rather you had the property and I were in my
grave!"

"I will be anything, do anything, learn anything you please!" cried
Forgue, his heart aching with disappointment.

"I know what such submission is worth!" said Arctura. "I should be
everything till we were married, and then nothing! You dissemble, you
hide even from yourself, but you are not hard to read."

Perhaps she would not have spoken just so severely, had she not been
that morning unusually annoyed with his behaviour to Donal, and at the
same time specially pleased with the calm, unconsciously dignified way
in which Donal took it, casting it from him as the rock throws aside
the sea-wave: it did not concern him! The dull world has got the wrong
phrase: it is he who resents an affront who pockets it! he who takes no
notice, lets it lie in the dirt.

CHAPTER LXVIII.

LARKIE.

It was a lovely day in spring.

"Please, Mr. Grant," said Davie, "may I have a holiday?"

Donal looked at him with a little wonder: the boy had never before made
such a request! But he answered him at once.

"Yes, certainly, Davie. But I should like to know what you want it for."

"Arkie wants very much to have a ride to-day. She says Larkie--I gave
him his name, to rime with Arkie--she says Larkie will forget her, and
she does not wish to go out with Forgue, so she wants me to go with her
on my pony."

"You will take good care of her, Davie?"

"I will take care of her, but you need not be anxious about us, Mr.
Grant. Arkie is a splendid rider, and much pluckier than she used to
be!"

Donal did, however--he could not have said why--feel a little anxiety.
He repressed it as unfaithfulness, but it kept returning. He could not
go with them--there was no horse for him, and to go on foot, would, he
feared, spoil their ride. He was so much afraid also of presuming on
lady Arctura's regard for him, that he would have shrunk from offering
had it been more feasible. He got a book, and strolled into the park,
not even going to see them off: Forgue might be about the stable, and
make things unpleasant!

Had Forgue been about the stable, he would, I think, have somehow
managed to prevent the ride, for Larkie, though much better, was not
yet cured of his lameness. Arctura did not know he had been lame, or
that he had therefore been very little exercised, and was now rather
wild, with a pastern-joint far from equal to his spirit. There was but
a boy about the stable, who either d