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Half an hour later my uncle's carriage was announced, and I left with the distinct impression that there was some deep mystery surrounding the Leithcourts. What it was, however, I could not, for the life of me, make out.
"Your Highness evidently knows the Leithcourts," I hazarded, after a brief silence. "I have heard of them," was her unsatisfactory reply. "I go to England sometimes. When the Prince was alive, we were often at Claridge's for the season. The Prince was for five years military attaché at the Embassy under de Staal, you know. What I know of the Leithcourts is not to their credit.
"That's just the question. For a solution of the problem we must first fathom the motive of the Leithcourts and the reason they fled in fear before that fellow Chater. That Muriel is innocent of any complicity in their plot, whatever it may be, I feel convinced.
She wanted to speak to me in confidence, and yet she would reveal to me nothing absolutely nothing. Martin Woodroffe did not rejoin the house-party at Rannoch. Although I remained the guest of my uncle much longer than I intended, indeed right through the shooting season, in order to watch the Leithcourts, yet as far as we could judge they were extremely well-bred people and very hospitable.
After the Leithcourts left it was like pandemonium let loose; the guests collared everything they could lay their hands upon! It's a wonder to me the disgraceful affair didn't get into the papers." "But where's Leithcourt now?" I asked anxiously. "Haven't the ghost of an idea," replied the Major, standing astride with his hands in his pockets.
And really no better or kinder lady never breathed, I'm sure. We're all very sorry indeed for her." "But she had nothing to do with the affair." "Of course not. But she shares in the scandal and disgrace. You should have seen the effect of the news upon the guests when they knew that the Leithcourts had gone. It was a regular pandemonium.
Have you heard of them?" "No. What?" I cried breathlessly, staring at him. "Well, my suspicions that those Leithcourts were utter outsiders turns out to be about correct." "Why?" "Well, it's a very funny story, and there are a dozen different distorted versions of it," he said.
Of the two suggestions, I was inclined to believe in the latter. He walked with me as far as the end of Bishop's Road, endeavoring with all the Italian's exquisite diplomacy to obtain from me what I knew concerning the Leithcourts. But I told him nothing, nor did I reveal that I had only that morning returned from Scotland.
"The Carmichaels are very thick with the Leithcourts, I hear," my uncle remarked. "Strange they didn't ask Leithcourt to their shoot." "They did, but he'd got another engagement over at Kenmure Castle, I think." I retired to my room that night full of fevered apprehension. Had I acted rightly in not returning to that lonely spot on the brow of the hill?
"That fellow shall never marry Muriel," he declared in a fierce, hoarse voice. "What you have just told me reveals the truth. Did you meet Chater?" "He appeared suddenly at Rannoch, and the Leithcourts fled precipitately and have not since been heard of." "Ah, no wonder!" he remarked with a dry laugh. "No wonder!
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