"Well, you thought you saw the Lady of Glencardine. Where was she?"
"On the drive, in front o' the hoose."
"Perhaps somebody played a practical joke on you. The Green Lady is
Glencardine's favourite spectre, isn't she—perfectly harmless, I mean?"
"Ay, miss. Lots o' folk saw her ten year syne. But nooadays she seems to ha'e been laid. Somebody said they saw her last Glesca holidays, but I dinna believe 't."
"Neither do I, Stewart. But don't let's trouble about the unfortunate lady, who ought to have been at rest long ago. It's those weird whisperings I mean to investigate." And she looked blankly around her at the great, cyclopean walls and high, weather-beaten towers, gaunt yet picturesque in the morning sunshine.
The keeper shook his shaggy head. "I'm afear'd, Miss Gabrielle, that ye'll ne'er solve the mystery. There's somethin' sae fatal aboot the whisperin's," he said, speaking in his pleasant Highland tongue, "that naebody cares tae attempt the investigation. They div say that the Whispers are the voice o' the De'il himsel'."
The girl, in her short blue serge skirt, white cotton blouse, and blue tam-o'-shanter, laughed at the man's dread. There must be a distinct cause for this noise she had heard, she argued. Yet, though they both spent half-an-hour wandering among the ruins, standing in the roofless banqueting hall, and traversing stone corridors and lichen-covered, moss-grown, ruined chambers choked with weeds, their efforts to obtain any clue were all in vain.
To Gabrielle it was quite evident that the old keeper regarded the incident of the previous night as a fatal omen, for he was most solicitous of her welfare. He went so far as to crave permission to go to Sir Henry and put the whole of the mysterious facts before him.
But she would not hear of it. She meant to solve the mystery herself. If her father learnt of the affair, and of the ill-omen connected with it, the matter would surely cause him great uneasiness. Why should he be worried on her account? No, she would never allow it, and told Stewart plainly of her disapproval of such a course.
"But, tell me," she asked at last, as returning to the courtyard, they stood together at the spot where she had stood in that moonlit hour and heard with her own ears those weird, mysterious voices coming from nowhere—"tell me, Stewart, is there any legend connected with the Whispers? Have you ever heard any story concerning their origin?"