id not appear, however, and luncheon was announced.

"I suppose we may as well go down," said Lavender with a shrug of his
shoulders. "It is impossible to say when she may come back. She is such
a good-hearted creature that she would never think of herself or her own
affairs in looking after this girl from Lewis."

They went down stairs and took their places at the table.

"For my part," said Mrs. Lorraine, "I think it is very unkind not to
wait for poor Mrs. Lavender. She may come in dreadfully tired and
hungry."

"But that would not vex her so much as the notion that you had waited on
her account," said Sheila's husband with a smile; and Mrs. Lorraine was
pleased to hear him sometimes speak in a kindly way of the Highland girl
whom he had married.

Lavender's guests were going somewhere after luncheon, and he had half
promised to go with them, Mrs. Lorraine stipulating that Sheila should
be induced to come also. But when luncheon was over and Sheila had not
appeared, he changed his intention. He would remain at home. He saw his
three friends depart, and went into the study and lit a cigar.

How odd the place seemed! Sheila had left no instructions about the
removal of those barbaric decorations she had placed in the chamber; and
here, around him, seemed to be the walls of the old fashioned little
room at Borvabost, with its big shells, its peacocks' feathers, its
skins and stuffed fish, and masses of crimson bell-heather. Was there
not, too, an odor of peat-smoke in the air?--and then his eye caught
sight of the plate that still stood on the window-sill, with the ashes
of the burned peat on it.

"The odd child she is!" he thought with a smile, "to go playing at
grotto-making, and trying to fancy she was up in Lewis again! I suppose
she would like to let her hair down again, and take off her shoes and
stockings, and go wading along the sand in search of shellfish."

And then, somehow, his fancies went back to the old time when he had
first seen and admired her wild ways, her fearless occupations by sea
and shore, and the delight of active work that shone on her bright face
and in her beautiful eyes. How lithe and handsome her figure used to be
in that blue dress, when she stood in the middle of the boat, her head
bent back, her arms upstretched and pulling at some rope or other, and
all the fine color of exertion in the bloom of her cheeks! Then the
pride with which she saw her little vessel cutting through the