ident that morning
while starting from Bunessan; and that his place had been taken by a
young lad who had but now arrived with the bag. Macleod hastily looked
over the bundle of newspapers, etc., they brought him and his eager eyes
fell on an envelope, the writing on which made his heart jump.

"Give the lad a half-crown," said he.

And then he went to his own room. He had the letter in his hand; and he
knew the handwriting: but there was no wind of the night that could
bring him the mystic message she had sent with it:

"_Oh, here is, Glenogie, a letter for thee!_"

CHAPTER XVIII.

CONFIDENCES.

For a second or two he held the letter in his hand, regarding the
outside of it; and it was with more deliberation than haste that he
opened it. Perhaps it was with some little tremor of fear--lest the
first words that should meet his eye might be cruelly cold and distant.
What right had he to expect anything else? Many a time, in thinking
carefully over the past, he had recalled the words--the very tone--in
which he had addressed her, and had been dismayed to think of their
reserve, which had on one or two occasions almost amounted to austerity.
He could expect little beyond a formal acknowledgment of the receiving
of his letter, and the present that had accompanied it.

Imagine, then, his surprise when he took out from the envelope a number
of sheets closely written over in her beautiful, small, neat hand.
Hastily his eye ran over the first few lines; and then surprise gave way
to a singular feeling of gratitude and joy. Was it indeed she who was
writing to him thus? When he had been thinking of her as some one far
away and unapproachable--who could have no thought of him or of the too
brief time in which he had been near to her--had she indeed been
treasuring up some recollection that she now seemed disposed to value?

"You will guess that I am woman enough," she wrote, "to be greatly
pleased and flattered by your sending me such a beautiful present; but
you must believe me when I say that its chief value to me was its
showing me that I had another friend in the world who was not disposed
to forget me the next day after bidding me good-bye. Perhaps you will
say that I am cynical; but actresses are accustomed to find the
friendships they make--outside the sphere of their own profession--of a
singularly temporary character. We are praised and flattered to-day, and
forgotten to-morrow. I don't complain. It