er, staring at her, "and a pretty
mess you have got us into!"

"Me!" said Mairi, almost with a cry of pain: she had not imagined before
that she had anything to do with Sheila's trouble.

"No, no, Mairi," her companion said, taking her hand, "it was not you.
Mrs. Lavender, Mairi does not understand our way of joking in London.
Perhaps she will learn before she goes back to the Highlands."

"There is one thing," said Mrs. Lavender, observing that Mairi's eyes
had filled the moment she was charged with bringing trouble on
Sheila--"there is one thing you people from the Highlands seem never
disposed to learn, and that is to have a little control over your
passions. If one speaks to you a couple of words, you either begin to
cry or go off into a flash of rage. Don't you know how bad that is for
the health?"

"And yet," said Sheila with a smile--and it seemed so strange to Mairi
to see her smile--"we will not compare badly in health with the people
about us here."

Mrs. Lavender dropped the question, and began to explain to Sheila what
she advised her to do. In the mean time both the girls were to remain
in her house. She would guarantee their being met by no one. When
suitable rooms had been looked out by Paterson they were to remove
thither. The whole situation of affairs was at once perceived by Mrs.
Lavender's attendant, who was given to understand that no one was to
know of young Mrs. Lavender's being in the house. Then the old woman,
much contented with what she had done, resolved that she would reward
herself with a joke, and sent for Edward Ingram.

When Sheila, as already described, came into the room, and found her old
friend there, the resolution she had formed went clean out of her mind.
She forgot entirely the ban that had been placed on Ingram by her
husband. But after her first emotion on seeing him was over, and when he
began to discuss what she ought to do, and even to advise her in a
diffident sort of way, she remembered all that she had forgotten, and
was ashamed to find herself sitting there and talking to him as if it
were in her father's house at Borva. Indeed, when he proposed to take
the management of her affairs into his own hands, and to go and look at
certain apartments that Paterson had proposed, she was forced, with
great heart-burning and pain, to hint to him that she could not avail
herself of his kindness.

"But why?" he asked with a stare of surprise.

"You remember Brighton," she a