As Mary rose to send the message to Elise the lady dropped her muff. They both stooped to pick it up. Mary was first to reach it, and as she gave it back two things met her astonished gaze. On the little finger of the bare hand held out for the muff shone the agate that none but MacIntyres had owned since the days of Malcolm the Second. And through the parted lips, where an instant before a gold-crowned tooth had gleamed, shone only perfect little white teeth, with not a glint of dentist's handiwork about them. The gold-leaf had slipped off.
Mary gasped, but before the others had a chance to see her amazed face, the lady had risen and linked her arm through hers, and was drawing her towards the door, saying. "Let me go with you. I am sure that Elise will not mind receiving such a very old friend as I am up in her room."
Although the lady in black clung to her, shaking hysterically with repressed laughter, behind her crape-bordered veil, it was not till they had passed the footman, climbed the stairs and paused at Elise's door that Mary was sure of the identity of her guest. The disguise had been so complete that she could not believe the evidence of her own eyes, until the blond wig was torn off and the spectacles laid aside. Then Elise threw herself across her bed, laughing until she gasped for breath. Her mirth was so contagious that Mary joined in, laughing also until she was weak and breathless, and could only cling to the bedpost, wiping her eyes.
"And wasn't Jimmy a whole menagerie!" Elise exclaimed as soon as she could speak. "You should have been there to have heard him howl and tear his hair at something A.O. told him about me. And I sat there with a perfectly straight face through the whole of it, while she made up dreadful things about me. I'm going away off in the pasture to-morrow and practise that bray all by myself till I can do it to perfection. Then when A.O. begins to sing his praises again, I won't say a word. I'll just give her Jimmy's laugh. Won't she be astonished? She's bound to recognize it, for it's the only one of its kind in the world. I shall keep her guessing until after Christmas, where I heard it."
"Don't _you_ tell her till then!" she exclaimed, sitting up on the side of the bed. "She would be so furious she wouldn't speak to me. But after the holidays, it won't be so fresh in her mind. Promise you won't tell her."