swung
Afar on the wave, like a bird on the main,
And aye as it lessened, she sighed and she sung,
'Fareweel to the lad I shall ne'er see again!'"

But Rita had no patience with Flora McDonald.

"Why did she not go with him?" she asked, when Margaret, after the song
was over, told the brave story of Prince Charlie's escape after
Culloden, and of how the noble girl, at the risk of her own life, led
the prince, disguised as her waiting-woman, through many weary ways,
till they reached the seashore where the vessel was waiting to take him
to France.

"He could not speak!" said Margaret. "He just took her hand, and stood
looking at her; but she could hardly see him for her tears. Then he took
off his cap, and stooped down and kissed her twice on the forehead; and
so he went. But after he was in the boat, he turned again, and said to
her:

"'After all that has happened, I still hope, madam, we shall meet in St.
James's yet!' But of course they never did."

"But why did she not go with him?" demanded Rita. "She had spirit, it
appears. Why did she let him go without her?"

Margaret gazed at her wide-eyed.

"He was going into exile," she said. "She had done all she could, she
had saved his life; there was nothing more to be done."

"But--that she should leave him! Did she not love him? was he
faithless?"

Margaret blushed, and drew herself up unconsciously. "You do not
understand, Rita," she said gravely. "This was her prince, the son of
her sovereign; she was a simple Scottish gentlewoman. When he was flying
for his life, she was able to befriend him, and to save his life at
peril of her own; but when that was over, there was no more need of her,
and she went back to her home. What should she have done in France, at
the king's court?"

"Even if so," muttered Rita, with the well-known shrug of her shoulders,
"I would have gone, if it had been I. He should not have thrown me off
like that."

Margaret raised her eyes, full of angry light, and opened her lips to
speak; but instead kept silence for a moment. Then, "You do not
understand," she said again, but gently; "my mother was a Scotchwoman,
so I feel differently, of course. It is no matter, but I will tell you
this about Miss McDonald: that when she died, years after, an old woman
of seventy, she was buried in the sheet that had covered Prince Charles
Stuart, that night after Culloden."

"My!" said Peggy, "it must have been awfully yellow!"