He stood between the Baronet's wife and his daughter, and hesitated in which direction to follow.
What did she really know, he wondered.

Had she overheard any of that serious conversation between Lady Heyburn and himself while they walked together in the glen on the previous evening?
Such a _contretemps_ was surely impossible, for he remembered they had taken every precaution lest even Stewart, the head gamekeeper, might be about in order to stop trespassers, who, attracted by the beauties of Glencardine, tried to penetrate and explore them, and by so doing disturbed the game.
"And if the girl really knows ?" he asked of the woman who stood there motionless, gazing out across the lawn fixedly towards the dawn.
"If she knows, James," she said in a hard, decisive tone, "then we must act together, quickly and fearlessly.

We must carry out that--that plan you proposed a year ago!" "You are quite fearless, then," he asked, looking straight into her fine eyes.
"Fearless?
Of course I am," she answered unflinchingly.

"We must get rid of her." "Providing we can do so without any suspicion falling upon us." "You seem to have become quite white-livered," she exclaimed to him with a harsh, derisive laugh.

"You were not so a year ago--in the other affair." His brows contracted as he reflected upon all it meant to him.