mmediately by General Armour, who had entered soon after her. She had
been keen enough to read (if a little vaguely) behind the scenes, and
her mind was wakening slowly to the peculiarity of the position she
occupied. The place awed her, and had broken her rest by perplexing her
mind, and she sat down to the breakfast-table with a strange hunted look
in her face. But opposite to her was a window opening to the ground, and
beyond it were the limes and beeches and a wide perfect sward and far
away a little lake, on which swans and wild fowl fluttered. Presently,
as she sat silent, eating little, her eyes lifted to the window. They
flashed instantly, her face lighted up with a weird kind of charm, and
suddenly she got to her feet with Indian exclamations on her lips, and,
as if unconscious of them all, went swiftly to the window and out of
it, waving her hands up and down once or twice to the trees and the
sunlight.

"What did she say?" said Mrs. Armour, rising with the others.

"She said," replied Mackenzie, as she hurried towards the window, "that
they were her beautiful woods, and there were wild birds flying and
swimming in the water, as in her own country."

By this time all were at the window, Richard arriving last, and the
Indian girl turned on them, her body all quivering with excitement,
laughed a low, bird-like laugh, and then, clapping her hands above her
head, she swung round and ran like a deer towards the lake, shaking her
head back as an animal does when fleeing from his pursuers. She would
scarcely have been recognised as the same placid, speechless woman in a
blanket who sat with folded hands day after day on the Aphrodite.

The watchers turned and looked at each other in wonder. Truly, their
task of civilising a savage would not lack in interest. The old general
was better pleased, however, at this display of activity and excitement
than at yesterday's taciturnity. He loved spirit, even if it had to be
subdued, and he thought on the instant that he might possibly come
to look upon the fair savage as an actual and not a nominal
daughter-in-law. He had a keen appreciation of courage, and he thought
he saw in her face, as she turned upon them, a look of defiance or
daring, and nothing could have got at his nature quicker. If the case
had not been so near to his own hearthstone he would have chuckled. As
it was, he said good-humouredly that Mackenzie and Marion should go and
bring her back. But Mackenzie w