icer, with glowing light and gay costumes and joyous music
all around her. What do you think of her, you poor clown, standing all
alone and melancholy, with your cap and bells? Has she pierced your
heart too with a flash of the saucy black eyes?

But there is still another vision; and perhaps this solitary dreamer,
who has no eyes for the great slopes of Ben-an-Sloich that stretch into
the clouds, and no ears for the soft calling of the sea-birds as they
wheel over his head, tries hardest to fix this one in his memory. Here
she is the neat and watchful house-mistress, with all things bright and
shining around her; and she appears, too, as the meek daughter and the
kind and caressing sister. Is it not hard that she should be torn from
this quiet little haven of domestic duties and family affection to be
bound hand and foot in the chains of art, and flung into the arena to
amuse that great ghoul-faced thing, the public? The white slave does not
complain. While as yet she may, she presides over the cheerful table;
and the beautiful small hands are helpful, and that light morning
costume is a wonder of simplicity and grace. And then the garden, and
the soft summer air, and the pretty ways of the two sisters: why should
not this simple, homely, beautiful life last forever, if only the summer
and the roses would last forever?

But suppose now that we turn aside from these fanciful pictures of
Macleod's and take a more commonplace one of which he could have no
notion whatever. It is night--a wet and dismal night--and a four-wheeled
cab is jolting along through the dark and almost deserted thoroughfares
of Manchester. Miss Gertrude White is in the cab, and the truth is that
she is in a thorough bad temper. Whether it was that the unseemly
scuffle that took place in the gallery during the performance, or
whether it is that the streets of Manchester, in the midst of rain and
after midnight are not inspiriting, or whether it is merely that she has
got a headache, it is certain that Miss White is in an ill-humor, and
that she has not spoken a word to her maid, her only companion, since
together they left the theatre. At length the cab stops opposite a
hotel, which is apparently closed for the night. They get out, cross the
muddy pavements under the glare of a gas-lamp; after some delay get into
the hotel; pass through a dimly lit and empty corridor; and then Miss
White bids her maid good-night and opens the door of a small parlor.