lorimel: once is enough."

"I told him _all_," she said with a gasp, then gave a wild little cry,
and, with subdued exultation, added, "and he _loves_ me yet! He has
taken the girl without a name to his heart!"

"No wonder," said Malcolm, "when she brought it with her."

"Yes," said Lenorme, "I but took the diamond casket that held my bliss,
and now I could dare the angel Gabriel to match happinesses with me."

Poor Florimel, for all her worldly ways, was but a child. Bad associates
had filled her with worldly maxims and words and thoughts and
judgments. She had never loved Liftore: she had only taken delight in
his flatteries. And now had come the shock of a terrible disclosure,
whose significance she read in remembered looks and tones and behaviors
of the world. Her insolence to Malcolm when she supposed his the
nameless fate had recoiled in lurid interpretation of her own. She was a
pariah--without root, without descent, without fathers to whom to be
gathered. She was nobody. From the courted and flattered and high-seated
and powerful, she was a nobody! Then suddenly, to this poor houseless,
wind-beaten, rain-wet nobody, a house--no, a a home she had once looked
into with longing--had opened, and received her to its heart, that it
might be fulfilled which was written of old, "A man shall be as an
hiding-place from the wind and a covert from the tempest." Knowing
herself a nobody, she now first began to be a somebody. She had been
dreaming pleasant but bad dreams: she woke, and here was a lovely,
unspeakably blessed and good reality which had been waiting for her all
the time on the threshold of her sleep. She was baptized into it with
the tears of sorrow and shame. She had been a fool, but now she knew it,
and was going to be wise.

"Will you come to your brother, Florimel?" said Malcolm tenderly,
holding out his arms.

Lenorme raised her. She went softly to him and laid herself on his
bosom. "Forgive me, brother," she said, and held up her face.

He kissed her forehead and lips, took her in his arms and laid her again
on Lenorme's knees.

"I give her to _you_," he said, "for you are good."

With that he left them, and sought Mr. Morrison and Mr. Soutar, who were
waiting him over a glass of wine after their lunch. An hour of business
followed, in which, amongst other matters, they talked about the needful
arrangements for a dinner to his people, fishers and farmers and all.
After the gentlemen took their le