She plunged in and sketched out the barest pattern of notes. On the stave, that tiny snatch of song looked unimpressive when in her head it had sounded beguiling. She hummed it aloud and smiled, hearing again the chords which suggested themselves as an accompaniment. She scribbled them in as best she could and played them through in her mind. It was a start but it would not do. There was still a gap between what she had imagined and what was in front of her. She wondered how she was going to pull down and shape into plain black marks on the stave those dream-like sounds which had filled her head. She clutched at the pencil in her hand in frustration at her lack of skill. She felt like a man with a vision of an unbuilt house, a person who had a hod of bricks and a pail of mortar but no real knowledge of how to transform them into a house. "I must learn to build," she told herself, and reached out for one of the harmony books she kept on her tables. But she hesitated to open it, distracted by the view from the window. The great beech trees which edged the Manse garden, she noticed, had been touched by the first gold of autumn and shone with it against an intense clear blue sky. Her little piece of music ran in her ears again and she realized that she would not find her answer between the covers of those books. She had to work out for herself what she wanted: conventional exercises in four-part harmony did not make the sort of music she heard in her head. She had to discover her own musical language.

But how hard that was! Why did she always have to be left alone with that impossible task, with no-one to encourage her, no-one to tell her even it was worthwhile? Sometimes it seemed more like a curse than a gift that desperate desire in her to make something out of nothing. "But I will do it," she told herself.

She leant back in her chair and closed her eyes. She took her notes, and experimentally imagined them played on the fiddle. Then, quite wonderfully, she heard the answering phrase played on the flute. That was it: flute and fiddle - the two voices weaving together, twisting and turning to form a conversation. "Chris, you won't believe who's here!" Her sister May's voice tore into the web of sound she had been creating. "Oh, did I make you jump?"

"Yes - I wish you'd learn to knock," said Chris, "I was..."

"Miles away," said May glibly. "Daydreaming."

"I was not!" exclaimed Chris and wondered why she need to justify herself to her younger sister. "So who is it? It better be good, mind. I'm busy." "Oh, in that case..." said May, now off-hand. "I just thought you might be interested, that's all, interested that Guy Lindsay is sitting downstairs." "Guy? Surely not?" Chris could not help sounding enthusiastic.

"I thought you'd be pleased," laughed May. "And he only got back yesterday. I call that pretty keen." She was heading for the door. "I'll leave you to get changed, then." "Changed? Why on earth?" said Chris. "Oh May, don't be daft. We're just friends. You're the one who's been daydreaming."

"Oh, but wouldn't it be wonderful?" said May. "He's so braw... and all that money!"

"Father would be horrified to hear you talking like that," said Chris but May ignored her and went instead to open the press. "I'm not dressing up," Chris added, firmly.

"Just a fresh blouse," pleaded May. "That one is so..."

"No," said Chris. "He can take me as he finds me."

In the chilly Manse drawing room with its skimpy chintz curtains and shabby furniture, the girls found their mother giving him a regular interrogation. She had sat him opposite her on an uncomfortable little chair by the empty grate (September was too early for a fire) and Chris observed an expression of pained politeness on his face. However, an instant later, when he had realized she had come in, it changed. He grinned broadly, leapt to his feet, and strode over to her. He seemed to fill the room with his broad- shouldered handsome presence, as if the wind from the moor was gusting through an open door.

"My dear, Christina, it's so very good to see you again," he said. She put out her hand and he clasped it with both his, with extraordinary enthusiasm. For a moment she at a loss and then remembered herself.

"Hello, Guy. Welcome back. We didn't expect you so early. Christmas, we heard..."

"Well, I thought I should surprise everyone."

"Did things not work out?" she could not help asking.

"Not exactly," said Guy.

"I don't know why you went in the first place," said Mrs Adam, with typical forthrightness. "The Continent is such a terrible place. Your mother must be so pleased you're home again. May, go and tell Phemie to bring in the tea now. You must be longing for some proper Scottish food, Guy, I shouldn't wonder."

"I did miss Arbroath smokies," he said, sitting down again. "You can't get those in Vienna."

The tea, by usual standards, was lavish: shortbread and treacle scones as well as bread and butter, and Guy was enjoined to eat as much as possible. Chris could not help being amused by at her mother's treating him like a returned prodigal. He had not gone abroad in disgrace, after all, but to study music.

"Another scone, Guy, won't you? They won't keep."

"I couldn't, really. But they were delicious," he said. "In fact, I feel a bit cheeky now, having eaten those. I brought you this from Vienna. I hope you don't mind." He extracted a brown parcel from a little pile by his feet.

"Oh but you shouldn't have..." said Mrs Adam.

"Open it, Mother, please," said May, leaning over in excitement.

"There's one for you too, May, and you, Chris," he said handing out the other two parcels.

"Well, Guy, I really don't know..." began Mrs Adam. A present for her was one thing, but for her unmarried daughters quite another. She contemplated the morality of it for a moment and said, "I suppose, there can't be any harm in it, can there? Rather wicked of you, though, I think."

"Guy only meant to be nice, Mother," said May, enthusiastically ripping the paper from her parcel.

Chris sat with her parcel on her knees, wondering slightly at this gesture. She found herself thinking that the presents for May and her mother were simply a justification for giving one to her. There had been something portentous in the way he had given it to her.

"Oh Guy!" May suddenly exclaimed, lifting the lid from a slender, striped pink and white box, "Oh but... How did you know I collected fans?" She took out a folded fan and spread it over her knees. It was a pretty, sugary thing, painted with harlequins and Columbines. Guy had judged May's taste perfectly.

"Chris mentioned it once," said Guy.

"I hope it wasn't too expensive," said Mrs Adam. Chris repressed a smile.

"It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen! Thank you so much!" said May, jumping up. She fanned herself with it for a moment, a parody coquette and then leant over and kissed him on the cheek. "Thank you."

"Sit down dear," murmured Mrs Adam.

"You haven't opened yours yet, Mother," said May.

"Very well," said Mrs Adam, who was clearly enjoying this, despite her puritanical instinct.

It was a large box of bonbons at which she made a little exclamation of delight.

"Not Scottish, I'm afraid," said Guy, with a grin.

Mrs Adam was beyond words. In a moment the ribbon had been torn off and the box handed round. Chris wanted to laugh. Guy was undoubtedly a genius.

"Aren't you going to open yours?" he asked her, moving over to sit beside her. Mrs Adam and May were not listening. They were examining the painted fan.

She found she was nervous as she attempted to unfasten the knots.

"Here, let me," He produced his penknife from his pocket and cut through the string.

The string cut, the paper bounced open. There was no elegant box beneath to open, simply a pile of miniature scores with bright yellow covers.

"Mozart..." she said softly. "Mozart... oh Guy!"

"The Marriage of Figaro," he said, "The Magic Flute, Cosi, and Don Giovanni. I saw them all, and when I had, I bought the scores for you. It was the nearest thing to your being there. I know you would have wanted to see them."

"You saw them all?" she said.

"What have you got, Chris?" said May breaking in. "Oh music. How dull."

"You wouldn't say that it you heard these, Miss," said Guy, rapping May playfully on the forehead with The Magic Flute.

The other scores lay in still Chris's lap, glowing in their intense yellowness against the dull tweed of her skirt. She wanted to plunge herself into them at once, but did not quite dare to, fearing an almost immediate interruption. She would save turning back the covers until she had time and privacy to drown in their music.

"If it wasn't for the German lettering, they'd look like French novels, wouldn't they?" remarked Guy.

The mention of French novels drew Mrs Adam's attention.

"Really Guy, I should not be able to thank you if that's what they were. I just hope that there's nothing too salacious in them. Opera can be so... well..."

"When did you ever see an opera, Mother?" Chris could not help asking, irritated.

"When I was a girl - when I was staying with the Macrae cousin's in Glasgow. A most improper thing it was, full of half-naked women. Aunt Jeanie and I did not know where to look. We left after the first act."

"Are you sure that was an opera, Mrs Adam?" murmured Guy, with a glance at Chris. She swallowed her laughter - it was all too easy to imagine her mother and Aunt Jeanie Macrae scandalized by the sight of dancing girls in pink tights in some second-rate musical burlesque which they had unaccountably mistaken for an opera.

"It isn't the story in a opera that matters, anyway, Mother," she said. "It's the music."

"I'm not sure I agree with you," said Guy. "Admittedly, the stories can be absurd, but on occasion, well the mixture of wonderful music and powerful sentiment is quite marvellous. Take 'The Marriage of Figaro' - there's a quite extraordinary scene set in the Countess's bedroom, for example, which..."

"In her bedroom?" said Mrs Adam. "Well, that just confirms everything I ever thought, doesn't it?"

"What happens?" said May eagerly.

"Haven't you anything useful to do, May?" said Mrs Adam, swiftly. "There are still the things to be sorted for the Dorcas meeting aren't there?"

May went, albeit reluctantly, recognising censorship when she saw it.

"Mother you shouldn't be so..." said Chris when she had gone. "She's nearly seventeen."

"That is not the point," said Mrs Adam. "Really, I'm not sure this is the sort of thing I want discussed in my house."

"I'm sorry, said Guy. "I didn't..."

"Well, you'll have to remember this is Scotland, Guy," she went on. "What goes for Vienna, doesn't go here."

"I'll try and remember," said Guy getting up from his seat. "Well, I'm afraid I had better cut along. Roddy's coming down from town today and my mother will be cross if I'm not there to meet him."

"I'm very glad to hear that," said Mrs Adam. "It's been such a time since he was at the castle. People have been remarking on it, in fact. Some of the tenants - well, they are my husband's congregation and one does hear things - they feel, well, that the laird ought to be here. They expect it. I thought I should mention it."

Guy looked uncomfortable and made his excuses to go. Chris follow followed him into the hall.

"Look, do you fancy a walk? It's so nice out," he asked.

"What about Roddy?"

"He won't be here for hours, I only said that as an excuse," he said, with a slight grin. "I wanted to walk with you. Go and get your coat and then we can have a proper talk."

"Yes, why not?" said Chris.

They took the lane which lay between the church and the manse, and left the neatness of the village behind them as they climbed up the wooded slopes of Rankeillor Hill.

"Best to avoid the village," Guy had said. "People are beginning to look askance."

"Because of Roddy?" said Chris. "What my mother said was idiotic..."

"No, not really. It's no more than the truth, is it? You've been here. You must have heard things."

"Yes, but I haven't honestly believed it. It just seemed more Rankeillor nonsense."

"Rankeillor nonsense!" he repeated with a laugh. "I like that."

"I think I've had more off it than I can stand. Every little thing blown up out of all proportion." said Chris. "This last year..." she sighed. "Well,... you saw what my mother was like. Sometimes, it's simply insufferable."

"You must wonder why I've come back, then."

"You must tell me," said Chris. "Only if you like, of course."

"I think you are the only person I can tell who might understand," he said with sudden gravity that unnerved her. The remark struck her, like the present of the scores, as designed to touch something deep and quiet inside her.

"Oh, I don't think so!" she laughed. "What about your Oxford friends?" She remembered the glamorous young men that Guy had brought to the Castle a few summers ago. They had seemed to her like a group of gods who had lifted Guy up their sacred level, making him leave behind the insignificant friends of childhood. She had been sixteen, and he nineteen and a vast gap had opened between them; he was a young man, while she was still only a schoolgirl. He had been as kind as ever, but remote from her. She could no longer understand his experiences, for he had the world now, while she still only had Rankeillor and boarding school. She had felt at the time that a door had shut in her face, and yet now, Guy seemed to want to open that door again, back to the intimate conspiracy of their childhood, but there was still that great gulf of experience. She had left had left school now, a full year ago, but she had not left Rankeillor. She felt frozen in time, unable to keep pace with Guy.

"Oh, I haven't kept up with them much," he said, surprisingly."

"I'm sorry," said Chris. "You all seemed so close, that summer."

"That summer, yes..." he said with regret. "Ah well, that's life, I suppose. Nothing lasts particularly except..."

"Except what?"

"Rankeillor nonsense. That hasn't changed."

"I wish to God it would!" Chris exclaimed, with real feeling.

"My poor child, is it that bad?"

"I'm suffocating quietly," she said, as brightly as she could. "One day, they'll find me lying on my bed choked to death by it."

"I hope not," said Guy.

"I know it's wrong of me, of course, not to be able to settle to this life. I ought to be grateful, I know, but sometimes I think if I have to teach another girlsĘ bible class or make any more useful, plain clothes to send to the poor in Dundee I shall simply explode. There has to be more to life than that, doesn't there? There's so much I want to do ."

"Such as?" he asked, as they reached the point of their walk where the trees cleared and the valley spread out in front of them with the village, the church and the Castle.

She hesitated. She had found in the past it was not a good idea to admit to her real ambition. It was generally greeted with open scorn or polite indifference. She glanced at Guy. He had sat down now, his elbows resting on his bent knees, his chin on knotted hands and those unsettling blue eyes regarded her rather than the view. He was waiting it seemed quite expectantly for her to speak and Chris decided she would risk it. Here, with Rankeillor, subdued and distant, it felt safe. "I've been writing a bit of music lately, when I can and I've found what I really want - and I know this probably sounds silly but what I want is to be a composer."

There now, she had said it.

"It doesn't sound the least bit silly to me. I'm not at all surprised, really," he said. "You always were so musical, more than I am, certainly. And, how wonderful to have such a clear idea of what you want out of life! That's the hardest thing I find," he went on. "To have a clear sense of purpose. It's something I've never had. I'm afraid I'm a bit of a drifter, a dabbler if you like..."

"I wouldn't call your playing dabbling," she interjected. "And that's why you went to Vienna, surely, to study, to be a real musician at last."

"Is it?" he queried. "I suppose I thought that, but it didn't take long for me to realise I was fooling myself. I'm no more a musician than..."

"But you play wonderfully," went on Chris, horrified. "What on earth happened?"

"Why don't you sit down? he said, "You make me feel guilty about it, standing there like a reproachful angel."

She complied.

"So what happened?" she asked again.

"I was thoroughly humiliated. At first, it was wonderful. A beautiful city to get used to - a new way of life - those coffee houses - I thought it was all so civilised. I couldn't believe my luck. My German was improving and my teacher was indulgent. I worked hard, I thought - there was a marvellous piano in my digs, and it was easy - I was doing four or five hours practice a day. I began to believe I was getting somewhere until..." He broke off and stared out over the valley. "Do you think the estate is really such a mess?"

"I don't know anything about that," said Chris. "Anyway, it isn't your responsibility. It's Roddy's."

"I think it is," he said, with a sigh. "I've got off the point, haven't I?"

"If you don't want to tell me, you don't have to," said Chris.

"I do want to. I just feel such a fool. It's all that terrible male pride one is raised to have. It can't take too many knocks."

"Guy, what happened?" she said.

"A ten year old, a little girl, in fact. A very pretty child actually, in a white muslin dress - the sort you used to wear on Sundays. Her mother had brought all the way from Hungary to see my teacher. She arrived just after my lesson, and I stayed to hear her play."

"And?"

"She was extraordinary - she is extraordinary. She'll be famous in a few years, I imagine. I don't think I've heard anyone play quite like it. It was as if she had the soul of a seventy year old, and put seventy years of experience into her playing but mixed it with energy of a child. She played Schubert, and I sat there, in the room next to music room - the rooms had double doors between them so I could hear perfectly - and I think I cried. And I then I noticed the mother. She was sitting across the room from me, a thin, shabby creature in black - she looked like a widow, and she looked as though she'd starved herself to get her daughter to Vienna. I knew then the game was up. I hadn't even begun to learn how to be a musician. It wasn't in me. I was simply on holiday, being self indulgent."

"I think you are being too hard on yourself," said Chris.

"You wouldn't if you'd heard that child."

"She's an exception, surely, a freak. It shouldn't have made you give up. It should have inspired you."

"To continue with something that was utterly pointless?" he responded. "I don't think so. The next day I asked my teacher what my chances were, what they really were. He was quite brutal: "You will never be anything than an accomplished amateur, Herr Lindsay." And that was it. So here I am, again."

"Well, if you can still bear to touch a piano," she said, "we could do with you at the village concert. Or have you lost your nerve utterly?"

"No, not entirely," he smiled. "I'd like that."

"It'll be good for you. People will appreciate your playing here - and they should. You play beautifully. You shan't change my mind on that."

"Thanks," he said. "Perhaps we should do some duets - just like the old days. Some of the Dvorak Slavonic Dances? Or Greig?"

"I shall have to get some practice in," she laughed. "I haven't been able to get more than an hour a day in, lately."

"Then come up to the Castle," said Guy. "Better to practise, together don't you think?"

"Well, your lovely Bechstein is a temptation but I don't think my parents would be too keen. It isn't as we were still children."

"That's Rankeillor nonsense," he said. "And you don't listen to that. Besides my mother will be there. You know how she loves to interfere. There won't be a chance of our left being alone, unfortunately."

"I should be wary of you," laughed Chris, getting up. "And I ought to get back to the manse. My mother..."

"Yes perhaps, he cut in. "Or you'll find she's confiscated your Mozart on the grounds of impropriety."

"You never did tell me what happened in the Countess's bedroom," she said.

"It really is too shocking," he said, with mock solemnity. "Especially for your innocent, manse-bred ears. Run along now,"

"You're not coming just now?"

"I need to think a bit."

"Well don't get too gloomy. It doesn't suit you."

He smiled at that and stretched to catch her hand. To her surprise, he kissed it. She looked down at him, amused but flattered by this little piece of gallantry.

Letting go of her hand, he said, "Off you go now."

She went, a little reluctantly, she found, and turned to see him wave to her. Further on down, she turned again, and he was just still just in sight, but he did not see her. He was staring forward again, his chin resting again on his knotted hands, his craggy face locked in some grim pattern of thought. She felt his disappointment then as if it had been her own. When he had left for Vienna she had wished for his success although she had envied his opportunity. She had lived vicariously through the very fact of his being there, and to find that he, of all people, had failed, seemed to dash her own hopes harder than ever against the rocks of circumstance. If ever a soul was destined to succeed in what he set out to do, she had thought it would be Guy Lindsay, but now he was back at Rankeillor, like a whipped dog. What chance then did her ambitions stand?

When she got back to the Manse she had a chance to look at the miniature scores he had brought for her. She turned to the first of them: 'Die Zauberflote' - the Magic Flute. The name pleased her - she had long believed that music was a form of sorcery. Opening the score, she saw it was rather meanly type-set with no thought for clarity or elegance but to her such things were immaterial. It was the patterns of the notes which electrified her, and as she read the first few bars of the overture, she found herself quite entranced.

Three sets of sustained chords rang out in those first few bars of the overture, each set punctuated by, it seemed to her, daringly long pauses. She felt those chords, with their deeply satisfying harmonies echo through her, sending a prickle of excitement through her nerves. After them was a brief section of development, resolving it seemed all the tensions that the chords had awoken and then a fugue broke out, a delicious, mischievous fugue on a pattern of rapidly repeated quavers...

She closed her eyes for a moment, dizzy at it. She had realized some time ago that she could read a printed piece of music and hear it playing in her head, but never had anything she had seen before affected her like that. She knew the Messiah backwards and loved it dearly, but there was nothing in it like this. This was not like the few pieces of Mozart's piano music she was familiar with but something entirely different and compelling.

She knew she would be wanted downstairs, and she was about to close the book but those opening chords tantalised her again. She could not resist turning the page to see what lay beyond. A bold, rising melody confronted her, hooked her indeed, and soon she was lost utterly in the wonderful music of the first act of The Magic Flute where three women sang in extraordinary harmony to save a man from a dragon. Nothing could disentangle her now from such enchantments. Not even Mrs Adam, at her most persistent, could follow her into this world.