en her fancy! Women are a' like weans; they never see the
crack in an auld toy till some ane shows them a new ane. Weel! as sure
as death I wash my haun's o' the hale affair. She's daft; clean daft,
puir dear! If she kent whit I ken, she micht hae some excuse, but I took
guid care o' that. I doot yon's the end o' a very promisin' match, and
the man, though he mayna' think it, has his merchin' orders."

The brief bow-legged figure rolled along the lobby, pshawing with
vexation, and in a little, Doom, to all appearance, was a castle dark
and desolate.

Yet not wholly asleep, however dark and silent; for Olivia, too, had
heard the last of the thundering hoofs, had suffered the agony that
comes from the wrench of a false ideal from the place of its long
cherishing.

She came down in the morning a mere wraith of beauty, as it seemed to
the little servitor, shutting her lips hard, but ready to burst into a
shower.

"Guid Lord!" thought Mungo, setting the scanty table. "It's clear she
hasna steeked an e'e a' nicht, and me sleepin' like a peerie. That's ane
o' the advantages o' being ower the uneasy age o' love--and still I'm
no' that auld. I wonder if she's rued it the day already."

She smiled upon him bravely, but woe-begone, and could not check
a quivering lip, and then she essayed at a song hummed with no bad
pretence as she cast from the window a glance along the wintry coast,
that never changed its aspect though hearts broke. But, as ill-luck had
it, the air was the unfinished melody of Sim's bewitching flageolet.
She stopped it ere she had gone farther than a bar or two, and turned to
find Mungo irresolute and disturbed.

"He ga'ed awa'--" began the little man, with the whisper of the
conspirator.

"Mungo!" she cried, "you will not say a word of it. It is all bye with
me, and what for not with you? I command you to say no more about it, do
you hear?" And her foot beat with an imperiousness almost comical from
one with such a broken countenance.

"It's a gey droll thing--"

"It's a gey hard thing, that is what it is," she interrupted him, "that
you will not do what I tell you, and say nothing of what I have no
relish to hear, and must have black shame to think of. Must I go over
all that I have said to you already? It is finished, Mungo; are you
listening? Did he--did he--looked vexed? But it does not matter, it is
finished, and I have been a very foolish girl."

"But that needna' prevent me tellin' ye that