what I have seen there of Youth and
Beauty," said Count Victor, "it is, I swear it is--it is--"

"It is because you would be pleasant to a simple Highland girl," said
Olivia, with just a hint of laughter in her eyes.

"No, no, _par ma foi!_ not wholly that. But yes, I love my country--ah!
the happy days I have known there, the sunny weather, the friends so
good, the comradeship so true. Your land is beautiful--it is even more
beautiful than the exiles in Paris told me; but I was not born here, and
there are times when your mountains seem to crush my heart."

"Is it so, indeed?" said Doom. "As for me, I would not change the
bleakest of them for the province of Champagne." And he beat an
impulsive hand upon the table.

"Yes, yes, I understand that," cried Olivia. "I understand it very well.
It is the sorrow of the hills and woods you mean; ah! do I not know it,
too? It is only in my own little wee glens among the rowans that I can
feel careless like the birds, and sing; when I walk the woods or stand
upon the shore and see the hills without a tree or tenant, when the land
is white with the snow and the mist is trailing, Olivia Lamond is not
very cheery. What it is I do not know--that influence of my country; it
is sad, but it is good and wholesome, I can tell you; it is then I
think that the bards make songs, and those who are not bards, like poor
myself, must just be feeling the songs there are no words for."

At this did Doom sit mighty pleased and humming to himself a bar of
minstrelsy.

"Look at my father there!" said Olivia; "he would like you to be
thinking that he does not care a great deal for the Highlands of
Scotland."

"Indeed, and that is not fair, Olivia; I never made pretence of that,"
said Doom. "Never to such as understand; Montaiglon knows the Highlands
are at my heart, and that the look of the hills is my evening prayer."

"Isn't that a father, Count Victor?" cried Olivia, quite proud of the
confession. "But he is the strange father, too, that will be pretending
that he has forgotten the old times and the old customs of our dear
people. We are the children of the hills and of the mists; the hills
make no change, the mists are always coming back, and the deer is in the
corrie yet, and when you will hear one that is of the Highland blood say
he does not care any more for the old times, and preferring the
English tongue to his own, and making a boast of his patience when the
Government of England r