NEXT morning Sheila was busy with her preparations for departure, when she heard a hansom drive up. She looked out and saw Mr. Ingram step out; and before he had time to cross the pavement she had run around and opened the door, and stood at the top of the steps to receive him. How often had her husband cautioned her not to forget herself in this monstrous fashion!

“Do you think I had run away? Have you come to see me?” she said, with a bright, roseate gladness on her face, which reminded him of many a pleasant morning in Borva.

“I did not think you had run away, for, you see, I have brought you some flowers;” but there was a sort of blush in the sallow face, and perhaps the girl had some quick fancy or suspicion that he had brought this bouquet to prove that he knew everything was right, and that he expected to see her. It was only a part of his universal kindness and thoughtfulness, she considered.

“Frank is up stairs,” she said, “getting ready some things to go to Brighton. Will you come into the breakfast-room? Have you had breakfast?”

“Oh, you were going to Brighton?”

“Yes,” she said, and somehow something moved her to add quickly, “but not for long, you know. Only a few days. It is many a time you will have told me of Brighton long ago in the Lewis, but I cannot understand a large town being beside the sea, and it will be a great surprise to me, I am sure of that.”

“Ay, Sheila,” he said, falling into the old habit quite naturally, “you will find it different from Borvapost. You will have no scampering about the rock, with your head bare and your hair flying about. You will have to dress more correctly there than here even; and, by the way, you must be busy getting ready; so I will go.”

“Oh, no,” she said, with a quick look of disappointment, “you will not go yet. If I had known you were coming—but it was very late when we got home this morning: two o’clock it was.”

“Another ball?”

“Yes,” said the girl, but not very joyfully.

“Why, Sheila,” he said, with a grave smile on his face, “you are becoming quite a woman of fashion now. And you know I can’t keep up an acquaintance with a fine lady, who goes to all these grand places, and knows all sorts of swell people; so you’ll have to cut me, Sheila.”

“I hope I shall be dead before that time ever comes,” said the girl, with a sudden flash of indignation in her eyes. Then she softened: “But it is not kind for you to laugh at me.”

“Of course I did not laugh at you,” he said, taking both her hands in his, “although I used to sometimes when you were a little girl and talked very wild English. Don’t you remember how vexed you used to be, and how pleased you were when your papa turned the laugh against me by getting me to say that awful Gaelic sentence about ‘A young calf ate a raw egg!’”

“Can you say it now?” said Sheila, with her face getting bright and pleased again. “Try it after me. Now listen.”

She uttered some half dozen of the most extraordinary sounds that any language ever contained, but Ingram would not attempt to follow her. She reproached him with having forgotten all that he had learnt in Lewis, and said she should no longer look on him as a possible Highlander.

“But what are you now?” he asked. “You are no longer that wild girl who used to run out to sea in the Maighdean-mhara whenever there was the excitement of a storm coming on.”

“Many times,” she said, slowly and wistfully, “I will wish that I could be that again for a little while.”

“Don’t you enjoy, then, all those fine gatherings you go to?”

“I try to like them.”

“And you don’t succeed?”

He was looking at her gravely and earnestly, and she turned away her head and did not answer. At this moment Lavender came down stairs and entered the room.

“Halloo, Ingram, my boy! glad to see you! What pretty flowers! It’s a pity we can’t take them to Brighton with us.”

“But I intend to take them,” said Sheila, firmly.

“Oh, very well, if you don’t mind the bother,” said her husband. “I should have thought your hands would have been full; you know you’ll have to take everything with you you would want in London. You will find that Brighton isn’t a dirty little fishing-village in which you’ve only to tuck up your dress and run about anyhow.”

“I never saw a dirty little fishing-village,” said Sheila, quietly.

Her husband laughed: “I meant no offense. I was not thinking of Borvapost at all. Well, Ingram, can’t you run down and see us while we are at Brighton?”

“Oh, do, Mr. Ingram?” said Sheila, with quite a new interest in her face; and she came forward as though she would have gone down on her knees and begged this great favor of him. “Do Mr. Ingram! We should try to amuse you some way, and the weather is sure to be fine. Shall we keep a room for you? Can you come on Friday and stay till Monday? It is a great difference there will be in the place if you come down.”

Ingram looked at Sheila, and was on the point of promising, when Lavender added: “And we shall introduce you to that young American lady whom you are so anxious to meet.”

“Oh, is she to be there?” he said, looking rather curiously at Lavender.

“Yes, and her mother. We are going down together.”

“Then I’ll see whether I can in a day or two,” he said, but in a tone which pretty nearly convinced Sheila that she should not have her stay at Brighton made pleasant by the company of her old friend and associate.

However, the mere anticipation of seeing the sea was much; and when they had got into a cab and were going down to Victoria Station, Sheila’s eyes were filled with a joyful anticipation. She had discarded altogether the descriptions of Brighton that had been given her. It is one thing to receive information, and another to reproduce it in an imaginative picture; and in fact her imagination was busy with its own work while she sat and listened to this person or the other speaking of the seaside town she was going to. When they spoke of promenades and drives and miles of hotels and lodging houses, she was thinking of the sea-beach and of the boats and of the sky-line with its distant ships. When they told her of private theatricals and concerts and fancy-dress balls, she was thinking of being out on the open sea, with a light breeze filling the sails, and a curl of white foam rising at the bow and sweeping and hissing down the sides of the boat. She would go down among the fishermen when her husband and his friends were not by, and talk to them, and get to know what they sold their fish for down here in the South. She would find out what their nets cost, and if there was anybody in authority to whom they could apply for an advance of a few pounds in case of hard times. Had they their cuttings of peat free from the nearest mossland? and did they dress their fields with the thatch that had got saturated with the smoke? Perhaps some of them could tell her where the crews hailed from that had repeatedly shot the sheep of the Flannen Isles. All these and a hundred other things she would get to know; and she might procure and send to her father some rare bird or curiosity of the sea, that might be added to the little museum in which she used to sing in days gone by, when he was busy with his pipe and his whisky.

“You are not much tired, then, by your dissipation of last night?” said Mrs. Kavanagh to her at the station, as the slender, fair-haired, grave lady looked admiringly at the girl’s fresh color and bright gray-blue eyes. “It makes one envy you to see you looking so strong and in such good spirits.”

“How happy you must be always!” said Mrs. Lorraine; and the younger lady had the same sweet, low and kindly voice as her mother.

“I am very well, thank you,” said Sheila, blushing somewhat, and not lifting her eyes, while Lavender was impatient that she had not answered with a laugh and some light retort, such as would have occurred to almost any woman in the circumstances.

On the journey down, Lavender and Mrs. Lorraine, seated opposite each other in two corner seats, kept up a continual cross-fire of small pleasantries, in which the young American lady had distinctly the best of it, chiefly by reason of her perfect manner. The keenest thing she said was said with a look of great innocence and candor in the large gray eyes; and then directly afterward she would say something very nice and pleasant in precisely the same voice, as if she could not understand that there was any effort on the part of either to assume an advantage. The mother sometimes turned and listened to this aimless talk with an amused gravity, as of a cat watching the gambols of a kitten, but generally she devoted herself to Sheila, who sat opposite her. She did not talk much, and Sheila was glad of that, but the girl felt that she was being observed with some little curiosity. She wished that Mrs. Kavanagh would turn those observant gray eyes of hers away in some other direction. Now and again Sheila would point out what she considered strange or striking in the country outside, and for a moment the elderly lady would look out. But directly afterward the gray eyes would come back to Sheila, and the girl knew they were upon her.

At last she so persistently stared out of the window that she fell to dreaming, and all the trees and the meadows and the farm-houses and the distant heights and hollows went past her as though they were in a sort of mist, while she replied to Mrs. Kavanagh’s chance remarks in a mechanical fashion, and could only hear as a monotonous murmur the talk of the two people at the other side of the carriage. How much of the journey did she remember? She was greatly struck by the amount of open land in the neighborhood of London—the commons between Wandsworth and Streatham, and so forth—and she was pleased with the appearance of the country about Red Hill. For the rest, a succession of fair green pictures passed by her, all bathed in a calm, half-misty Summer sunlight; then they pierced the chalk-hills (which Sheila, at first sight, fancied were of granite) and rumbled through the tunnels. Finally, with just a glimpse of a great mass of gray houses filling a vast hollow and stretching up the bare green downs beyond, they found themselves in Brighton.

“Well, Sheila, what do you think of the place?” her husband said to her with a laugh as they were driving down the Queen’s road.

She did not answer.

“It is not like Borvapost, is it?”

She was too bewildered to speak. She could only look about her with a vague wonder and disappointment. But surely this great city was not the place they had come to live in? Would it not disappear somehow, and they would get away to the sea and the rocks and the boats?

They passed into the upper part of West Street, and here was another thoroughfare, down to which Sheila glanced with no great interest. But the next moment there was a quick catching of her breath, which almost resembled a sob, and a strange glad light sprang into her eyes. Here, at last, was the sea! Away beyond the narrow thoroughfare she could catch a glimpse of a great green plain—yellow-green it was in the sunlight—that the wind was whitening here and there with tumbling waves. She had not noticed that there was any wind in-land—there everything seemed asleep—but here there was a fresh breeze from the South, and the sea had been rough the day before, and now it was of this strange olive color, streaked with the white curls of foam that shone in the sunlight. Was there not a cold scent of sea-weed, too, blown up this narrow passage between the houses?

And now the carriage cut around the corner and whirled out into the glare of the Parade, and before her the great sea stretched out its leagues of tumbling and shining waves, and she heard the water roaring along the beach, and far away at the horizon she saw a phantom ship. She did not even look at the row of splendid hotels and houses, at the gayly-dressed folks on the pavement, at the brilliant flags that were flapping and fluttering on the New Pier and about the beach. It was the great world of shining water beyond that fascinated her, and awoke in her a strange yearning and longing, so that she did not know whether it was grief or joy that burned in her heart and blinded her eyes with tears. Mrs. Kavanagh took her arm as they were going up the steps of the hotel, and said in a friendly way, “I suppose you have some sad memories of the sea?”

“No,” said Sheila, bravely, “it is always pleasant to me to think of the sea; but it is a long time since—since—”

“Sheila,” said her husband, abruptly, “do tell me if all your things are here;” and then the girl turned, calm and self-collected, to look after rugs and boxes.

When they were finally established in the hotel, Lavender went off to negotiate for the hire of a carriage for Mrs. Kavanagh during her stay, and Sheila was left with the two ladies. They had tea in their sitting-room, and they had it at one of the windows, so that they could look out on the stream of people and carriages now beginning to flow by in the clear yellow light of the afternoon. But neither the people nor the carriages had much interest for Sheila, who, indeed, sat for the most part silent, intently watching the various boats that were putting out or coming in, and busy with conjectures which she knew there was no use placing before her two companions.

“Brighton seems to surprise you very much,” said Mrs. Lorraine.

“Yes,” said Sheila, “I have been told all about it, but you will forget all that; and this is very different from the sea at home—at my home.”

“Your home is in London now,” said the elder lady, with a smile.

“Oh, no!” said Sheila, most anxiously and earnestly. “London, that is not our home at all. We live there for a time—that will be quite necessary—but we shall go back to the Lewis some day soon—not to stay altogether, but enough to make it as much our home as London.”

“How do you think Mr. Lavender will enjoy living in the Hebrides?” said Mrs. Lorraine, with a look of innocent and friendly inquiry in her eyes.

“It was many a time that he has said he never liked any place so much,” said Sheila with something of a blush; and then she added with growing courage, “for you must not think he is always like what he is here. Oh, no! When he is in the Highlands there is no day that is nearly long enough for what has to be done in it; and he is up very early, and away to the hills or the loch with a gun or a salmon-rod. He can catch the salmon very well—oh, very well for one that is not accustomed—and he will shoot as well as any one that is in the island, except my papa. It is a great deal to do there will be in the island, and plenty of amusement; and there is not much chance—not any whatever—of his being lonely or tired when we go to live in the Lewis.”

Mrs. Kavanagh and her daughter were both amused and pleased by the earnest and rapid fashion in which Sheila talked. They had generally considered her to be a trifle shy and silent, not knowing how afraid she was of using wrong idioms or pronunciations; but here was one subject on which her heart was set, and she had no more thought as to whether she said like-a-ness or likeness, or whether she said gyarden or garden. Indeed, she forgot more than that. She was somewhat excited by the presence of the sea and the well-remembered sound of the waves; and she was pleased to talk about her life in the North, and about her husband’s stay there, and how they should pass the time when she returned to Borva. She neglected altogether Lavender’s instructions that she should not talk about fishing or cooking or farming to his friends. She incidentally revealed to Mrs. Kavanagh and her daughter a great deal more about the household at Borva than he would have wished to be known. For how could they understand about his wife having her own cousin to serve at table? And what would they think of a young lady who was proud of making her father’s shirts? Whatever these two ladies may have thought, they were very obviously interested, and if they were amused, it was in a far from unfriendly fashion. Mrs. Lorraine professed herself quite charmed with Sheila’s descriptions of her island-life, and wished she could go up to Lewis to see all these strange things. But when she spoke of visiting the island when Sheila and her husband were staying there, Sheila was not nearly so ready to offer her a welcome as the daughter of a hospitable old Highland man ought to have been.

“And will you go out in a boat now?” said Sheila, looking down to the beach.

“In a boat! What sort of a boat?” said Mrs. Kavanagh.

“Any of those little sailing boats; it is very good they are, as far as I can see.”

“No, thank you,” said the elder lady, with a smile, “I am not fond of small boats, and the company of the men who go with you might be a little objectionable, I should fancy.”

“But you need not take any men,” said Sheila; “the sailing of one of those little boats, it is very simple.”

“Do you mean to say you could manage the boat by yourself?”

“Oh yes! It is very simple. And my husband he will help me.”

“And what would you do if you went out?”

“We might try the fishing. I do not see where the rocks are, but we would go off to the rocks and put down the anchor and try the lines. You would have some ferry good fish for breakfast in the morning.”

“My dear child,” said Mrs. Kavanagh, “you don’t know what you propose to us. To go and roll about in an open boat in these waves—we should be ill in five minutes. But I suppose you don’t know what seasickness is?”

“No,” said Sheila, “but I will hear my husband speak of it often. And it is only in crossing the Channel that people will get sick.”

“Why, this is the Channel.”

Sheila stared. Then she endeavored to recall her geography. Of course, this must be a part of the Channel, but if the people in the South became ill in this weather, they must be feeble creatures. Her speculations on this point were cut short by the entrance of her husband, who came to announce that he had not only secured a carriage for a month, but that it would be around at the hotel door in half an hour; whereupon the two American ladies said they would be ready, and left the room.

“Now go off and get dressed, Sheila,” said Lavender.

She stood for a moment irresolute.

“If you wouldn’t mind,” she said, after a moment’s hesitation—“if you would allow me to go by myself—if you would go to the driving, and let me go down to the shore!”

“Oh, nonsense!” he said. “You will have people fancying you are only a school-girl. How can you go down to the beach by yourself among all those loafing vagabonds, who would pick your pockets or throw stones at you? You must behave like an ordinary Christian. Now do, like a good girl, get dressed and submit to the restraints of civilized life. It won’t hurt you much.”

So she left, to lay aside, with some regret, her rough blue dress, and he went down-stairs to see about ordering dinner.

Had she come down to the sea, then, only to live the life that had nearly broken her heart in London? It seemed so. They drove up and down the Parade for about an hour and a half, and the roar of the carriages drowned the rush of the waves. Then they dined in the quiet of this still Summer evening, and she could only see the sea as a distant and silent picture through the windows, while the talk of her companions was either about the people whom they had seen while driving, or about matters of which she knew nothing. Then the blinds were drawn and the candles lit, and still their conversation murmured around her unheeding ears. After dinner, her husband went down to the smoking-room of the hotel to have a cigar, and she was left with Mrs. Kavanagh and her daughter. She went to the window, and looked through a chink in the Venetian blinds. There was a beautiful clear twilight abroad, the darkness still of a soft gray, and up in the pale yellow-green of the sky a large planet burned and throbbed. Soon the sea and the sky would darken, the stars would come forth in thousands and tens of thousands, and the moving water would be struck with a million trembling spots of silver as the waves came onward to the beach.

“Mayn’t we go out for a walk till Frank has finished his cigar?” said Sheila.

“You couldn’t go out walking at this time of night,” said Mrs. Kavanagh, in a kindly way, “you would meet the most unpleasant persons. Besides going out into the night air would be most dangerous.”

“It is a beautiful night,” said Sheila, with a sigh. She was still standing at the window.

“Come,” said Mrs. Kavanagh, going over to her, and putting her hand in her arm, “we cannot have any moping, you know. You must be content to be dull with us for one night; and after to-night we shall see what we can do to amuse you.”

“Oh, but I don’t want to be amused!” cried Sheila, almost in terror, for some vision flashed on her mind of a series of parties. “I would much rather be left alone and allowed to go about by myself. But it is very kind of you,” she hastily added, fancying that her speech had been somewhat ungracious—“it is very kind of you, indeed.”

“Come, I promised to teach you cribbage, didn’t I?”

“Yes,” said Sheila, with much resignation, and she walked to the table, and sat down.

Perhaps, after all, she could have spent the rest of the evening with some little equanimity in patiently trying to learn this game, in which she had no interest whatever, but her thoughts and fancies were soon drawn away from cribbage. Her husband returned. Mrs. Lorraine had been for some little time at the big piano at the other side of the room, amusing herself by playing snatches of anything she happened to remember, but when Mr. Lavender returned she seemed to wake up. He went over to her, and sat down by the piano.

“Here,” she said, “I have all the duets and songs you spoke of, and I am quite delighted with those I have tried. I wish mamma would sing a second to me; how can one learn without practising? And there are some of those duets I really should like to learn after what you have said of them.”

“Shall I become a substitute for your mamma?” he said.

“And sing the second, so that I may practise? Your cigar must have left you in a very amiable mood.”

“Well, suppose we try,” he said; and he proceeded to open out the roll of music which she had brought down.

“Which shall we take first?” he asked.

“It does not much matter,” she answered, indifferently, and indeed she took up one of the duets at haphazard.

What was it made Mrs. Kavanagh’s companion suddenly lift her eyes from the cribbage-board and look with surprise to the other end of the room? She had recognized the little prelude to one of her own duets, and it was being played by Mrs. Lorraine. And it was Mrs. Lorraine who began to sing in a sweet, expressive and well-trained voice of no great power—

and it was she to whom the answer was given—

and then Sheila, sitting stupefied and pained and confused, heard them sing together—

She had not heard the short conversation which had introduced this music; and she could not tell but that her husband had been practising these duets—her duets—with some one else. For presently they sang “When the rosy morn appearing,” and “I would that my love could silently,” and others, all of them, in Sheila’s eyes, sacred to the time when she and Lavender used to sit in the little room in Borva. It was no consolation to her that Mrs. Lorraine had but an imperfect acquaintance with them; that oftentimes she stumbled and went back over a bit of the accompaniment; that her voice was far from being striking. Lavender, at all events, seemed to heed none of these things. It was not as a music master that he sang with her. He put as much expression of love into his voice as ever he had done in the old days when he sang with his future bride. And it seemed so cruel that this woman should have taken Sheila’s own duets from her to sing before her with her own husband.

Sheila learnt little more cribbage that evening. Mrs. Kavanagh could not understand how her pupil had become embarrassed, inattentive, and even sad, and asked her if she was tired. Sheila said she was very tired and would go. And when she got her candle, Mrs. Lorraine and Lavender had just discovered another duet, which they felt bound to try together as the last.

This was not the first time she had been more or less vaguely pained by her husband’s attentions to this young American lady; and yet she would not admit to herself that he was any in the wrong. She would entertain no suspicion of him. She would have no jealousy in her heart, for how could jealousy exist with a perfect faith? And so she had repeatedly reasoned herself out of these tentative feelings, and resolved that she would do neither her husband nor Mrs. Lorraine the injustice of being vexed with them. So it was now. What more natural than that Frank should recommend to any one the duets of which he was particularly fond? What more natural than that this young lady should wish to show her appreciation of those songs by singing them? and who was to sing with her but he? Sheila would have no suspicion of either; and so she came down next morning determined to be very friendly with Mrs. Lorraine.

But that forenoon another thing occurred which nearly broke down all her resolves.

“Sheila,” said her husband, “I don’t think I ever asked you whether you rode?”

“I used to ride many times at home,” she said.

“But I suppose you’d rather not ride here,” he said. “Mrs. Lorraine and I propose to go out presently; you’ll be able to amuse yourself somehow till we come back.”

Mrs. Lorraine had indeed gone to put on her habit, and her mother was with her.

“I suppose I may go out,” said Sheila. “It is so very dull indoors, and Mrs. Kavanagh is afraid of the East wind, and she is not going out.”

“Well, there’s no harm about your going out,” answered Lavender, “but I should have thought you’d have liked the comfort of watching the people pass, from the window.”

She said nothing, but went off to her own room and dressed to go out. Why, she knew not, but she felt that she would rather not see her husband and Mrs. Lorraine start from the hotel-door. She stole down-stairs without going into the sitting-room, and then, going through the great hall and down the steps, found herself free and alone in Brighton.

It was a beautiful, bright, clear day, though the wind was a trifle chilly, and all around her there was a sense of space and light and motion in the shining skies, the far clouds and the heaving and noisy sea. Yet she had none of the gladness of heart with which she used to rush out of the house at Borva to drink in the fresh, salt air, and feel the sunlight on her cheeks. She walked away, with her face wistful and pensive, along the King’s road, scarcely seeing any of the people who passed her; and the noise of the crowd and of the waves hummed in her ears in a distant fashion, even as she walked along the wooden railing over the beach. She stopped and watched some men putting off a heavy fishing-boat, and she still stood and looked long after the boat was launched. She would not confess to herself that she felt lonely and miserable; it was the sight of the sea that was melancholy. It seemed so different from the sea off Borva, that had always to her a familiar and friendly look, even when it was raging and rushing before a Southwest wind. Here this sea looked vast and calm and sad, and the sound of it was not pleasant to her ears, as was the sound of the waves on the rocks at Borva. She walked on, in a blind and unthinking fashion, until she had got far up the Parade, and could see the long line of monotonous white cliff meeting the dull blue plain of the waves until both disappeared in the horizon.

She returned to the King’s road a trifle tired, and sat down on one of the benches there. The passing of the people would amuse her; and now the pavement was thronged with a crowd of gayly-dressed folks, and the centre of the thoroughfare brisk with the constant going and coming of riders. She saw strange old women painted, powdered and bewigged in hideous imitation of youth, pounding up and down the level street, and she wondered what wild hallucinations possessed the brains of these poor creatures. She saw troops of beautiful young girls, with flowing hair, clear eyes and bright complexions, riding by, a goodly company, under charge of a riding-mistress, and the world seemed to grow sweeter when they came into view. But while she was vaguely gazing and wondering and speculating, her eyes were suddenly caught by two riders whose appearance sent a throb to her heart. Frank Lavender rode well, so did Mrs. Lorraine; and, though they were paying no particular attention to the crowd of passers-by, they doubtless knew that they could challenge criticism with an easy confidence. They were laughing and talking to each other as they went rapidly by; neither of them saw Sheila. The girl did not look after them. She rose and walked in the other direction, with a greater pain at her heart than had been there for many a day.

What was this crowd? Some dozen or so of people were standing around a small girl, who, accompanied by a man, was playing a violin, and playing it very well, too. But it was not the music that attracted Sheila to the child, but partly that there was a look about the timid, pretty face and modest and honest eyes that reminded her of little Ailasa, and partly because, just at this moment, her heart seemed to be strangely sensitive and sympathetic. She took no thought of the people looking on. She went forward to the edge of the pavement, and found that the small girl and her companion were about to go away. Sheila stopped the man.

“Will you let your little girl come with me into this shop?”

It was a confectioner’s shop.

“We were going home to dinner,” said the man, while the small girl looked up with wondering eyes.

“Will you let her have dinner with me, and you will come back in a half an hour?”

The man looked at the little girl; he seemed to be really fond of her, and saw that she was very willing to go. Sheila took her hand and led her into the confectioner’s shop, putting her violin on one of the small marble tables while they sat down at another. She was probably not aware that two or three idlers had followed them, and were staring with might and main in at the door of the shop.

What could this child have thought of the beautiful and yet sad-eyed lady who was so kind to her, who got her all sorts of things with her own hands and asked her all manner of questions in a low, gentle and sweet voice? There was not much in Sheila’s appearance to provoke fear or awe. The little girl, shy at first, got to be a little more frank, and told her hostess when she rose in the morning, how she practised, the number of hours they were out during the day, and many of the small incidents of her daily life. She had been photographed, too, and her photograph was sold in one of the shops. She was very well content; she liked playing, the people were kind to her, and she did not often get tired.

“Then I shall see you often if I stay in Brighton?” said Sheila.

“We go out every day when it does not rain very hard.”

“Perhaps some wet day you will come and see me, and you will have some tea with me; would you like that?”

“Yes, very much,” said the small musician, looking up frankly.

Just at this moment, the half hour having fully expired, the man appeared at the door.

“Don’t hurry,” said Sheila to the little girl; “sit still and drink out the lemonade, then I will give you some little parcels which you must put in your pocket.”

She was about to rise to go to the counter when she suddenly met the eyes of her husband, who was calmly staring at her. He had come out, after their ride, with Mrs. Lorraine to have a stroll up and down the pavements, and had, in looking in at the various shops, caught sight of Sheila quietly having luncheon with this girl whom she had picked up in the streets.

“Did you ever see the like of that?” he said to Mrs. Lorraine. “In open day, with people staring in, and she has not even taken the trouble to put the violin out of sight!”

“The poor child means no harm,” said his companion.

“Well, we must get her out of this somehow,” he said; and so they entered the shop.

Sheila knew she was guilty the moment she met her husband’s look, though she had never dreamed of it before. She had, indeed, acted quite thoughtlessly—perhaps chiefly moved by a desire to speak to some one and to befriend some one in her own loneliness.

“Hadn’t you better let this little girl go?” said Lavender to Sheila, somewhat coldly, as soon as he had ordered an ice for his companion.

“When she has finished her lemonade she will go,” said Sheila, meekly. “But I have to buy some things for her, first.”

“You have got a whole lot of people around the door,” he said.

“It is very kind of the people to wait for her,” answered Sheila, with the same composure. “We have been here half an hour. I suppose they will like her music very much.”

The little violiniste was now taken to the counter and her pockets stuffed with packages of sugared fruits and other deadly delicacies; then she was permittted to go with half a crown in her hand. Mrs. Lorraine patted her shoulder in passing, and said she was a pretty little thing.

They went home to luncheon. Nothing was said about the incident of the forenoon, except that Lavender complained to Mrs. Kavanagh in a humorous way, that his wife had a most extraordinary fondness for beggars, and that he never went home of an evening without expecting to find her dining with the nearest scavenger and his family. Lavender, indeed, was in an amiable frame of mind at the meal (during the progress of which Sheila sat by the window, of course, for she had already lunched in company with the tiny violiniste), and was bent on making himself as agreeable as possible to his two companions. Their talk had drifted toward the wanderings of the two ladies on the Continent; from that to the Niebelungen frescoes in Munich; from that to the Niebelungen itself, and then by easy transition to the ballads of Uhland and Heine. Lavender was in one of his most impulsive and brilliant moods—gay and jocular, tender and sympathetic by turns, and so obviously sincere in all that his listeners were delighted with his speeches and assertions and stories, and believed them as implicitly as he did himself.

Sheila, sitting at a distance, saw and heard, and could not help recalling many an evening in the far North when Lavender used to fascinate every one around him by the infection of his warm and poetic enthusiasm. How he talked, too—telling the stories of these quaint and pathetic ballads in his own rough and ready translations—while there was no self-consciousness in his face, but a thorough warmth of earnestness; and sometimes, too, she would notice a quiver of the under lip that she knew of old, when some pathetic point or phrase had to be indicated rather than described. He was drawing pictures for them as well as telling stories—of the three students entering the room in which the landlady’s daughter lay dead—of Barbarossa in his cave—of the child who used to look up at Heine as he passed her in the street, awe-stricken by his pale and strange face—of the last of the band of companions who sat in the solitary room in which they had sat, and drank to their memory—of the King of Thule, and the deserter from Strasburg, and a thousand others.

“But is there any of them—is there anything in the world—more pitiable than that pilgrimage to Kevlaar?” he said. “You know it, of course. No? Oh, you must, surely. Don’t you remember the mother who stood by the bedside of her sick son, and asked him whether he would not rise to see the great procession go by the window; and he tells her that he cannot, he is so ill; his heart is breaking for thinking of his dead Gretchen? You know the story, Sheila. The mother begs him to rise and come with her, and they will join the band of pilgrims going to Kevlaar, to be healed there of their wounds by the Mother of God. Then you find them at Kevlaar, and all the maimed and the lame people have come to the shrine; and whichever limb is diseased, they make a waxen image of that and lay it on the altar, and then they are healed. Well, the mother of this poor lad takes wax and forms a heart out of it, and says to her son, ‘Take that to the Mother of God, and she will heal your pain.’ Sighing, he takes the wax heart in his hand, and, sighing, he goes to the shrine; and there, with tears running down his face, he says: ‘O beautiful Queen of Heaven, I am come to tell you my grief. I lived with my mother in Cologne; near us lived Gretchen, who is dead now. Blessed Mary, I bring you this wax heart, heal the wound in my heart.’ And then—and then—”

Sheila saw his lip tremble. But he frowned and said impatiently: “What a shame it is to destroy such a beautiful story! You can have no idea of it—of its simplicity and tenderness—”

“But pray let us hear the rest of it,” said Mrs. Lorraine, gently.

“Well, the last scene, you know, is a small chamber, and the mother and her sick son are asleep. The Blessed Mary glides into the chamber and bends over the young man, and puts her hand lightly on his heart. Then she smiles and disappears. The unhappy mother has seen all this in a dream, and now she awakes, for the dogs are barking loudly. The mother goes over to the bed of her son, and he is dead, and the morning light touches his pale face. And then the mother folds her hands, and says—”

He rose hastily with a gesture of fretfulness, and walked over to the window at which Sheila sat, and looked out. She put her hand up to his; he took it.

“The next time I try to translate Heine,” he said, making it appear that he had broken off through vexation, “something strange will happen.”

“It is a beautiful story,” said Mrs. Lorraine, who had herself been crying a little bit in a covered way, “I wonder I have not seen a translation of it. Come, mamma, Lady Leveret said we were not to be after four.”

So they rose and left, and Sheila was alone with her husband, and still holding his hand. She looked up at him timidly, wondering, perhaps, in her simple way, as to whether she should not now pour out her heart to him and tell him all her griefs and fears and yearnings. He had obviously been deeply moved by the story he had told so roughly; surely now was a good opportunity of appealing to him, and begging for sympathy and compassion.

“Frank,” she said, and she rose and came close, and bent down her head to hide the color in her face.

“Well?” he answered, a trifle coldly.

“You won’t be vexed with me,” she said, in a low voice, and with her heart beginning to beat rapidly.

“Vexed with you; about what?” he said, abruptly.

Alas! all her hopes had fled. She shrank from the cold stare with which she knew he was regarding her. She felt it to be impossible that she should place before him those confidences with which she had approached him; and so, with a great effort, she merely said: “Are we to go to Lady Leveret’s?”

“Of course we are,” he said, “unless you would rather go to see some blind fiddler or beggar. It is really too bad of you, Sheila, to be so forgetful; what if Lady Leveret, for example, had come into that shop? It seems to me you are never satisfied with meeting the people you ought to meet, but that you must go and associate with all the wretched cripples and beggars you can find. You should remember you are a woman, and not a child—that people will talk about what you do if you go on in this mad way. Do you ever see Mrs. Kavanagh or her daughter do any of these things?”

Sheila had let go his hand; her eyes were still turned toward the ground. She had fancied that a little of that emotion that had been awakened in him by the story of the German mother and her son might warm his heart toward herself, and render it possible for her to talk to him frankly about all that she had been dimly thinking, and more definitely suffering. She was mistaken, that was all.

“I will try to do better, and please you,” she said; and then she went away.

CHAPTER XV.
A FRIEND IN NEED.

WAS it a delusion that had grown up in the girl’s mind, and held full possession of it—that she was in a world with which she had no sympathy, that she should never be able to find a home there, that the influences of it were gradually and surely stealing from her her husband’s love and confidence? Or was this longing to get away from the people and the circumstances that surrounded her but the unconscious promptings of an incipient jealousy? She did not question her own mind closely on these points. She only vaguely knew that she was miserable, and that she could not tell her husband of the weight that pressed on her heart.

Here, too, as they drove along to have tea with a certain Lady Leveret, who was one of Lavender’s especial patrons, and to whom he had introduced Mrs. Kavanagh and her daughter, Sheila felt that she was a stranger, an interloper, a “third wheel to the cart.” She scarcely spoke a word. She looked at the sea, but she had almost grown to regard that great plain of smooth water as a melancholy and monotonous thing—not the bright and boisterous sea of her youth, with its winding channels, its secret bays and rocks, its salt winds and rushing waves. She was disappointed with the perpetual wall of white cliff, where she had expected to see something of the black and rugged shore of the North. She had as yet made no acquaintance with the sea-life of the place; she did not know where the curers lived; whether they gave the fishermen credit and cheated them; whether the people about here made any use of the back of the dog-fish, or could, in hard seasons, cook any of the wild-fowl; what the ling and the cod and the skate fetched; where the wives and the daughters sat and spun and carded their wool; whether they knew how to make a good dish of cockles boiled in milk. She smiled to herself when she thought of asking Mrs. Lorraine about any such things; but she still cherished some vague hope that before she left Brighton she would have some little chance of getting near to the sea and learning a little of the sea-life down in the South.

And as they drove along the King’s Road on this afternoon she suddenly called out, “Look, Frank!”

On the steps of the Old Ship Hotel stood a small man with a brown face, a brown beard and a beaver hat, who was calmly smoking a wooden pipe, and looking at an old woman selling oranges in front of him.

“It is Mr. Ingram,” said Sheila.

“Which is Mr. Ingram?” asked Mrs. Lorraine, with considerable interest, for she had often heard Lavender speak of his friend. “Not that little man?”

“Yes,” said Lavender, coldly; he could have wished that Ingram had had some little more regard for appearances in so public a place as the main thoroughfare of Brighton.

“Won’t you stop and speak to him?” said Sheila, with great surprise.

“We are late already,” said her husband. “But if you would rather go back and speak to him than go on with us, you may.”

Sheila said nothing more; and so they drove on to the end of the Parade, where Lady Leveret held possession of a big white house with pillars, overlooking the broad street and the sea.

But next morning she said to him, “I suppose you will be riding with Mrs. Lorraine this morning?”

“I suppose so.”

“I should like to go and see Mr. Ingram, if he is still there,” she said.

“Ladies don’t generally call at hotels and ask to see gentlemen; but of course you don’t care for that.”

“I shall not go if you do not wish me.”

“Oh, nonsense. You may as well go. What is the use of professing to keep observances that you don’t understand? And it will be some amusement for you, for I dare say both of you will immediately go and ask some old cab-driver to have luncheon with you, or buy a nosegay of flowers for his horse.”

The permission was not very gracious, but Sheila accepted it, and very shortly after breakfast she changed her dress and went out. How pleasant it was to know that she was going to see her old friend, to whom she could talk freely! The morning seemed to know of her gladness, and to share in it, for there was a brisk Southerly breeze blowing fresh in from the sea, and the leaves were leaping white in the sunlight. There was no more sluggishness in the air, or the gray sky, or the leaden plain of the sea. Sheila knew that the blood was mantling in her cheeks; that her heart was full of joy; that her whole frame so tingled with life and spirit that, had she been in Borva, she would have challenged her deerhound to a race, and fled down the side of the hill with him to the small bay of white sand below the house. She did not pause for a minute when she reached the hotel. She went up the steps, opened the door, and entered the square hall. There was an odor of tobacco in the place, and several gentlemen standing about rather confused her, for she had to glance at them in looking for a waiter. Another minute would probably have found her a trifle embarrassed, but that, just at this crisis, she saw Ingram himself come out of a room, with a cigarette in his hand. He threw away the cigarette, and came forward to her, with amazement in his eyes.

“Where is Mr. Lavender? Has he gone into the smoking-room for me?” he asked.

“He is not here,” said Sheila. “I have come for you by myself.”

For a moment, too, Ingram felt the eyes of the men on him, but directly he said, with a fine air of carelessness, “Well, that is very good of you. Shall we go out for a stroll until your husband comes?”

So he opened the door and followed her outside into the fresh air and the roar of the waves.

“Well, Sheila,” he said, “this is very good of you, really; where is Mr. Lavender?”

“He generally rides with Mrs. Lorraine in the morning.”

“And what do you do?”

“I sit at the window.”

“Don’t you go boating?”

“No, I have not been in a boat. They do not care for it. And yesterday it was a letter to papa I was writing, and I could tell him nothing about the people here or the fishing.”

“But you could not in any case, Sheila. I suppose you would like to know what they pay for their lines, and how they dye their wool, and so on; but you would find the fishermen here don’t live in that way at all. They are all civilized, you know. They buy their clothing in the shops. They never eat any sort of seaweed or dye with it, either. However, I will tell you all about it by-and-by. At present I suppose you are returning to your hotel.”

A quick look of pain and disappointment passed over her face as she turned to him for a moment with something of entreaty in her eyes.

“I came to see you,” she said. “But perhaps you have an engagement. I do not wish to take up any of your time; if you please, I will go back alone to—”

“Now, Sheila,” he said, with a smile, and with the old friendly look she knew so well, “you must not talk like that to me. I won’t have it. You know I came down to Brighton because you asked me to come; and my time is altogether at your service.”

“And you have no engagement just now?” said Sheila, with her face brightening.

“No.”

“And you will take me down to the shore to see the boats and nets? Or could we go out and run along the coast for a few miles? It is a very good wind.”

“Oh, I should be very glad,” said Ingram slowly. “I should be delighted. But, you see, wouldn’t your husband think it—wouldn’t he you know—wouldn’t it seem just a little odd to him if you were to go away like that?”

“He is to go riding with Mrs. Lorraine,” said Sheila quite simply. “He does not want me.”

“Of course you told him you were coming to see—you were going to call at the Old Ship?”

“Yes. And I am sure he would not be surprised if I did not return for a long time.”

“Are you quite sure, Sheila?”

“Yes, I am quite sure.”

“Very well. Now I shall tell you what I am going to do with you. I shall first go and bribe some mercenary boatman to let us have one of those small boats committed to our own exclusive charge. I shall constitute you skipper and pilot of the craft, and hold you responsible for my safety. I shall smoke a pipe to prepare me for whatever may befall.”

“Oh, no,” said Sheila. “You must work very hard, and I will see whether you remember all that I taught you in the Lewis. And if we can have some long lines we might get some fish. Will they pay more than thirty shillings for their long lines in this country?”

“I don’t know,” said Ingram. “I believe most of the fishermen here live upon the shillings they get from the passers-by after a little conversation about the weather and their hard lot in life; so that one doesn’t talk to them more than one can help.”

“But why do they need the money? Are there no fish?”

“I don’t know that, either. I suppose there is some good fishing in the Winter, and sometimes in the Summer they get some big shoals of mackerel.”

“It was a letter I had last week from the sister of one of the men of the Nighean-dubh, and she will tell me that they have been very lucky all through the last season, and it was near six thousand ling they got.”

“But I suppose they are in debt to some curer up about Habost?”

“Oh, no; not at all. It is their own boat; it is not hired to them. And it is a very good boat whatever.”

That unlucky “whatever” had slipped out inadvertently: the moment she had uttered it she blushed and looked timidly toward her companion, fearing that he had noticed it. He had not. How could she have made such a blunder? she asked herself. She had been most particular about the avoidance of the word, even in the Lewis. The girl did not know that from the moment she had left the steps of the Old Ship in company with that good friend of hers she had unconsciously fallen into much of her old pronunciation and her old habit of speech; while Ingram, much more familiar with the Sheila of Borvapost and Loch Roag than with the Sheila of Notting Hill and Kensington Gardens did not perceive the difference, but was mightily pleased to hear her talk in any fashion whatsoever.

By fair means or foul, Ingram managed to secure a pretty little sailing vessel which lay at anchor out near the New Pier, and when the pecuniary negotiations were over, Sheila was invited to walk down over the loose stones of the beach and take command of the craft. The boatman was still very doubtful. When he had pulled them out to the boat, however, and put them on board, he speedily perceived that his handsome young lady not only knew everything that had to be done in the way of getting the small vessel ready, but had a very smart and business-like way of doing it. It was very obvious that her companion did not know half as much about the matter as she did; but he was obedient and watchful, and presently they were ready to start. The man put off in his boat to shore again, much relieved in mind, but not a little puzzled to understand where the young lady had picked up not merely her knowledge of boats, but the ready way in which she put her delicate hands to hard work, and the prompt and effectual fashion in which she accomplished it.

“Shall I belay away the jib or reef the upper hatchways?” Ingram called out to Sheila when they had fairly got under way.

She did not answer for a moment; she was still watching with a critical eye the manner in which the boat answered to her wishes; and then, when everything promised well and she was quite satisfied, she said, “If you will take my place for a moment and keep a good lookout, I will put on my gloves.”

She surrendered the tiller and the mainsail sheets into his care, and, with another glance ahead, pulled out her gloves.

“You did not use to fear the saltwater or the sun on your hands, Sheila,” said her companion.

“I do not now,” she said, “but Frank would be displeased to see my hands brown. He has himself such pretty hands.”

What Ingram thought about Frank Lavender’s delicate hands he was not going to say to his wife; and indeed he was called upon at this moment to let Sheila resume her post, which she did with an air of great satisfaction and content.

And so they ran lightly through the curling and dashing water on this brilliant day, caring little indeed for the great town that lay away to leeward, with its shining terraces surmounted by a faint cloud of smoke. Here all the roar of carriages and people was unheard; the only sound that accompanied their talk was the splashing of the waves at the prow, and the hissing and gurgling of the water along the boat. The South wind blew fresh and sweet around them, filling the broad white sails and fluttering the small pennon up there in the blue. It seemed strange to Sheila that she should be so much alone with so great a town close by—that under the boom she could catch a glimpse of the noisy Parade without hearing any of its noise. And there, away to windward, there was no mere trace of city life—only the great blue sea, with its waves flowing on toward them from out of the far horizon, and with here and there a pale ship just appearing on the line where the sky and ocean met.

“Well, Sheila, how do you like being on the sea again?” said Ingram, getting out his pipe.

“Oh, very well. But you must not smoke Mr. Ingram; you must attend to the boat.”

“Don’t you feel at home in her yet?” he asked.

“I am not afraid of her,” said Sheila, regarding the lines of the small craft with the eye of a shipbuilder, “but she is very narrow in the beam, and she carries too much sail for so small a thing. I suppose they have not any squalls on this coast, where you have no hills and no narrows to go through.”

“It doesn’t remind you of Lewis, does it?” he said, filling his pipe all the same.

“A little—out there it does,” she said, turning to the broad plain of the sea, “but it is not much that is in this country that is like the Lewis; sometimes I think that I shall be a stranger when I go back to the Lewis, and the people will scarcely know me, and everything will be changed.”

He looked at her for a second or two. Then he laid down his pipe, which had not been lit, and said to her gravely, “I want you to tell me, Sheila, why you have got into a habit lately of talking about many things, and especially about your home in the North, in that sad way. You did not do that when you came to London first; and yet it was then that you might have been struck and shocked by the difference. You had no home-sickness for a long time. But is it home-sickness, Sheila?”

How was she to tell him? For an instant she was on the point of giving him all her confidence; and then, somehow or other, it occurred to her that she would be wronging her husband in seeking such sympathy from a friend as she had been expecting, and expecting in vain, from him.

“Perhaps it is home-sickness,” she said, in a low voice, while she pretended to be busy tightening up the mainsail sheet. “I should like to see Borva again.”

“But you don’t want to live there all your life?” he said. “You know that would be unreasonable, Sheila, even if your husband could manage it; and I don’t suppose he can. Surely your papa does not expect you to go and live in Lewis always?”

“Oh, no,” she said, eagerly. “You must not think my papa wishes anything like that. It will be much less than that he was thinking of when he used to speak to Mr. Lavender about it. And I do not wish to live in the Lewis always; I have no dislike to London—none at all—only that—that—” And here she paused.

“Come, Sheila,” he said in the old paternal way to which she had been accustomed to yield up all her own wishes in the old days of their friendship, “I want you to be frank with me, and tell me what is the matter. I know there is something wrong; I have seen it for some time back. Now, you know I took the responsibility of your marriage on my shoulders, and I am responsible to you, and to your papa and myself for your comfort and happiness. Do you understand?”

She still hesitated, grateful in her inmost heart, but still doubtful as to what she should do.

“You look on me as an intermeddler,” he said with a smile.

“No, no,” she said; “you have always been our best friend.”

“But I have intermeddled, none the less. Don’t you remember when I told you that I was prepared to accept the consequences?”

It seemed so long a time since then!

“And once having to intermeddle, I can’t stop it, don’t you see? Now, Sheila, you’ll be a good little girl and do what I tell you. You’ll take the boat a long way out; we’ll put her head around, take down the sails, and let her tumble about and drift for a time, till you tell me all about your troubles, and then we’ll see what can be done.”

She obeyed in silence with her face grown grave enough in anticipation of the coming disclosures. She knew that the first plunge into them would be keenly painful to her, but there was a feeling at her heart that, this penance over, a great relief would be at hand. She trusted this man as she would have trusted her own father. She knew that there was nothing on earth he would not attempt if he fancied it would help her. And she knew, too, that having experienced so much of his great unselfishness and kindness and thoughtfulness, she was ready to obey him implicitly in anything that he could assure her was right for her to do.

How far away seemed the white cliffs now, and the faint green downs above them! Brighton, lying farther to the West, had become dim and yellow, and over it a cloud of smoke lay thick and brown in the sunlight. A mere streak showed the line of the King’s road and all its carriages and people; the beach beneath could just be made out by the white dots of the bathing-machines; the brown fishing-boats seemed to be close in shore; the two piers were foreshortened into small dusky masses marking the beginning of the sea. And then from these distant and faintly-defined objects out here to the side of the small white and pink boat, that lay lightly in the lapping water, stretched that great and moving network of waves, with here and there a sharp gleam of white foam curling over amid the dark blue-green.

Ingram took his seat by Sheila’s side, so that he should not have to look in her downcast face; and then with some little preliminary nervousness and hesitation, the girl told her story. She told it to sympathetic ears, and yet Ingram, having partly guessed how matters stood, and anxious, perhaps, to know whether much of her trouble might not be merely the result of fancies which could be reasoned and explained away, was careful to avoid anything like corroboration. He let her talk in her own simple and artless way: and the girl spoke to him, after a little while, with an earnestness which showed how deeply she felt her position. At the very outset she told him that her love for her husband had never altered for a moment—that all the prayers and desire of her heart were that they two might be to each other as she had at one time hoped they would be when he got to know her better.

She went over all the story of her coming to London, of her first experiences there, of the conviction that grew upon her that her husband was somehow disappointed with her, and was anxious now that she should conform to the ways and habits of the people with whom he associated. She spoke of her efforts to obey his wishes, and how heartsick she was with her failures, and of the dissatisfaction which he showed. She spoke of the people to whom he devoted his life, of the way in which he passed his time, and of the impossibility of her showing him, so long as he thus remained apart from her, the love she had in her heart for him, and the longing for sympathy which that love involved. And then she came to the question of Mrs. Lorraine; and here it seemed to Ingram she was trying at once to put her husband’s conduct in the most favorable light, and to blame herself for her unreasonableness. Mrs. Lorraine was a pleasant companion to him, she could talk cleverly and brightly, she was pretty, and she knew a large number of his friends. Sheila was anxious to show that it was the most natural thing in the world that her husband, finding her so out of communion with his ordinary surroundings, should make an especial friend of this graceful and fascinating woman. And if at times it hurt her to be left alone—but here the girl broke down somewhat, and Ingram pretended not to know that she was crying.

These were strange things to be told to a man, and they were difficult to answer. But out of these revelations—which rather took the form of a cry than of any distinct statement—he formed a notion of Sheila’s position sufficiently exact; and the more he looked at it the more alarmed and pained he grew, for he knew more of her than her husband did. He knew the latent force of character that underlay all her submissive gentleness. He knew the keen sense of pride her Highland birth had given her; and he feared what might happen if this sensitive and proud heart of hers were driven into rebellion by some possibly unintentional wrong. And this high-spirited, fearless, honor-loving girl—who was gentle and obedient, not through any timidity or limpness of character, but because she considered it her duty to be gentle and obedient—was to be cast aside and have her tenderest feelings outraged and wounded for the sake of an unscrupulous, shallow-brained woman of fashion, who was not fit to be Sheila’s waiting-maid. Ingram had never seen Mrs. Lorraine, but he had formed his own opinion of her. The opinion, based upon nothing, was wholly wrong, but it served to increase, if that were possible, his sympathy with Sheila, and his resolve to interfere on her behalf at whatever cost.

“Sheila,” he said, gravely putting his hand on her shoulder as if she were still the little girl who used to run wild with him about the Borva rocks, “you are a good woman.”

He added to himself that Lavender knew little of the value of the wife he had got, but he dared not say that to Sheila, who would suffer no imputation against her husband to be uttered in her presence, however true it might be, or however much she had cause to know it to be true.

“And, after all,” he said in a lighter voice, “I think I can do something to mend all this. I will say for Frank Lavender that he is a thoroughly good fellow at heart, and that when you appeal to him, and put things fairly before him, and show him what he ought to do, there is not a more honorable and straightforward man in the world. He has been forgetful, Sheila. He has been led away by these people, you know, and has not been aware of what you were suffering. When I put the matter before him, you will see it will be all right; and I hope to persuade him to give up this constant idling and take to his work, and have something to live for. I wish you and I together could get him to go away from London altogether—get him to take to serious landscape painting on some wild coast—the Galway coast, for example.”

“Why not the Lewis?” said Sheila, her heart turning to the North as naturally as the needle.

“Or the Lewis. And I should like you and him to live away from hotels and luxuries, and all such things; and he would work all day, and you would do the cooking in some small cottage you could rent, you know.”

“You make me so happy in thinking of that,” she said, with her eyes growing well again.

“And why should he not do so? There is nothing romantic or idyllic about it, but a good, wholesome, plain sort of life, that is likely to make an honest painter of him, and bring both of you some well-earned money. And you might have a boat like this.”

“We are drifting too far in,” said Sheila, suddenly rising. “Shall we go back now?”

“By all means,” he said; and so the small boat was put under canvas again, and was soon making way through the breezy water.

“Well, all this seems simple enough, doesn’t it?” said Ingram.

“Yes,” said the girl, with her face full of hope.

“And then, of course, when you are quite comfortable together, and making heaps of money, you can turn around and abuse me, and say I made all the misery to begin with.”

“Did we do so before when you were very kind to us?” she said in a low voice.

“Oh, but that was different. To interfere on behalf of two young folks who are in love with each other is dangerous, but to interfere between two people who are married—that is a certain quarrel. I wonder what you will say when you are scolding me, Sheila, and bidding me get out of the house? I have never heard you scold. Is it Gaelic or English you prefer?”

“I prefer whichever can say the nicest things to my very good friends, and tell them how grateful I am for their kindness to me.”

“Ah, well, we’ll see.”

When they got back to shore it was half-past one.

“You will come and have some luncheon with us?” said Sheila when they had gone up the steps and into the King’s road.

“Will that lady be there?”

“Mrs. Lorraine? Yes.”

“Then I’ll come some other time.”

“But why not come now?” said Sheila. “It is not necessary that you will see us only to speak about those things we have been talking over?”

“Oh, no, not at all. If you and Mr. Lavender were by yourselves, I should come at once.”

“And are you afraid of Mrs. Lorraine?” said Sheila, with a smile. “She is a very nice lady, indeed: you have no cause to dislike her.”

“But I don’t want to meet her, Sheila, that is all,” he said; and she knew well, by the precision of his manner, that there was no use trying to persuade him further.

He walked along to the hotel with her, meeting a considerable stream of fashionably-dressed folks on the way; and neither he nor she seemed to remember that his costume—a blue pilot jacket, not a little worn and soiled with the salt water, and a beaver hat that had seen a good deal of rough weather in the Highlands—was a good deal more comfortable than elegant. He said to her, as he left her at the hotel: “Would you mind telling Lavender I shall drop in at half-past three, and that I expect to see him in the coffee-room? I shan’t keep him five minutes.”

She looked at him for a moment, and he saw that she knew what this appointment meant, for her eyes were full of gladness and gratitude. He went away pleased at heart that she put so much trust in him. And in this case he should be able to reward that confidence, for Lavender was really a good sort of fellow, and would at once be sorry for the wrong he had unintentionally done, and be only too anxious to set it right. He ought to leave Brighton at once, and London, too. He ought to go away into the country or by the seaside, and begin working hard to earn money and self-respect at the same time; and then, in his friendly solitude, he would get to know something about Sheila’s character, and begin to perceive how much more valuable were these genuine qualities of heart and mind than any social graces such as might lighten up a dull drawing-room. Had Lavender yet learnt to know the worth of an honest woman’s perfect love and unquestioning devotion? Let these things be put before him, and he would go and do the right thing, as he had many a time done before, in obedience to the lecturing of his friend.

Ingram called at half-past three, and went into the coffee-room. There was no one in the long, large room, and he sat down at one of the small tables by the windows, from which a bit of lawn, the King’s road and the sea beyond were visible. He had scarcely taken his seat when Lavender came in.

“Halloo, Ingram! how are you?” he said in his freest and friendliest way. “Won’t you come up-stairs? Have you had lunch? Why did you go to the Ship?”

“I always go to the Ship,” he said. “No, thank you, I won’t go up-stairs.”

“You are a most unsociable sort of brute!” said Lavender frankly. “Will you take a glass of sherry?”

“No, thank you.”

“Will you have a game of billiards?”

“No, thank you. You don’t mean to say you would play billiards on such a day as this?”

“It is a fine day, isn’t it?” said. Lavender, turning carelessly to look at the sunlit road and the blue sea. “By the way, Sheila tells me you and she were out sailing this morning. It must have been very pleasant, especially for her; for she is mad about such things. What a curious girl she is, to be sure! Don’t you think so?”

“I don’t know what you mean by curious,” said Ingram, coldly.

“Well, you know, strange—odd—unlike other people in her ways and her fancies. Did I tell you about my aunt taking her to see some friends of hers at Norwood? No? Well, Sheila had got out of the house somehow (I suppose their talking did not interest her), and when they went in search of her they found her in the cemetery, crying like a child.”

“What about?”

“Why,” said Lavender, with a smile, “merely because so many people had died. She had never seen anything like that before; you know the small church-yards up in Lewis, with their inscriptions in Norwegian and Danish and German. I suppose the first sight of all the white stones at Norwood was too much for her.”

“Well, I don’t see much of a joke in that,” said Ingram.

“Who said there was any joke in it?” cried Lavender, impatiently. “I never knew such a cantankerous fellow as you are. You are always fancying I am finding fault with Sheila, and I never do anything of the kind. She is a very good girl indeed. I have every reason to be satisfied with the way our marriage has turned out.”

“Has she?”

The words were not important, but there was something in the tone in which they were spoken that suddenly checked Frank Lavender’s careless flow of speech. He looked at Ingram for a moment with some surprise, and then he said, “What do you mean?”

“Well, I will tell you what I mean,” said Ingram, slowly. “It is an awkward thing for a man to interfere between husband and wife, I am aware—he gets something else than thanks for his pains, ordinarily—but sometimes it has to be done, thanks or kicks. Now, you know, Lavender, I had a good deal to do with helping forward your marriage in the North; and I don’t remind you of that to claim anything in the way of consideration, but to explain why I think I am called on to speak to you now.”

Lavender was at once a little frightened and a little irritated. He half guessed what might be coming, from the slow and precise manner in which Ingram talked. That form of speech had vexed him many a time before, for he would rather have had any amount of wild contention and bandying about of reproaches than the calm, unimpassioned and sententious setting forth of his shortcomings to which this sallow little man was, perhaps, too much addicted.

“I suppose Sheila has been complaining to you, then?” said Lavender, hotly.

“You may suppose what absurdities you like,” said Ingram, quietly; “but it would be a good deal better if you would listen to me patiently, and deal in a common sense fashion with what I have got to say. It is nothing very desperate. Nothing has happened that is not of easy remedy, while the remedy would leave you and her in a much better position, both as regards your own estimation of yourselves and the opinion of your friends.”

“You are a little roundabout, Ingram,” said Lavender, “and ornate. But I suppose all lectures begin so. Go on.”

Ingram laughed: “If I am too formal it is because I don’t want to make mischief by any exaggeration. Look here! A long time before you were married I warned you that Sheila had very keen and sensitive notions about the duties that people ought to perform, about the dignity of labor, about the proper occupations of a man, and so forth. These notions you may regard as romantic and absurd, if you like, but you might as well try to change the color of her eyes as attempt to alter any of her beliefs in that direction.”

“And she thinks that I am idle and indolent because I don’t care what a washerwoman pays for her candles?” said Lavender, with impetuous contempt. “Well, be it so. She is welcome to her opinion. But if she is grieved at heart because I can’t make hob-nailed boots, it seems to me that she might as well come and complain to myself, instead of going and detailing her wrongs to a third person, and calling for his sympathy in the character of an injured wife.”

For an instant the dark eyes of the man opposite him blazed with a quick fire, for a sneer at Sheila was worse than an insult to himself; but he kept quite calm, and said, “That, unfortunately, is not what is troubling her.”

Lavender rose abruptly, took a turn up and down the empty room, and said, “If there is anything the matter, I prefer to hear it from herself. It is not respectful to me that she should call in a third person to humor her whims and fancies.”

“Whims and fancies!” said Ingram, with that dark light returning to his eyes. “Do you know what you are talking about? Do you know that while you are living on the charity of a woman you despise, and dawdling about the skirts of a woman who laughs at you, you are breaking the heart of a girl who has not her equal in England? Whims and fancies! Good God, I wonder how she ever could have—”

He stopped, but the mischief was done. These were not prudent words to come from a man who wished to step in as a mediator between husband and wife; but Ingram’s blaze of wrath, kindled by what he considered the insufferable insolence of Lavender in thus speaking of Sheila, had swept all notions of prudence before it. Lavender, indeed, was much cooler than he was, and said, with an affectation of carelessness, “I am sorry you should vex yourself so much about Sheila. One would think you had had the ambition yourself, at some time or other, to play the part of husband to her; and doubtless then you would have made sure that all her idle fancies were gratified. As it is, I was about to relieve you from the trouble of further explanation by saying that I am quite competent to manage my own affairs, and that if Sheila has any complaint to make she must make it to me.”

Ingram rose, and was silent for a moment.

“Lavender,” he said, “it does not matter much whether you and I quarrel—I was prepared for that, in any case—but I ask you to give Sheila a chance of telling you what I had intended to tell you.”

“Indeed, I shall do nothing of the sort. I never invite confidence. When she wishes to tell me anything she knows I am ready to listen. But I am quite satisfied with the position of affairs as they are at present.”

“God help you, then!” said his friend, and went away, scarcely daring to confess to himself how dark the future looked.