w does any one know that any one loves any one else--when oneself
loves?" he returned enigmatically. "Remember I, too, belong to the happy
band. He lives close here, Miss Duggan?"

"Yes. Only a couple of miles away. But, alas! my father will hear
nothing of him, and has even forbidden him the house."

"And may I ask why?"

"Certainly. Because he is poor. Father's god is Mammon, Mr. Deland. He
knows and acknowledges no other. And Angus Macdonald has received very
little at the hands of that god."

"But a good deal at the hands of the only God that matters, I take it,"
put in Cleek softly, with a smile at her. "Well, they say that Love
laughs at locksmiths, and always finds a way. Time will give you your
chance, Miss Duggan, and you'll have to be brave enough to take it....
There's someone coming, I think."

There _was_ someone coming, for even as Cleek spoke the door swung open
and a tall, gaunt, white-haired old man, with a back like a ramrod and a
face of granite, and with eyes that shone like pin-points of steel in
the smooth pallor of it, came into the room, followed by a dark-eyed,
dark-haired, sallow-complexioned woman with the long nose of the Italian
and the brand of the true coquette stamped all over her.

Cleek recognized them at once. Here were the chief actors in the little
comedy of what was at present a girl's imaginings, and which he
sincerely hoped would never become anything else. What a hard face the
man had! What a trap-like mouth! What a merciless, seeking eye! And the
woman with him--all soft curves and roundness, with those luminous eyes
of southern Italy looking out at him from the frame of her pale,
ivory-tinted face, with already a hint of coquetry in their velvet
depths for any well-dressed, well-apportioned specimen of mankind.
Beside the something rugged and clear-cut in Maud Duggan's
personality--the something Scotch and enduring which is the birthright
of those born beyond the boundary-line of England--this woman's pale
suavity fell into a kittenish foolishness, became instantly trivial and
beyond recognizance.

At sound of their approach Maud Duggan turned hurriedly and waved a hand
toward Cleek.

"Father," said she in her low, level-toned voice, "this is Mr. Deland of
whom I told you last night. Mr. Deland is engaged to Ailsa Lorne, my old
school friend at the convent in Paris--and he has come down for the
fishing, and did me the honour to call upon me the very first thing. I
hav