ess."

It was to Lady Drum that Coquette made her confession that day.

"I do love him better than everything in the world--and I cannot help
it. And now he is gone, and I shall never see him again, and I would
like to see him only once to say I am sorry for him."

Coquette returned to Airlie, and tried to find peace in homely duties in
the village. As time went on the Whaup pressed for the marriage day to
be named, but he could not awake in her hopes for the future. Then, one
dull morning in March, as she walked by herself over the Moor, Lord
Earlshope was by her side, saying: "Coquette, have you forgotten
nothing, as I have forgotten nothing?" And she was saying: "I love you,
dearest, more than ever."

"Listen, Coquette, listen!" he said. "A ship passes here in the morning
for America; I have taken two berths in it for you and me; to-morrow we
shall be sailing away to a new world, and leaving all these troubles
behind. You remember that woman--nothing has been heard of her for two
years. I have sought her everywhere. She must be dead. And so we shall
be married when we get there. The yacht will be waiting off Saltcoats
to-night; you must go down by yourself, and the gig shall come for you,
and we shall intercept the ship."

A little while thereafter Coquette was on her way back to the Manse
alone. She had promised to go down to Saltcoats that night, and had
sealed her sin with a kiss.

It was a wild, strange night that she stole out of the house, leaving
behind her all the sweet consciousness of rectitude and the purity and
innocence which had enabled her to meet trials with a courageous
heart--leaving behind the crown of womanhood, the treasure of a
stainless name. Every moment the storm grew in intensity, till the
rain-clouds were blown upon the land in hissing torrents. At last, just
as she saw before her the lights of Saltcoats, she sank down by the
roadside with a faint cry of "Uncle! Uncle!"

When she came to herself, in a neighbour's house, a letter was given her
from Lord Earlshope, saying that he could not exact from her the
sacrifice he had proposed, and incur for both the penalty of remorse and
misery; so he would leave for America alone.

Even as she was reading the letter, the report reached Saltcoats that
the yacht had gone down in the storm, and Lord Earlshope was beyond the
reach of accusation and defence.

She married the Whaup, but was never again the old Coquette, and though
Tom tried hop