gospel at the root of it than Byron had brought
her--she answered:

"I think a woman must give up everything for love."

She was then precisely of the same opinion as Jean Paul's Linda in
_Titan_.

"That is very true, I daresay," said Mrs Forbes; "but I fear you mean
only one kind of love. Does a woman owe no love to her father or mother
because she has a lover?"

To this plain question Kate made no reply, but her look changed to one
of obstinacy.

Her mother died when she was a child, and her father had kept himself
shut up in his study, leaving her chiefly to the care of a Shetland
nurse, who told her Scandinavian stories from morning to night, with
invention ever ready to supply any blank in the tablets of her memory.

Alec thought his mother's opinion the more to be approved, and Kate's
the more to be admired; showing the lack of entireness in his nature,
by thus dissociating the good and the admirable. That which is best
cannot be less admirable than that which is not best.

CHAPTER XLIX.

The next day saw Alec walking by the side of Kate mounted on his pony,
up a steep path to the top of one of the highest hills surrounding the
valley. It was a wild hill, with hardly anything growing on it but
heather, which would make it regal with purple in the autumn: no tree
could stand the blasts that blew over that hill in winter. Having
climbed to the topmost point, they stood and gazed. The country lay
outstretched beneath in the glow of the June day, while around them
flitted the cool airs of heaven. Above them rose the soaring blue of
the June sky, with a white cloud or two floating in it, and a blue peak
or two leaning its colour against it. Through the green grass and the
green corn below crept two silvery threads, meeting far away and
flowing in one--the two rivers which watered the valley of
Strathglamour. Between the rivers lay the gray stone town, with its
roofs of thatch and slate. One of its main streets stopped suddenly at
the bridge with the three arches above Tibbie's cottage; and at the
other end of the bridge lay the green fields.

The landscape was not one of the most beautiful, but it had a beauty of
its own, which is all a country or a woman needs; and Kate sat gazing
about her in evident delight. She had taken off her hat to feel the
wind, and her hair fell in golden heaps upon her shoulders, and the
wind and the sunbeams played at hide-and-seek in it.

In a moment the pleasure v