Winter had come to our cold northern isles. The snow lay thick upon the ground, but a sharp frost had made it hard and crisp. It sparkled in a flood of brilliant sunshine; the air was fresh and exhilarating, the sky transparently blue. It was a pleasant day for walking, and one that Miss Kitty Heron seemed thoroughly to enjoy, as she trod the white carpet with which nature had provided the world.

She carried a little basket on her arm: a basket filled with good things for some children in a cottage not far from Strathleckie. The good things were of Elizabeth's providing; but Kitty acted as her almoner. Kitty was a very charming almoner, with her slight, graceful little figure and mignonne face set off by a great deal of brown fur and a dress of deep Indian red. The sharpness in the air brought a faint colour to her cheeks—Kitty was generally rather pale—and a new brightness to her pretty eyes. There was something delightfully bewitching about her: something provoking and coquettish: something of which Hugo Luttrell was pleasantly conscious as he came down the road to meet her and then walked for a little way at her side.

They did not say very much. There were a few ardent speeches from him, a vehement sort of love-making, which Kitty parried with a good deal of laughing adroitness, some saucy speeches from her which all the world might have heard, and then the cottage was reached.

"Let me go in with you," said Hugo.

"Certainly not. You would frighten the children."

"Am I so very terrible? Not to you; don't say that I frighten you."

"I should think not," said Kitty, with a little toss sideways of her dainty head. "I am frightened of nothing."

"I should think not. I should think that you were the bravest of women, as you are the most charming."

"Oh, please! I am not accustomed to these compliments. I must take my cakes to the children. Good-bye."

"Good-bye," said Hugo, taking her hand, and keeping it in his own while he spoke. "I may wait for you here and go back with you to Strathleckie, may I not?"

"Oh, dear, no," said Kitty. "You'll catch cold."

Then she looked down at her imprisoned hand, and up into his face, sweetly smiling all the time, and, if they had not been within sight of the cottage windows, Hugo would have taken her in his arms and kissed her there and then.

"I never catch cold. I shall walk about here till you come back. You don't dislike my company, I hope?"

It was said vehemently, with a sudden kindling of his dark eyes.

"Oh, no," answered Kitty, feeling rather frightened, in spite of her previous professions of courage, though she did not quite know why. "I shall be very pleased. I must go now." And then she vanished hastily into the cottage.

Hugo waited for some time, little guessing the fact that she was protracting her visit as much as possible, and furtively peeping through the blinds now and then in order to see if he were gone. Kitty had had some experience of his present mood, and was not certain that she liked it. But his patience was greater than hers. She was forced to come out at last, and before she had gone two steps he was at her side.

"I thought you were never going to leave that wretched hole," he said.

"Don't call it a wretched hole. It is very clean and nice. I often think that I should like to live in a cottage like that."

"With someone who loved you," said Hugo, coming nearer, and gazing into her face.

Kitty made a little moue.

"The cottage would only hold one person comfortably," she said.

"Then you shall not live in a cottage. You shall live in a far pleasanter place. What should you say to a little villa on the shores of the Mediterranean, with orange groves behind it, and the beautiful blue sea before? Should you like that, Kitty? You have only to say the word, and you know that it will be yours."

"Then I won't say the word," said Kitty, turning away her head. "I like Scotland better than the Mediterranean."

"Then let it be Scotland. What should you say to Netherglen?"

"I prefer Strathleckie," replied the girl, with her most provoking smile.

"That is no answer. You must give me an answer some day," said Hugo, whose voice was beginning to tremble. "You know what I mean: you know——"

"Oh, what a lovely bit of bramble in the hedge!" cried Kitty, making believe that she had not been listening. "Look, it has still a leaf or two, and the stem is frosted all over and the veins traced in silver! Do get it for me: I must take it home."

Hugo did her bidding rather unwillingly; but his sombre eyes were lighted with a reluctant smile, or a sort of glow that did duty for a smile, as she thanked him.

"It is beautiful: it is like a piece of fairies' embroidery; far more beautiful than jewels would be. Oh, I wonder how people can make such a fuss about jewels, when they are so much less beautiful than these simple, natural things."

"These will soon melt away; jewels won't melt," said Hugo. "I should like to see you with jewels on your neck and arms—you ought to be covered with diamonds."

"That is not complimentary," laughed Kitty, "it sounds as if you thought they would make me better-looking. Now, you should compliment a person on what she is, and not on what she might be."

"I have got beyond the complimentary stage," said Hugo. "What is the use of telling you that you are the most beautiful girl I ever met, or the most charming, or anything of that kind? The only thing I know"—and he lowered his voice almost to a whisper, and spoke with a fierce intensity that made Kitty shrink away from him—"the only thing I know is that you are the one woman in the world for me, and that I would sooner see you dead at my feet than married to another man!"

Kitty had turned pale: how was she to reply? She cast her eyes up and down the road in search of some suggestion. Oh, joy and relief! she saw a figure in the distance. Perhaps it was somebody from Strathleckie; they were not far from the lodge now. She spoke with renewed courage, but she did not know exactly what she said.

"Who is this coming down the road? He is going up to Strathleckie, I believe; he seems to be pausing at the gates. Oh, I hope it is a visitor. I do like having the house full; and we have been so melancholy since Percival went on that horrid expedition to Brazil. Who can it be?"

"What does it matter?" said Hugo. "Can you not listen to me for one moment? Kitty—darling—wait!"

"I can't; I really can't!" said Kitty, quickening her pace almost to a run. "Oh, Hugo—Mr. Luttrell—you must not say such things—besides—look, it's Mr. Vivian; it really is! I haven't seen him for two years."

And she actually ran away from him, coming face to face with her old friend, at the Strathleckie gates.

Hugo followed sullenly. He did not like to be repulsed in that way. And he had reasons for wishing to gain Kitty's consent to a speedy marriage. He wanted to leave the country before the return of Percival Heron, whose errand to South America he guessed pretty accurately, although Mr. Colquhoun had thought fit to leave him in the dark about it. Hugo surmised, moreover, that Dino had told Brian Luttrell the history of Hugo's conduct to him in London: if so, Brian Luttrell was the last man whom Hugo desired to meet. And if Brian returned to England with Percival, the story would probably become known to the Herons; and then how could he hope to marry Kitty? With Brian's return, too, some alteration in Mrs. Luttrell's will might possibly be expected. The old lady's health had lately shown signs of improvement: if she were to recover sufficiently to indicate her wishes to her son, Hugo might find himself deprived of all chance of Netherglen. For these reasons he was disposed to press for a speedy conclusion to the matter.

He came up to the gates, and found Kitty engaged in an animated conversation with Mr. Vivian; her cheeks were carnation, and her eyes brilliant. She was laughing with rather forced vivacity as he approached. In his opinion she had seldom appeared to more advantage; while to Rupert's eyes she seemed to have altered for the worse. Dangerously, insidiously pretty, she was, indeed; but a vain little thing, no doubt; a finished coquette by the way she talked and lifted her eyes to Hugo's handsome face; possibly even a trifle fast and vulgar. Not the simple child of sixteen whom he had last seen in Gower-street.

"Won't you come in, Hugo? I am sure everybody would be pleased to see you," said poor Kitty, unconscious of being judged, as she tried to propitiate Hugo by a pleading look. She did not like him to go away with such a cross look upon his face—that was all. But as she did not say that she would be pleased to see him, Hugo only sulked the more.

"How cross he looks! I am rather glad he is not coming in," said Kitty, confidentially, as Hugo walked away, and she escorted Rupert up the long and winding drive. "And where did you come from? I did not know that you were near us."

"I have been staying at Lord Cecil's, thirty miles from Dunmuir. I thought that I should like to call, as you were still in this neighbourhood. I wrote to Mrs. Heron about it. I hope she received my note?"

"I see you don't know the family news," said Kitty, with a beaming smile. "I have a new stepsister, just three weeks old, and Isabel is already far too much occupied with the higher education of women to attend to such trifles as notes. She generally hands them over to Elizabeth or papa. Then, you know, papa broke one of his ribs and his collar-bone a fortnight ago, and I expect that this accident will keep us at Strathleckie for another month or two."

"That accounts for you being here so late in the year."

"Or so early! This is January, not December. But I think we may stay until the spring. It is not worth while to take a London house now."

Kitty spoke so dolefully that Rupert was obliged to smile. "You are sorry for that?" he said.

"Yes. We are all rather dull; we want something to enliven us. I hope you will enliven us, Mr. Vivian."

"I am afraid I can hardly hope to do so," said Rupert, coldly. "Of course, you have not the occupation that you used to have when you were in London."

"When I went to school! No, I should think not," said Kitty, with her giddiest laugh. "I have locked up my lesson books and thrown away the key. So you must not lecture me on my studies as you used to do, Mr. Vivian."

"I should not presume to do so," he said, with rather unnecessary stiffness.

"But you used to do it! Have you forgotten?" asked Kitty, peeping up at him archly from under her long, curling eyelashes. There was a momentary smile upon his lips, but it disappeared as he answered quietly:—

"What was allowable when you were a child, would justly be resented by you now, Miss Heron."

"I should not resent it; indeed I should not mind," said Kitty, eagerly. "I should like it: I always like being lectured, and told what I ought to do. I should be glad if you would scold me again about my reading; I have nobody to tell me anything now."

"I could not possibly take the responsibility," said Rupert. "If you have thrown away the key of your book-box, Miss Heron, I don't think that you will be anxious to find it again."

"Oh, but the lock could be picked!" cried Kitty, and then repented her words, for Rupert's impassive face showed no interest beyond that required by politeness. The tears were very near her eyes, but she got rid of them somehow, and plunged into a neat and frosty style of conversation which she heartily detested. "This is Strathleckie; you have never seen it before, I think? It is on the Leckie property, but it is not an old place like Netherglen. I think it was built in 1840."

"Not a very good style of architecture," said Rupert, scanning it with an attentive eye.

"A good style of architecture, indeed!" commented Kitty to herself, as she ran away to her own room, after committing Mr. Vivian to the care of her step-mother, who was lying on a sofa in the drawing-room, quite ready to unfold her views about the higher education of girls. "What a piece of ice he is! He used not to be so frigid. I wonder if we offended him in any way before we left London. He has never been nice since then. Nice? He is simply hateful!" and Kitty stamped on the floor of her bed-room with alarming vehemence, but the crystal drops that had been so long repressed were trembling on her eyelashes, and giving to her face the grieved look of a child.

Meanwhile Vivian was thinking:—"What a pity she is so spoilt! A coquettish, hare-brained flirt: that is all that she is now, and she promised to be a sweet little woman two years ago! What business had she to be out walking with Hugo Luttrell? I should have heard of it if they were going to be married. I suppose she has had nobody to look after her. And yet Miss Murray always struck me as a sensible, staid kind of girl. Why can she not keep her cousin in order?" And then Rupert was conscious of a certain sense of impatience for Kitty's return, much as he disapproved of her alluring ways.

He was prevailed on to stay the night, and his visit was prolonged day after day, until it was accepted as a settled thing that he would remain for some time—perhaps even until Percival came home. It had been calculated that Percival might easily be home in February.

He could not easily maintain the coldness and reserve with which he had begun to treat Kitty Heron. There was something so winning and so childlike about her at times, that he dropped unconsciously into the old familiar tone. Then he would try to draw back, and would succeed, perhaps, in saying something positively rude or unkind, which would bring the tears to her eyes, and the flush of vexation to her face. At least, if it was not really unkind it sounded so to Kitty, and that came to the same thing. And when she was vexed, he was illogical enough to feel uncomfortable.

But Kitty's crowning offence was her behaviour at a dinner-party, on the occasion of the christening of Mrs. Heron's little girl. Hugo Luttrell and the two young Grants from Dunmuir were amongst the guests; and with them Kitty amused herself. She did not mean any harm, poor child; she chattered gaily and looked up into their faces, with a gleeful consciousness that Rupert was watching her, and that she could show him now that some people admired her if he did not. Archie Grant certainly admired her prodigiously; he haunted her steps all through the evening, hung over the piano when she sang a gay little French chanson; turned over a portfolio of Mr. Heron's sketches with her in a corner. On the other hand, Hugo, who took her in to dinner, whispered things to her that made her start and blush. Vivian would have liked very much to know what he said. He did not approve of that darkly handsome face, with the haggard, evil-looking eyes, being thrust so close to Kitty's soft cheeks and pretty flower-decked head. He was glad to think that he had prevailed on Angela to leave Netherglen. He was not fond of Hugo Luttrell.

He was stiffer and graver than usual that evening; not even the appearance of the newly-christened Dorothy Elizabeth, in a very long white robe, won a smile from him. He never approached Kitty—never said a word to her—until he was obliged to say good-night. And then she looked up to him with her dancing eyes and pretty smile, and said:—

"You never came near me all the evening, and you had promised to sing a duet with me."

"Is the little coquette trying her wiles on me!" thought Rupert, sternly; but aloud he answered, with grave indifference,

"You were better employed. You had your own friends."

"And are you not a friend?" cried Kitty, biting her lip.

"I am not your contemporary. I cannot enter into competition with these younger men," he answered, quietly.

Kitty quitted him in a rage. Elizabeth encountered her as she ran upstairs, her cheeks crimson, her lips quivering, her eyes filled with tears.

"My dear Kitty, what is the matter?" she said, laying a gently detaining hand on the girl's arm.

"Nothing—nothing at all," declared Kitty; but she suffered herself to be drawn into Elizabeth's room, and there, sinking into a low seat by the fire, she detailed her wrongs. "He hates me; I know he does, and I hate him! He thinks me a horrid, frivolous girl; and so I am! But he needn't tell me that he does not want to be a friend of mine!"

"Well, perhaps, you are rather too old to take him for a friend in the way you used to do," said Elizabeth, smiling a little. "You were a child then; and you are eighteen now, you know, Kitty. He treats you as a woman: that is all. It is a compliment."

"Then I don't like his compliments: I hate them!" Kitty asseverated. "I would rather he let me alone."

"Don't think about him, dear. If he does not want to be friendly with you, don't try to be friendly with him."

"I won't," said Kitty, in the tone of one who has taken a solemn resolution. Then she rose, and surveyed herself critically in Elizabeth's long mirror. "I am sure I looked very nice," she said. "This pink dress suits me to perfection and the lace is lovely. And then the silver ornaments! I'm glad I did not wear anything that he gave me, at any rate. I nearly put on the necklace he sent me when I was seventeen; I'm glad I did not."

"Dearest Kitty, why should you mind what he thinks?" said Elizabeth, coming to her side, and looking at the exquisitely-pretty little figure reflected in the glass, a figure to which her own, draped in black lace, formed a striking contrast. But she was almost sorry that she had said the words, for Kitty immediately threw herself on her cousin's shoulder and burst into tears. The fit of crying did not last long, and Kitty was unfeignedly ashamed of it: she dried her tears with a very useless-looking lace handkerchief, laughed at herself hysterically, and then ran away to her own room, leaving Elizabeth to wish that the sense and spirit that really existed underneath that butterfly-like exterior would show itself on the surface a little more distinctly.

But the last thing she dreamed of was that Kitty, with all her little follies, would outrage Rupert's sense of the proprieties in the way she did in the course of the following morning.

Rupert was standing alone in the drawing-room, looking out of a window which commanded an extensive view. Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Heron had come downstairs. Kitty had breakfasted in her own room; Elizabeth was busy. Mr. Vivian was wondering whether it might not be as well to go back to London. It vexed him to see little Kitty Heron flirting with half-a-dozen men at once.

A voice at the door caused him to turn round. Kitty was entering, and as her hands were full, she had some difficulty in turning the handle. Rupert moved forward to assist her, and uttered a courteous good-morning, but Kitty only looked at him with flushed cheeks and wide-open resentful eyes, and made no answer.

She was wearing an embroidered apron over her dark morning frock, and this apron, gathered up by the corners in her hands, was full of various articles which Rupert could not see. He was thoroughly taken aback, therefore, when she poured its contents in an indiscriminate heap upon the sofa, and said, in a decided tone:—

"There are all the things you ever gave me; and I would rather not keep them any longer. I take presents only from my friends."

Foolish Kitty!