It is very pleasant here, in the shady drawing-room of Heathbank. Out of doors, these grassy slopes, which Menie Laurie cannot believe to be the heath, are all glowing with sunshine; but within here, the light falls cool and green, the breeze plays through the open window, and golden streaks of sunbeams come in faintly at one end, through the bars of the Venetian blind, upon the pleasant shade, touching it into character and consciousness. It is a long room with a window at either end, a round table in the middle, an open piano in a recess, and pretty bits of feminine-looking furniture straying about in confusion not too studied. The walls are full of gilt frames too, and look bright, though one need not be unnecessarily critical about the scraps of canvass and broad-margined water-colour drawings, which repose quietly within these gilded squares. They are Miss Annie Laurie’s pictures, and Miss Annie Laurie feels herself a connoisseur, and is something proud of them, while it cannot be denied that the frames do excellent service upon the shady drawing-room wall.

Mrs Laurie has found refuge in the corner of a sofa, and, with a very fine picture-book in her hand, escapes from the conversation of Miss Annie, which has been so very much in the style of the picture-book, that Menie’s mother still keeps her flush of abashed annoyance upon her cheek, and Menie herself lingers shyly at the door, half afraid to enter. There is something very formidable to Menie in the enthusiasm and sympathy of her aunt.

“My pretty darling!” said Miss Annie—and Miss Annie lifted her dainty perfumed fingers to tap Menie’s cheeks with playful grace. Menie shrunk back into a corner, blushing and disconcerted, and drooped her head after a shy girlish fashion, quite unable to make any response. “Don’t be afraid, my love,” said the mistress of the house, with a little laugh. “Don’t fear any jesting from me—no, no—I hope I understand better these sensitive youthful feelings—and we shall say nothing on the subject, my dear Menie—not a word—only you must trust me as a friend, you know, and we must wait tea till he comes—ah, till he comes, Menie.”

Poor Menie for the moment could have wished him a thousand miles away; but she only sat down, very suddenly and quietly, on a low seat by the wall, while Miss Annie tripped away to arrange some ornamental matters on the tea-table, where her little china cups already sparkled, and her silver tea-pot shone. Menie took courage to look at her kinswoman’s face as this duty was being performed. Withered and fantastic in its decayed graces, there was yet a something of kindness in the smile. The face had been pretty once in its youthful days—a sad misfortune to it now, for if it were not for this long-departed, dearly remembered beauty, there might have been a natural sunshine in Miss Annie Laurie’s face.

As it was, the wintry light in it played about gaily, and Miss Annie made very undeniable exertions to please her visitors. She told Menie of her own pursuits, as a girl might have done in expectation of a sharer in them; and to Mrs Laurie she gave a sketch of her “society,” the few friends who, Menie thought, made up a very respectable list in point of numbers. Mrs Laurie from her sofa, and Menie on her seat by the wall, looking slightly prim and very quiet in her shy confusion, made brief answers as they could. Their entertainer did not much want their assistance; and by-and-by Menie woke with a great flush to hear the little gate swing open, to discern a lofty figure passing the window, and the sound of a quick step on the gravel path. Randall was at the door.

And Randall, looking very stately, very gracious and deferential, came through the shower of “delighteds” and “most happys” with which Miss Annie saluted him, with a bow of proud grace and much dignity of manner, to Mrs Laurie’s extreme surprise, and Menie’s shy exultation. Another hour passed over very well. The strangers grew familiar with Miss Annie; then by-and-by they strayed out, all of them, into the sweet evening air, so full of charmed distant voices, the hum and breath of far-off life; and Menie found herself, before she was aware, alone, under a sky slowly softening into twilight, in a pretty stretch of sloping turf, where some young birch-trees stood about gracefully, like so many children resting in a game, with Randall Home by her side.

And they had found time for various pieces of talk, quite individual and peculiar to themselves, before Menie lifted her face, with its flush of full unshadowed pleasure, and, glancing up to the other countenance above her, asked, “When is the next book coming, Randall?”

“What next book, May Marion?”

This was his caressing name for her, as May alone was his father’s.

“The next book—our next book,” said Menie. “I do not know much, nor maybe care much, about anybody else’s. Randall—our own—when is it coming?”

“What if it should never come at all?”

Randall drew her fingers through his hand with playful tenderness, half as he might have done with a child.

“Yes—but I know it is to come at all, so that is not my question,” said Menie. “I want to know when—not if. Tell me—for you need not be coy, or think of keeping such a secret from me.”

“Did you never hear that it is dangerous to hurry one work upon another?” was the answer somewhat evasively given. “I am to be prudent this time—there is peril in it.”

“Peril to what?” Menie Laurie looked up with simple eyes into a face where there began to rise some faint mists. Looking into them, she did not comprehend at all these floating vapours, nor the curve of fastidious discontent which they brought to Randall’s lip and brow.

“My simple Menie, you do not know how everything gets shaped into a trade,” said Randall, with a certain condescension. “Peril to reputation, risk of losing what one has gained—that is what we all tremble for in London.”

“Randall!” Menie looked up again with a flush of innocent scorn. He might speak it, indeed, but she knew he could mean nothing like this.

There was a slight pause—it might be of embarrassment—on Randall’s part; certainly he made no effort to break the silence.

“But a great gift was not given for that,” said Menie rapidly, in her unwitting enthusiasm. “People do not have unusual endowments given them to be curbed by such things as that; and you never meant it, Randall; it could not move you.”

But Randall only drew his hand fondly over the fingers he held, and smiled—smiled with pleasure and pride, natural and becoming. He had not been sophisticated out of regard for the warm appreciation and praise of those most dear to him. He might distrust it—might think the colder world a better judge, and the verdict of strangers a safer rule, but in his heart he loved the other still.

But Menie’s thoughts were disturbed, and moved into a sudden ferment. Her hand trembled a little on Randall’s arm; her eyes forsook his face, and cast long glances instead over the bright air before them; and when she spoke her voice was as low as her words were quick and hurried.

“It does not become me to teach you, but, Randall, Randall, you used to think otherwise. Do you mind what you used to say about throwing away the scabbard, putting on the harness—Randall, do you mind?”

“I mind many a delightful hour up on the hillside yonder,” said Randall affectionately, “when my May Marion began to enter into all my dreams and hopes; and I mind about the scabbard and the harness no less,” he continued, laughing, “and how I meditated flashing my sword in the eyes of all the world, like a schoolboy with his first endowment of gunpowder. But one learns to know that the world cares so wonderfully little about one’s sword, Menie; and moreover—you must find out for me the reason why—this same world seems to creep round one’s-self strangely, and by-and-by one begins to feel it more decorous to hide the glitter of the trenchant steel. What a coxcomb you make me,” said Randall, abruptly breaking off with a short laugh; “one would fancy this same weapon of mine was the sword of Wallace wight.”

Menie made no answer, and the discontent on Randall’s face wavered into various shades of scorn,—a strange scorn, such as Menie Laurie had never seen before on any face—scorn half of himself, wholly of the world.

“When I knew I had succeeded,” said Randall at length, with still a tone of condescension in his confidence, “I was a little elated, I confess, Menie, foolish as it seems, and thought of nothing but setting to work again, and producing something worthy to live. Well, that is just the first impulse; by-and-by I came to see what a poor affair this applause was after all, and to think I had better keep what I had, without running the risk of losing my advantage by a less successful stroke. After all, this tide of popularity depends on nothing less than real ‘merit,’ as the critics call it; so I apprehend we will have no new book, Menie; we will be content with what we have gained.”

“If applause is such a poor affair, why be afraid of the chance of losing it?” said Menie; but she added hastily, “I want to know about Johnnie Lithgow, Randall; is it possible that he has come to be a great writer too?”

“If I only knew what you meant by a great writer too,” said Randall, with a smile. “Johnnie Lithgow is quite a popular man, Menie—one of the oracles of the press.”

“Is it a derogation, then, to be a popular man?” said the puzzled Menie; “or is he afraid to risk his fame, like you?”

The lofty head elevated itself slightly. “No. Johnnie Lithgow is not a man for fame,” said Randall, with some pride. “Johnnie does his literary work like any other day’s work; and, indeed, why should he not?”

Menie looked up with a blank look, surprised, and not comprehending. Even the stronger emotions of life, the passions and the anguishes, had never yet taken hold of Menie; still less had the subtle refining, the artificial stoicism of mere mind and intellect, living and feeding on itself; and Menie’s eye followed his slight unconscious gestures with wistful wonderment as Randall went on.

“After all, what does it signify—what does anything of this kind signify? One time or another appreciation comes; and if appreciation never should come, what then? So much as is good will remain. I do not care a straw for applause myself. I rate it at its own value; and that is nothing.”

It began to grow somewhat dark, and Menie drew her shawl closer. “I think it is time to go home,” she said softly; and as she spoke, a vision of the kindly home she had left—of the brave protecting hills, the broad fair country, the sky and atmosphere, all too humble for this self-abstraction, which answered in clouds and tears, in glorious laughter and sunshine, to every daily change—rose up before her; some tears, uncalled for and against her will, stole into Menie’s eyes. With a little awe, in her innocence, she took Randall’s arm again. He must be right, she supposed; and something very grand and superior was in Randall’s indifference—yet somehow the night air crept into Menie’s heart, as she had never felt it do before. Many an hour this soft night air had blown about her uncovered head, and tossed her hair in curls about her cheeks—to-night she felt it cold, she knew not why—to-night she was almost glad to hurry home.