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and daughters was not represented. The present Countess had not been painted according to tradition. The space beside the Earl’s portrait was occupied by a magnificent picture of Katharine in hunting dress, painted just before she went to France.
    Katharine went to the mahogany clothes-press that ran the length of one wall in her room, and pulled out the dresses one after the other.
    â€œThis,” she said suddenly. “I will wear this. And the green slippers.”
    The dress had been made for her in France. It was taffeta, its colour a lovely, elusive sea-green shot with blue, the bodice cut low and straight across her breast. Tiny flowers of turquoise and crystal were sewn on the bodice and scattered cleverly in the folds of her very full skirts. It was a beautiful dress, and she chose a long velvet scarf of brilliant turquoise blue to cover her shoulders. Annie laid out the dress on her bed and put the slippers and scarf beside it, and then, still in silence, Katharine sat down to have her hair dressed.
    Annie was as proud of that thick, shining hair as if it were her own. She brushed it with two of her mistress’s silver brushes until it gleamed like fire.
    Katharine had never needed to direct her; she had an unerring instinct for what was in good taste where her mistress was concerned. She combed the hair back off her forehead, slipping two dark tortoiseshell combs into place, and caught it up behind with a double knot of blue silk ribbons, twisting the ends so that they fell in ringlets over Katharine’s shoulder.
    â€œThank you, Annie. That looks very well.”
    â€œI’ve done it a hundred times before. There’s nothing special in it. It’d take a great fool to make you look other than the beauty ye are. Stand up now, milady, and I’ll lace ye into your dress.”
    Katharine paused and turned slowly round in front of her long mirror, and saw Annie’s expression confirming what she saw. She had never looked more beautiful.
    â€œIf your father says no,” Annie said suddenly, “yon Macdonald will murder him to get his hands on you.”
    â€œThere’ll be no murder, Annie,” she said quietly. “There’ll be no violence and no argument. I have James Macdonald’s word and I know he will not break it. We are all tired of fighting; after all, we’ve had a Macdonald living in this house for the last five years.”
    â€œWe have that,” her maid agreed. “And much good it’s done her or us.” She looked at the watch hanging from her waist. It was a present from her mistress and she was immensely proud of it. She was the only servant in the Castle who possessed a watch, and she had taught herself to tell the time.
    â€œIt’s past ten. Ye’ve been so long dressing, milady, ye’ll keep your family waiting for their morning chocolate.”
    The chocolate was a ritual which never varied. At eleven the Earl and his son and daughter and his wife drank chocolate in the Long Library and discussed the business of the day. It was a leisurely habit which had originated with the Earl’s French mother. She had been an heiress and a gay and lively woman, though not particularly pretty, and she had begun to improve and civilize her new home and seduce her fierce husband from his uncouth tastes in food and drink and a day beginning with porridge and meat at sunrise and the same diet, followed by bed, as soon as the sun had set. She had panelled the Green Salon and covered the walls in soft green silk, and filled it with beautiful furniture made by some of the best craftsmen in her native France. The tulip-wood table and the elegant walnut chairs with their fine embroidery were hers, and over the years she had transformed other of the state rooms in the bleak, forbidding Castle, filling them with colour and elegance and catching the Scottish sun by the reflection of many mirrors. The Great Hall was untouched. It was said