With this the Lady of Ben Nevis swept from her lord’s dressing-room, and retired to her own stronghold, which was still known as the Yellow Drawing-room, though it had not been either yellow or a drawing-room since twenty-five years ago Hector, the Twenty-second of Ben Nevis, died and was succeeded by the present Chieftain, who was the second son, his elder brother Hector having died in boyhood. Mrs MacDonald had devoted herself loyally to the customs of her adopted country from the moment her dowry had enabled Ben Nevis to put his castle and his land in order, but she had felt the need of having at least one room in the castle that apart from the view from the windows of the Three Sisters of Glenbogle might have been a room in the Grosvenor Square house of her father. She had seen that her proposal to substitute for the carpet and curtains of the bridal chamber a softer design and more becoming colour than the Ben Nevis MacDonald tartan had wounded Donald, and she had abandoned the notion at once. She would have liked to strip from the walls their frieze of substantial Victorian wallpaper depicting stags in every attitude a stag can put itself into, and when the attitudes were exhausted no less than eight sets of stags repeating the same set of attitudes all round the room. There were moments when the steel-engravings of MacDonalds overwhelming Macintoshes in battle palled upon her and when views in water-colour of the Three Sisters of Glenbogle, with that perpetual view of them from the windows, seemed superfluous. However, she always recognized that they were dear to the heart of the chieftain she had married and she had never complained. Only to the Yellow Drawing-room had she left nothing except its name, and of its chintzy privacy made for herself a refuge that was for ever England.

Mrs MacDonald laid the keys of the dungeon door upon a small table which shivered under the impact and when a kilted gillie that was the equivalent of a footman answered her bell she bade him send Toker to her.

The butler was not kilted. He was as English as his mistress.

“Toker, tell Mrs Parsall I wish to speak to her. And, Toker,” she added as he neared the door, “dinner must be postponed until half-past eight.”

Not even Toker’s impassivity was proof against the slight tremor that shook him, so slight that only the most delicate seismograph would have registered it, but still a perceptible tremor.

“Until half-past eight, madam,” he repeated in case his ears had deceived him.

“Yes, and tell Mr Fletcher I should like to speak to him when he comes down.”

“Mr Fletcher is now in the Great Hall, madam.”

“Is Duncan still here?”

“Mr MacDonald is in Mrs Parsall’s room, madam.”

“Tell him to come with Mrs Parsall.”