"Was Sir David in need of money?" asked Gimblet.
"He hasn't got a penny," said Lady Ruth. "Not a red cent, as that terrible young woman put it. His father left everything to the moneylenders, so to speak, and David couldn't bear to see his mother poverty-stricken. He did it entirely for her sake--got engaged, I mean--but I don't think he'd have been such a self-sacrificing son if he'd met Miss Juliet Byrne a little earlier in the day."
"Indeed!" said Gimblet. "I thought Miss Byrne seemed very much worried about his arrest."
"Worried? Poor child, she's the ghost of what she was a few days ago. Half-drowned, too, when it happened, which made it worse for her."
"She must have had a narrow escape," Gimblet remarked. "What was the name of the man who pulled her out of the river?"
"Andy Campbell. He had been stalking with Mark McConachan."
"Was young Lord Ashiel with him?"
"No, he was on ahead. He saw Juliet in the distance, just going up to the waterfall, but he seems to have taken her for Miss Romaninov, which is odd, because they aren't in the least like one another, one being tall and the other short, in the first place, and one fair and the other dark in the second. He can't have looked very carefully. However, he was very positive about it till they both assured him that Julia Romaninov had turned and gone home some time before she had reached the top pool. And I certainly should have in her place. It doesn't amuse me scrambling over rocks and scratching my legs in bramble bushes. The path Andy came by goes along high above the water for half a mile. I hate walking on a height myself. And for most of that distance the river is not in sight. If he hadn't been thirsty and come down to the water-side for a drink at a spring near by, he would never have seen Miss Byrne floating down the stream, and she would have been in the loch pretty soon. It just shows how much better it is to drink water than whisky."
"It was lucky he did," said Gimblet. "Does the path pass in sight of the pool she fell into?"
"No. The banks are high there, and you can't see down into the pool unless you go to the very edge of the precipice. I did it once, to look at the waterfall, and I very nearly joined it. It's a nasty giddy place, though why one should feel inclined to throw oneself down I can't imagine; but it seems a natural instinct, and it's certainly easier to go down than up."