was uneasy. He
it was who must busy himself with the feeding of an appetite whose like
he had not manifested before, either silent altogether or joining in the
conversation with the briefest sentences.

There was never a Montaiglon who would lose such a good occasion, and
Count Victor made the most of it. He was gentle, but not too gentle--for
this was a lady to resent the easy self-effacement with which so many
of her sex are deceived and flattered; he was not unmindful of the
more honest compliments, yet he had the shrewdness to eschew the mere
meaningless _blague_ that no one could better employ with the creatures
of Versailles, who liked their olives well oiled, or the Jeannetons
and Mimis of the Italian comedy and the playhouse. Under his genial and
shining influence Olivia soon forgot the ignominy of these recent days,
and it was something gained in that direction that already she looked
upon him as a confederate.

"I am so glad you like our country, Count Victor," she said, no way
dubious about his praise of her home hills, those loud impetuous
cataracts, and that alluring coast. "It rains--oh! it rains--"

"_Parfaitement_, mademoiselle, but when it shines!" and up went his
hands in an admiration wherefor words were too little eloquent: at that
moment he was convinced truly that the sun shone nowhere else than in
the Scottish hills.

"Yes, yes, when it shines, as you say, it is the dear land! Then the
woods--the woods gleam and tremble, I always think, like a girl who has
tears in her eyes, the tears of gladness. The hills--let my father tell
you of the hills, Count Victor; I think he must love them more than he
loves his own Olivia--is that not cruel of a man with an only child? He
would die, I am sure, if he could not be seeing them when he liked. But
I cannot be considering the hills so beautiful as my own glens, my own
little glens, that no one, I'll be fancying, is acquainted with to the
heart but me and the red deer, and maybe a hunter or two. Of course, we
have the big glens, too, and I would like it if I could show you Shira
Glen--"

"The best of it was once our own," said Doom, black at brow.

"--That once was ours, as father says, and is mine yet so long as I can
walk there and be thinking my own thoughts in it when the wood is green,
and the wild ducks are plashing in the lake."

Doom gave a significant exclamation: he was recalling that rumour had
Shira Glen for his daughter's favourite tryst