as I lie awake. I am never afraid now--not
though I lie awake all night: 'perfect love casteth out fear,' you
know. I have God to love, and Jesus to love, and you to love, and my
own father to love! When you know him, you will see how good a man can
be without having been brought up like you!--Oh, Donal, do say
something, or I shall cry, and crying kills me!"

She was sitting on a low chair, with the sunlight across her lap--for
she was again in the sunny Garland-room--and the firelight on her face.
Donal knelt gently down, and laid his hands in the sunlight on her lap,
just as if he were going to say his prayers at his mother's knee. She
laid both her hands on his.

"I have something to tell you," he said; "and then you must speak
again."

"Tell me," said Arctura, with a little gasp.

"When I came here," said Donal, "I thought my heart so broken that it
would never love--that way, I mean--any more. But I loved God better
than ever: and as one I would fain help, I loved you from the very
first. But I should have scorned myself had I once fancied you loved me
more than just to do anything for me I needed done. When I saw you
troubled, I longed to take you up in my arms, and carry you like a
lovely bird that had fallen from one of God's nests; but never once, my
lady, did I think of your caring for my love: it was yours as a matter
of course. I once asked a lady to kiss me--just once, for a good-bye:
she would not--and she was quite right; but after that I never spoke to
a lady but she seemed to stand far away on the top of a hill against a
sky."

He stopped. Her hands on his fluttered a little, as if they would fly.

"Is she still--is she--alive?" she asked.

"Oh yes, my lady."

"Then she may--change--" said Arctura, and stopped, for there was a
stone in her heart.

Donal laughed. It was an odd laugh, but it did Arctura good.

"No danger of that, my lady! She has the best husband in the world--a
much better than I should have made, much as I loved her."

"That can't be!"

"Why, my lady, her husband's sir Gibbie! She's lady Galbraith! I would
never have wished her mine if I had known she loved Gibbie. I love her
next to him."

"Then--then--"

"What, my lady?"

"Then--then--Oh, do say something!"

"What should I say? What God wills is fast as the roots of the
universe, and lovely as its blossom."

Arctura burst into tears.

"Then you do not--care for me!"

Donal began to understand. In some thin