CHAPTER V.
THE MURIES OF CONNACHAN Elise, Lady Heyburn's French maid, discovered next morning that an antique snake-bracelet was missing, a loss which occasioned great consternation in the household.
Breakfast was late, and at table, when the loss was mentioned, Gabrielle offered to drive over to Connachan in the car and make inquiry and search.

The general opinion was that it had been dropped in one of the rooms, and was probably still lying there undiscovered.
The girl's offer was accepted, and half an hour later the smaller of the two Glencardine cars--the "sixteen" Fiat--was brought round to the door by Stokes, the smart chauffeur.

Young Gellatly, fresh down from Oxford, begged to be allowed to go with her, and his escort was accepted.
Then, in motor-cap and champagne-coloured dust-veil, Gabrielle mounted at the wheel, with the young fellow at her side and Stokes in the back, and drove away down the long avenue to the high-road.
The car was her delight.

Never so happy was she as when, wrapped in her leather-lined motor-coat, she drove the "sixteen." The six-cylinder "sixty" was too powerful for her, but with the "sixteen" she ran half-over Scotland, and was quite a common object on the Perth to Stirling road.

Possessed of nerve and full of self-confidence, she could negotiate traffic in Edinburgh or Glasgow, and on one occasion had driven her father the whole way from Glencardine up to London, a distance of four hundred and fifty miles.