help looking at many things not as I
will look at them. That is all. It is my bringing up in the Highlands,
perhaps."

"Do you know, Sheila, it sometimes occurs to me that you are not quite
comfortable here? And I can't make out what is the matter. I think you
have a perverse fancy that you are different from the people you meet,
and that you cannot be like them, and all that sort of thing. Now,
dear, that is only a fancy. There need be no difference if only you
will take a little trouble."

"Oh, Frank!" she said, going over and putting her hand on his
shoulder, "I cannot take that trouble. I cannot try to be like those
people. And I see a great difference in you since you have come back
to London, and you are getting to be like them and say the things they
say. If I could only see you, my own darling, up in the Lewis again,
with rough clothes on and a gun in your hand, I should be happy. You
were yourself up there, when you were helping us in the boat, or when
you were bringing home the salmon, or when we were all together at
night in the little parlor, you know--"

"My dear, don't get so excited. Now sit down, and I will tell you all
about it. You seem to have the notion that people lose all their finer
sentiments simply because they don't, in society, burst into raptures
over them. You mustn't imagine all those people are selfish and
callous merely because they preserve a decent reticence. To tell you
the truth, that constant profession of noble feelings you would like
to see would have something of ostentation about it."

Sheila only sighed. "I do not wish them to be altered," she said by
and by, with her eyes grown pensive: "all I know is, that I could
not live the same life. And you--you seemed to be happier up in the
Highlands than you have ever been since."

"Well, you see, a man ought to be happy when he is enjoying a holiday
in the country along with the girl he is engaged to. But if I had
lived all my life killing salmon and shooting wild-duck, I should have
grown up an ignorant boor, with no more sense of--"

He stopped, for he saw that the girl was thinking of her father.

"Well, look here, Sheila. You see how you are placed--how we are
placed, rather. Wouldn't it be more sensible to get to understand
those people you look askance at, and establish better relations with
them, since you have got to live among them? I can't help thinking
you are too much alone, and you can't expect me to stay in the h