length reached the open door of the splendid suite which, Mrs. M'Kissock had told her, had once been her mother's, she felt that she could not, after all, grudge the price she must pay by and by for her glimpse of home.
Ambrizette, with rolling eyes and open mouth, had everything in readiness for her in her dressing-room, for the hideous dwarf was indeed a very efficient femme de chambre. Within half an hour Sallie had had her bath and was dressed again, in the same frock that she had worn at the Savoy. She patted the dumb black creature on the head before turning away from the glass, and paused on the threshold to glance back into the cosy, fire-lit room with eyes which had grown unaccountably dim.
She found Mairi in the main hall, demurely flirting with one of the footmen whom Mrs. M'Kissock had conjured up, and Mairi showed her into a luxurious drawing-room where Slyne was standing, hands in pockets, before a cavernous, marble-faced fireplace in which a veritable bonfire of logs was cheerily crackling.
His eyes lighted up as she entered. The mirrors about the walls seemed to frame innumerable pictures of her as she crossed the slippery, age-blackened floor toward the big bearskin rug which made an oasis before the fire. He held out his hands to her, dumbly. And just at that moment Mr. Jobling appeared in the doorway, trumpeting into his handkerchief.
Captain Dove arrived shortly after him, under convoy of a scared housemaid who, it seemed, had found him astray in some far corner of the castle and whom he had impressed into his service as guide. The gongs resounded again, just in time to drown his added denunciation of the oak floor, on which he had all but come to grief as soon as he set foot on it. The folding-doors at one end of the long room were pulled apart and a resonant voice announced ceremoniously that dinner was served. Slyne offered Sallie an arm a second or two in advance of the slower Jobling, and, as she laid a light hand on his sleeve, led her into the banquet-hall.
"I told them we'd dine here to-night, although there are lots of more modern rooms," he mentioned to her, and frowned in helpless annoyance as Captain Dove, following, gave vent to a very audible whistle.
A butler and four tall footmen, all in tartan kilts and full-dress doublets, were at their places about a table resplendent with silver displayed with old-fashioned profusion. Rare crystal and fine foreign glassware flashed and sparkled under the shaded lights standing on damask like snow, to which hot-house fruit and flowers added an exquisite note of colour. In the dim background, barely visible in the faint firelight, hung faded tapestries with, here and there, some portrait or pair of horns. There seemed to be a small gallery at the farther end of the hall. The unceiled rafters overhead were also almost in darkness.
Sallie, glancing about her with eager, delighted eyes, paused on the way to the table to peer through a pane of plate-glass let into the panelling over one mantel.
"That's the famous Fairy Horn, Lady Josceline," said Mr. Jobling officiously. "But—you haven't heard the old Jura legend yet, I suppose?" He coughed in his most important manner.
"Well,—the Fairy Horn is said to have been presented to one of your ancestors a very long time ago by the White Lady—the family ghost; every real old Scots family, you know, has a private ghost of its own. And the horn carried with it the privilege, to him or any succeeding chief of the clan, of summoning the White Lady, on three occasions, to fulfil any wish so urgent as to be worth the price of her help. For, every time she does show up, the head of the family dies. So that—the Fairy Horn has only been sounded twice, I've been told, during the centuries which have passed since then; and—on each occasion the wish expressed has been duly fulfilled, at the price of the chieftain's life."