then
Mr. Lemuel is a man of genius. Who but himself could have caught the
very soul of your acting and fixed it on canvas?"

She hesitated for a moment, and then there was a flush of genuine
enthusiastic pride mantling on her forehead as she said, frankly,--

"Well, then, I wish I could see myself!"

Mr. White said nothing. He had watched this daughter of his through the
long winter months. Occasionally, when he heard her utter sentiments
such as these--and when he saw her keenly sensitive to the flattery
bestowed upon her by the people assembled at Mr. Lemuel's little
gatherings, he had asked himself whether it was possible she could ever
marry Sir Keith Macleod. But he was too wise to risk reawakening her
rebellious fits by any encouragement. In any case, he had some
experience of this young lady; and what was the use of combatting one of
her moods at five o'clock when at six o'clock she would be arguing in
the contrary direction, and at seven convinced that the _viv media_ was
the straight road? Moreover, if the worst came to the worst, there would
be some compensation in the fact of Miss White changing her name for
that of Lady Macleod.

Just as quickly she changed her mood on the present occasion. She was
looking again far over the darkly blue and ruffled seas toward the
white-sailed yacht.

"He must have gone away in the dark to get that boat for us," said she,
musingly. "Poor fellow, how very generous and kind he is!
Sometimes--shall I make the confession, pappy?--I wish he had picked out
some one who could better have returned his warmth of feeling."

She called it a confession; but it was a question. And her father
answered more bluntly than she had quite expected.

"I am not much of an authority on such points," said he, with a dry
smile; "but I should have said, Gerty, that you have not been quite so
effusive towards Sir Keith Macleod as some young ladies would have been
on meeting their sweetheart after a long absence."

The pale face flushed, and she answered, hastily,

"But you know, papa, when you are knocked about from one boat to
another, and expecting to be ill one minute and drowned the next, you
don't have your temper improved, do you? And then perhaps you have been
expecting a little too much romance?--and you find your Highland
chieftain handing down loaves, with all the people in the steamer
staring at him. But I really mean to make it up to him, papa, if I could
only get settled down