ng the November fogs, it seems so strange to think of those splendid
days and the long, clear twilights. I suppose it is all so well known to
you, you do not trouble to recall it; but I do--it is like a dream--only
that I see everything so distinctly--I seem almost to be able to touch
each leaf of the bushes in the little dell where we used to have
luncheon; do you remember?"

"Above the Geinig Pool?--oh, yes!" she said, smiling.

"And the Junction Pool," he continued, with a curious eagerness, as if
he were claiming her sympathy, her interest, on account of that old
companionship--"I can make the clearest vision of it as I sit up all by
myself at night--you remember the little bush on the opposite side that
you used sometimes to catch your fly on, and the shelf of shingle going
suddenly down into the brown water--I always thought that was a
dangerous place. And how well you used to fish the Rock Pool! Old Robert
used to be so proud of you! Once, at the tail of the Rock Pool, you
wound up, and said to him, 'Well, I can't do any better than that,
Robert;' and then he said, 'No man ever fished that pool better--oh, I
beg your pardon, Miss Honnor; no one at all ever fished that pool
better.' I suppose Strathaivron is nothing to you--you must be so
familiar with it--but to me it is a sort of wonderland, to dream of when
I am all by myself at night--"

Alas! it was at this very moment that Nina came up from her room; Clara,
the innkeeper's daughter, had to go on immediately after the ball-room
scene was over. And Nina, as she came by, caught sight of these two, and
for a moment she stood still, her eyes staring. The two figures were in
a sort of twilight--a twilight as compared with the glare of the stage
beyond them, but there were lights here quite sufficient to illumine
their features; it was no imagination on Nina's part--she saw with a
startling clearness that Lionel was regarding this tall, English-looking
girl with a look she had never seen him direct towards any woman
before--a timid, wistful, half-beseeching look that needed no words to
explain its meaning. For a second Nina stood there, paralyzed--not
daring to breathe--not able to move. Yet was it altogether a revelation
to her, or only a sudden and overwhelming confirmation of certain
half-frightened misgivings which had visited her from time to time, and
which she had striven hard to banish? The next moment Nina had passed on
silently, like a ghost, and had di