He looked at her and smiled. That fierce fascination he knew something
of: how had she guessed at it? And as for her talking as if she herself
would gladly brave these storms--was it for a foam-bell to brave a
storm? was it for a rose-leaf to meet the driving rains of
Ben-an-Sloich?

"Shall we go back now?" said she; and as she turned to lead the way he
could not fail to remark how shapely her neck was, for her rich
golden-brown hair was loosely gathered up behind.

But just at this moment Mrs. Ross made her appearance.

"Come," said she, "we shall have a chat all to ourselves; and you will
tell me, Sir Keith, what you have seen since you came to London, and
what has struck you most. And you must stay with us, Gertrude. Perhaps
Sir Keith will be so kind as to freeze your blood with another horrible
story about the Highlanders. I am only a poor southerner, and had to get
up my legends from books. But this wicked girl, Sir Keith, delights as
much in stories of bloodshed as a schoolboy does."

"You will not believe her," said Miss White, in that low-toned, gravely
sincere voice of hers, while a faint shell-like pink suffused her face.
"It was only that we were talking of the highlands, because we
understood you were coming; and Mrs. Ross was trying to make out"--and
here a spice of proud mischief came into her ordinarily calm eyes--"she
was trying to make out that you must be a very terrible and dangerous
person, who would probably murder us all if we were not civil to you."

"Well, you know, Sir Keith," said Mrs. Ross, apologetically, "you
acknowledge yourself that you Macleods were a very dreadful lot of
people at one time. What a shame it was to track the poor fellow over
the snow, and then deliberately to put brushwood in front of the cave,
and then suffocate whole two hundred persons at once!"

"Oh yes, no doubt!" said he; "but the Macdonalds were asked first to
give up the men that had bound the Macleods hand and foot and set them
adrift in the boat, and they would not do it. And if the Macdonalds had
got the Macleods into a cave, they would have suffocated them too. The
Macdonalds began it."

"Oh, no, no, no," protested Mrs. Ross; "I can remember better than that.
What were the Macleods about on the island at all when they had to be
sent off, tied hand and foot, in their boats?"

"And what is the difference between tying a man hand and foot and
putting him out in the Atlantic, and suffocating him in a cav