pierce his heart. Nor could all his hatred have blinded him to the
fact that Beauchamp looked splendid--his pale face, with its fine,
regular, clear-cut features, reflecting the glow of hers, and his
Highland dress setting off to full advantage his breadth of shoulders
and commanding height. Kate had at last found one to whom she could
look up, in whom she could trust!

He had taken her by storm, and yet not without well-laid schemes. For
instance, having discovered her admiration of Byron, instead of setting
himself, like Alec, to make himself acquainted with that poet, by which
he could have gained no advantage over her, he made himself her pupil,
and listened to everything she had to say about Byron as to a new
revelation. But, at the same time, he began to study Shelley; and, in a
few days, was able to introduce, with sufficient application, one or
two passages gathered from his pages. Now, to a mind like that of Kate,
with a strong leaning to the fantastic and strange, there was that in
Shelley which quite overcrowed Byron. She listened with breathless
wonder and the feeling that now at last she had found a poet just to
her mind, who could raise visions of a wilder beauty than had ever
crossed the horizon of her imagination. And the fountain whence she
drank the charmed water of this delight was the lips of that grand
youth, all nobleness and devotion. And how wide his reading must be,
seeing he knew a writer so well, of whom she had scarcely heard!

Shelley enabled Beauchamp to make the same discovery, with regard to
Kate's peculiar constitution, on the verge of which Alec had lingered
so long. For upon one occasion, when he quoted a few lines from the
Sensitive Plant--if ever there was a Sensitive Plant in the human
garden, it was Kate--she turned "white with the whiteness of what is
dead," shuddered, and breathed as if in the sensible presence of
something disgusting. And the cunning Celt perceived in this emotion
not merely an indication of what he must avoid, but a means as well of
injuring him whose rival he had become for the sake of injury. Both to
uncle and niece he had always spoken of Alec in familiar and friendly
manner; and now, he would occasionally drop a word or two with
reference to him and break off with a laugh.

"What _do_ you mean, Mr Beauchamp?" said Kate on one of these
occasions.

"I was only thinking how Forbes would enjoy some lines I found in
Shelley yesterday."

"What are they?"