If I went away to appease the restlessness which had attacked me so suddenly, to persuade myself that the secret of happiness for me lay in never remaining long in the same place, I succeeded badly.

It was not until I was three hundred miles away from them that I began fully to appreciate the joys of domestic life with To-to and Ta-ta, the comfort of being able to keep my books together, the supreme blessing of sitting every evening in the same arm-chair. I was surprised by this at first, till I reflected that the very loneliness of my life was bound to bring middle age upon me early. There was a period of each day which I found it very hard to get through; whether in Paris, enjoying coffee and cigarette at a cafÉ on the boulevards, or in Norway, watching the sunset on some picturesque fiord, when the day began to wane I grew restless, and, referring aimlessly to my watch again and again, could settle down to nothing till the last rays of daylight had faded away.

My four friends, when they joined me for our yearly holiday, all decided that something was wrong, but that was as far as they could agree. For while both Fabian and Edgar said that it was 'liver,' the former recommended camel-exercise in the Soudan, the latter would hear of nothing but porridge and Strathpeffer. And though both the fat Mr. Fussell and the lean Mr. Browne leaned to the sentimental view that love and Mrs. Ellmer were at the root of my malady, the latter suggested that to shut Mr. Ellmer up with a hogshead of new whisky and then to marry his widow would quench my passion effectually, while Mr. Fussell, with an indescribable smile, told me to go back to Paris and 'enjoy myself'; and, if I didn't know how, I was to take him.

I did none of these things, however, but after my friends had returned to England, I wandered about until late October. But when the days grew short again, the home-hunger grew irresistibly strong, and I went back to the Highlands, as a gambler goes back to the cards. Of course I knew what took me there, just when the hills were growing bleak, and the deer had gone to their winter retreat in the forests. I wanted to see that girl's face in my study again, to hear the young voice that rang with youth and happiness and every quality that makes womanhood sweet and loveworthy in a man's mind. She might conjugate Latin verbs or tell me her young girl love affairs, as she had done sometimes with ringing laughter, but I must hear her voice again.

So I arrived at Ballater without warning, and leaving Ferguson at the station to order a fly and come on with my luggage, I walked to Larkhall in the dusk. There was a lamp in the study; I could see it plainly enough, for the blind was not drawn down. I saw a figure pass between the window and the light; in another minute the front door opened, and Ta-ta rushed at me, leaping on to my shoulders, and barking joyously; while Babiole herself, scarcely less fleet of foot, seized both my hands, crying in joyous welcome—

'Mr. Maude! Mr. Maude! Mr. Maude!'

I said, 'How are you? I hope you are quite well. Isn't it cold?' But, indeed, no furnace-fire could have sent such a glow through my veins as the warm-hearted pressure of the girl's hands.

'Do you know, I have a sort of feeling that I knew you were coming to-day? The Scotch believe in second sight; perhaps it's a gift of the country. I've had all day a presentiment that something was going to happen—something nice, you know; and just now, before you were near enough for me to hear your step, some impulse made me get up and look out of the window. And, Mr. Maude, don't you believe mamma if she says Ta-ta moved first, because she didn't; it was I. There's always something in the air before the good genius appears, you know.'

And she laughed very happily as she led me in and gravely introduced me to her mother. Both had been knitting stockings for me, and I thought the study had never looked so warm or so home-like as it did with their work-baskets and wools about, and with these two good little women making kindly welcoming uproar around me. To-to broke his chain, and climbed up on my shoulder, snarling and showing his teeth jealously at Babiole. The delighted clamour soothed my ears as no prima donna's singing had ever done. That evening I could have embraced Mrs. Ellmer with tenderness.

Next day I was alone in the drawing-room, the ladies having given up possession of the Hall and returned to the cottage, when I heard footsteps at the open door and a voice—

'May I come in, Mr. Maude?'

'Certainly.'

I was busy putting up two paintings of Norwegian scenery in place of the portraits of Lady Helen, which were on the ground against the wall. On seeing my occupation, Babiole uttered a short cry of surprise and dismay. I said nothing, but put my head on one side to see if one of my new pictures was hung straight. At last she spoke—

'Oh, Mr. Maude!' was all she said, in a tone of timid reproach.

'Well.'

'You're not going to take her down after all this time?'

'You see I have taken her down.'

'Oh, why?' It was not curiosity; it was entreaty.

'Don't you think she's been up there long enough?'

'If you were the woman and she were the man you wouldn't say that.'

'What should I say?'

'You would say, "He's been up there so long that, whatever he's done, he may as well stay there now."'

'That would be rather contemptuous tolerance, wouldn't it?'

'But the picture wouldn't know that; and if the original should ever grow sorry for all the harm she—he had done, it would be something to know that the picture still hung there just the same.'

The story must have leaked out, then—the first part through Fabian, probably, and the rest through the divorce court columns of the daily papers. I said nothing in answer to the girl's pleadings, but I restored the portraits to their old places with the excuse that the landscapes would look better in the dining-room.

Our studies began again that very afternoon. Babiole had forgotten nothing, though work had, of course, grown slack during the hot days of the summer. She had had another and rather absorbing love affair, too, the details of which I extracted with the accompaniment of more blushes than in the old days.

'We shall have you getting married and flying away from us altogether, I suppose, now, before we know where we are.'

'No,' she protested stoutly, 'I'm not going to marry; I am going to devote myself to art.'

Upon this I made her fetch her sketch-book, after promising 'not to tell mamma,' who might well be forgiven for a prejudice against any more members of her family sacrificing themselves to this Juggernaut. The sketches were all of fir and larch-tree, hillside and rippling stony Dee; some were in pencil, some in water-colour; there was love in every line of each of the little pictures, and there was something more.

'Why, Babiole, you're going to be a great artist, I believe,' I cried, as I noticed the vigour of the outlines, the imaginative charm of the treatment of her favourite corners of rock and forest.

'Oh no, not that,' she said deprecatingly. 'If I can be only a little one I shall be satisfied. I should never dare to draw the big hills. When I get on those hills along the Gairn and see the peaks rising the one behind the other all round me, I feel almost as if I ought to fall on my knees only to look at them; it is only when we have crept down into some cleft full of trees, where I can peep at them from round a corner, that I feel I can take out my paper and my paint-box without disrespect.'

'But you can be a great artist without painting great things. You may paint Snowdon so that it is nothing better than a drawing-master's copy, and you may paint a handful of wild flowers so that it may shame acres of classical pot-boilers hung on the line at the Royal Academy.'

Babiole was thoughtfully silent for some minutes after this, while I turned over the rest of her drawings.

'Drawing-master's copy!' she repeated slowly at last. 'Then a drawing-master is a man who doesn't draw very well, or who isn't very particular how he teaches what he knows?'

'Yes, without being very severe I think we may say that.'

'That is not like your teaching, Mr. Maude.'

'What do you mean?'

'Why, all these months that you've been away I've had a lot of time to think, and I see what a different thing you have made of life to me by teaching me to understand things. Last year I thought of nothing when I was out on the hills with Ta-ta but childish things—stories and things like that. And now all the while I think of the things that are going on in the great world, the pictures that are being painted, the books that are being written.'

'And the dresses that are being worn?' I suggested playfully, not at all sure that the change she was so proud of was entirely for the better.

'Well, yes, I think I should like to know that too,' she admitted, with a blush.

'And you want to attribute all that to my teaching?'

'Yes, Mr. Maude,' she answered, laughing; 'you must bear the blame of it all.'

'Well, look here; I've re-visited the world since you have, and, believe me, you are much better outside. It's a horrid, over-crowded, noisy place, and, as for the artists in whom you are so much interested, you must worship them from afar if you want to worship them at all. Painters, actors, writers, and the rest—the successful ones are snobs, the unsuccessful—sponges. And as for the dresses, my child, there was never a frock sent out of Bond Street so pretty, so tasteful, or so becoming as the one you have on.'

But Babiole glanced down at her blue serge gown rather disdainfully, and there shone in her eyes, as brightly as ever, that vague hunger of a woman's first youth for emotions and pleasures, which every morning's sunshine seemed to promise her, and whose names she did not know.

'Ah,' she said gaily, 'but everybody doesn't speak like that. I shall wait until your friends come in the summer, and see what they tell me about it.'

My face clouded, and, with the pretty affectionateness with which she now always treated me, she assured me that she did not really want any advice but mine, and that, as long as I was good enough to teach her, she was content to read the lessons of the busy world through my eyes.

Meanwhile, however, I was myself, through those same eyes of mine, learning a far more dangerous lesson, and one, unluckily, which I could never hope to impart to any woman. I had no one but myself to thank for my folly, into which I had coolly walked with my eyes open. But the temptation to direct that fair young mind had been too strong for me, and, having once indulged in the pleasure, the few months away had but increased my craving to taste it again. This second winter we worked even harder than the first. Babiole, with her expanding mind, and the passionate excitement she began to throw into every pursuit, became daily a more fascinating pupil. She would slide down from her chair on to a footstool at my side when discussion grew warm between us concerning an interesting chapter we had been reading. She would put her hand on my shoulder with affectionate persuasion if I disagreed with her, or tap my fingers impatiently to hurry my expression of opinion. How could she know that the ugly grave man, with furrows in his scarred face, and already whitening hair, was young and hot-blooded too, with passions far stronger than hers, and all the stronger from being iron-bound?

Sometimes I felt tempted to let her know that I was twenty years younger than she, growing up in the belief of her childhood on that matter, innocently thought. But it could make no difference, in the only way in which I cared for it to make a difference, and it might render her constrained with me. After all, it was my comparative youth which enabled me to enter into her feelings, as no dry-as-dust professor of fifty could have done, and it was upon that sympathy that the bond between us was founded. In the happiness this companionship brought to me, I thought I had lulled keener feelings to sleep, when, as spring came back, and I was beginning again to dread the return of the long days, an event happened which made havoc of the most cherished sentiments of all three of us.

The first intimation of this revolution was given by Ferguson, who informed me at luncheon, with a solemnly indignant face, that a 'varra disreputable-looking person' had been pestering him with inquiries for Mr. Maude, and, after having the door shut in his face had taken himself off, so Ferguson feared, in the direction of the cottage, to bother the ladies. My butler's dislike of Mrs. Ellmer had broken down under her constant assistance to Janet.

'I saw that Jim was aboot the stable, sir, so I have nae doot he helped the gentleman awa' safe eno',' added Ferguson grimly.

I thought no more of the incident, which the butler had reported simply because up among the hills the sight of an unknown face is an event.

But at four o'clock Babiole did not appear; I sat waiting, looking through the pages of Green's Short History of the English People, on which we were then engaged, for twenty minutes; and then, almost alarmed at such an unusual occurrence, I was getting up to go and make inquiries at the cottage when I heard her well-known footstep through the open hall-door. Even before she came in I knew that something had happened, for instead of running in all eager, laughing apology, as was her way on the rare occasions when she was a few minutes late, I heard her cross the hall very slowly and hesitate at the door.

'Come in, come in, Babiole; what's the matter?' I cried out impatiently.

She came in then quickly, and held out her hand to me as she wished me good-afternoon. But there was no smile on her face, and the light seemed to have gone out of her eyes.

'What is it, child? Something has happened,' said I, as I drew her down into her usual chair.

She shook her head, and tried to laugh, but suddenly broke down, and, bursting into tears, leaned her face against her hands and sobbed bitterly.

I was horribly distressed. I tried some vague words of consolation for the unknown evil, and laid my hand lightly on one heaving shoulder, only to withdraw it as if seared by the touch. Then I sat down quietly and waited, while Ta-ta, more daring, set up a kindly howl of sympathetic lamentation, which happily caused a diversion.

'I ought to be ashamed of myself,' she said, sitting upright, and drying her eyes. 'I don't know what you must think of me, Mr. Maude.'

'I don't think anything of you,' I said at random, being far too much distressed by her unhappiness to think of any words more appropriate. 'Now, tell me, what is the matter?'

I was in no hurry for the answer, for I had already a very strong presentiment what it would be.

'Papa has found us out; he's at the cottage now.'

But he was even nearer, as a heavy tread on the stone steps outside the front door at this moment told us. Babiole jumped up, with her cheeks on fire and her lips parted, rather as if prepared for the onslaught of a mad bull.

'H'm, h'm, no one about! And no knocker!' we heard a thick voice say imperiously, as my town-bred visitor stumped about the steps.

'Look here, Babiole; I think you'd better go, dear. Run through the back door, and comfort mamma.'

There was no use disguising the fact that our visitor's arrival was a common calamity. She made one step away, but then turned back, clasped my right hand tightly, and whispered—

'Remember, you don't see him at his best. He's a very, very clever man, indeed—at home.'

Then she ran lightly away, without looking at me again, half-conscious, I am afraid, poor child, that her apology was but a lame one. I rose, and went to the hall to invite my visitor in.