mart red petticoats and gorgeous
outside stays; its shrines and its blazing sunsets, which seemed to
girdle the heavens with quivering bands of purple and gold.

Years went by without my being aware of their going, for after a while I
became entirely happy.

I heard frequently from home. Occasionally it was from Betsy Beauty, who
had not much to say beyond stories of balls at Government House, where
she had danced with the young Lord Raa, and of hunts at which she had
ridden with him. More rarely it was from Aunt Bridget, who usually began
by complaining of the ever-increasing cost of my convent clothes and
ended with accounts of her daughter's last new costume and how well she
looked in it.

From Nessy MacLeod and my father I never heard at all, but Father Dan
was my constant correspondent and he told me everything.

First of my father himself--that he had carried out many of his great
enterprises, his marine works, electric railways, drinking and dancing
palaces, which had brought tens of thousands of visitors and hundreds of
thousands of pounds to Ellan, though the good Father doubted the
advantage of such innovations and lamented the decline of piety which
had followed on the lust for wealth.

Next of Aunt Bridget--that she was bringing up her daughter in the ways
of worldly vanity and cherishing a serpent in her bosom (meaning Nessy
MacLeod) who would poison her heart some day.

Next, of Tommy the Mate--that he sent his "best respec's" to the
"lil-missy" but thought she was well out of the way of the Big Woman who
"was getting that highty-tighty" that "you couldn't say Tom to a cat
before her but she was agate of you to make it Thomas."

Then of Martin Conrad--that he was at college "studying for a doctor,"
but his heart was still at the North Pole and he was "like a sea-gull in
the nest of a wood pigeon," always longing to be out on the wild waves.

Finally of the young Lord Raa--that the devil's dues must be in the man,
for after being "sent down" from Oxford he had wasted his substance in
riotous living in London and his guardian had been heard to say he must
marry a rich wife soon or his estates would go to the hammer.

Such was the substance of the news that reached me over a period of six
years. Yet welcome as were Father Dan's letters the life they described
seemed less and less important to me as time went on, for the outer
world was slipping away from me altogether and I was becoming more and
mor