? Was this the reward of the sacrifice of a
life? That a sensitive girl should be publicly insulted by a tipsy
maniac, and jeered at by a brutal crowd? Macleod laid down the letter
for a minute or two, and the look on his face was not lovely to see.

"You may think it strange that I should write thus to you," she said;
"but if I say that it was yourself who first set me thinking about such
things? And since I have been thinking about them I have had no human
being near me to whom I could speak. You know papa's opinions. Even if
my dearest friend, Mrs. Ross, were here, what would she say? She has
known me only in London. She thinks it a fine thing to be a popular
actress. She sees people ready to pet me, in a way--so long as society
is pleased to have a little curiosity about me. But she does not see the
other side of the picture. She does not even ask how long all this will
last. She never thinks of the cares and troubles and downright hard
work. If ever you heard me sing, you will know that I have very little
of a voice, and that not worth much; but trifling as it is, you would
scarcely believe the care and cultivation I have to spend on it, merely
for business purposes. Mrs. Ross, no doubt, sees that it is pleasant
enough for a young actress, who is fortunate enough to have won some
public favor, to go sailing in a yacht on the Thames, on a summer day,
with nice companions around her. She does not see her on a wet day in
Newcastle, practising scales for an hour at a stretch, though her throat
is half choked with the fog, in a dismal parlor with a piano out of
tune, and with the prospect of having to go out through the wet to a
rehearsal in a damp and draughty theatre, with escaped gas added to the
fog. That is very nice, isn't it?"

It almost seemed to him--so intense and eager was his involuntary
sympathy--as though he himself were breathing fog, and gas, and the foul
odors of an empty theatre. He went to the window and threw it open, and
sat down there. The stars were no longer quivering white on the black
surface of the water, for the moon had risen now in the south, and
there was a soft glow all shining over the smooth Atlantic. Sharp and
white was the light on the stone-walls of Castle Dare, and on the
gravelled path, and the rocks and the trees around; but faraway it was a
milder radiance that lay over the sea, and touched here and there the
shores of Inch Kenneth and Ulva and Colonsay. It was a fair and peacefu