posal, and accepted it with much
magnanimity; but Sheila knew that before the offer was made Lavender had
come to her and asked her if she cared about sketches, and whether he
might be allowed to take a few on this journey and present them to her.
She was very grateful, but suggested that it might please her papa if
they were given to him. Would she superintend them, then, and choose the
topics for illustration? Yes, she would do that; and so the young man
was furnished with a roving commission.

He brought her a little sepia sketch of Borvabost, its huts, its bay,
and its upturned boats on the beach. Sheila's expressions of praise, the
admiration and pleasure that shone in her eyes, would have turned any
young man's head. But her papa looked at the picture with a critical
eye, and remarked, "Oh yes, it is ferry good, but it is not the color of
Loch Roag at all. It is the color of a river when there is a flood of
rain. I have neffer at all seen Loch Roag a brown color--neffer at all."

It was clear, then, that the subsequent sketches could not be taken in
sepia, and so Lavender proposed to make a series of pencil-drawings,
which could be washed in with color afterward. There was one subject,
indeed, which since his arrival in Lewis he had tried to fix on paper by
every conceivable means in his power, and that was Sheila herself. He
had spoiled innumerable sheets of paper in trying to get some likeness
of her which would satisfy himself, but all his usual skill seemed
somehow to have gone from him. He could not understand it. In ordinary
circumstances he could have traced in a dozen lines a portrait that
would at least have shown a superficial likeness: he could have
multiplied portraits by the dozen of old Mackenzie or Ingram or Duncan,
but here he seemed to fail utterly. He invited no criticism, certainly.
These efforts were made in his own room, and he asked no one's opinion
as to the likeness. He could, indeed, certify to himself that the
drawing of the features was correct enough. There was the sweet and
placid forehead with its low masses of dark hair; there the short upper
lip, the finely-carved mouth, the beautifully-rounded chin and throat;
and there the frank, clear, proud eyes, with their long lashes and
highly-curved eyebrows. Sometimes, too, a touch of color added warmth
to the complexion, put a glimmer of the blue sea beneath the long black
eyelashes, and drew a thread of scarlet round the white neck. But w