will go up to the railway station to-morrow morning and see you off.
There!"

"You will?" he said, with a flush of joy on his face.

"But I don't want any one else to see me," she said, looking down.

"Oh, I will manage that," he said, eagerly. "I will get Major Stuart
into the carriage ten minutes before the train starts."

"Colonel Ross?"

"He goes back to Erith to-night."

"And I will bring to the station," said she, with some shy color in her
face, "a little present--if you should speak of me to your mother, you
might give her this from me; it belonged to my mother."

Could anything have been more delicately devised than this tender and
timid message?

"You have a woman's heart," he said.

And then in the same low voice she began to explain that she would like
him to go to the theatre that evening, and that perhaps he would go
alone; and would he do her the favor to be in a particular box? She took
a piece of paper from her purse, and shyly handed it to him. How could
he refuse?--though he flushed slightly. It was a favor she asked. "I
will know where you are," she said.

And so he was not to bid good-by to her on this occasion, after all. But
he bade good-by to Mr. White, and to Miss Carry, who was quite civil to
him now that he was going away; and then he went out into the cold and
gray December afternoon. They were lighting the lamps. But gaslight
throws no cheerfulness on a grave.

He went to the theatre later on; and the talisman she had given him
took him into a box almost level with the stage, and so near to it that
the glare of the foot-lights bewildered his eyes, until he retired into
the corner. And once more he saw the puppets come and go, with the one
live woman among them whose every tone of voice made his heart leap. And
then this drawing-room scene, in which she comes in alone, and talking
to herself? She sits down to the piano carelessly. Some one enters
unperceived, and stands silent there, to listen to the singing. And this
air that she sings, waywardly, like a light-hearted schoolgirl:--

"Hi-ri-libhin o, Brae MacIntyre,
Hi-ri-libhin o, Costly thy wooing!
Thou'st slain the maid.
Hug-o-rin-o, 'Tis thy undoing!
Hi-ri-libhin o, Friends of my love,
Hi-ri-libhin o, Do not upbraid him;
He was leal
Hug-o-rin-o, Chance betrayed him."

Macleod's breathing came quick and hard. She had not sung the ballad of
the b