e-red flowers set amid its small and deep-green
leaves. For the rest, a bit of honeysuckle was trained up one side of
the porch, and at the small wooden gate there were two bushes of
sweetbrier that filled the warm air with fragrance.

Just before entering the house the two strangers turned to have a look
at the spacious landscape lying all around in the perfect calm of a
summer day. And lo! before them there was but a blinding mass of white
that glared upon their eyes, and caused them to see the far sea and the
shores and the hills as but faint shadows appearing through a silvery
haze. A thin fleece of cloud lay across the sun, but the light was
nevertheless so intense that the objects near at hand--a disused boat
lying bottom upward, an immense anchor of foreign make, and some such
things--seemed to be as black as night as they lay on the warm road. But
when the eye got beyond the house and the garden, and the rough hillside
leading down to Loch Roag, all the world appeared to be a blaze of calm,
silent and luminous heat. Suainabhal and its brother mountains were only
as clouds in the south. Along the western horizon the portion of the
Atlantic that could be seen lay like a silent lake under a white sky. To
get any touch of color, they had to turn eastward, and there the
sunlight faintly fell on the green shores of Borva, on the narrows of
Loch Roag, and the loose red sail of a solitary smack that was slowly
coming round a headland. They could hear the sound of the long oars. A
pale line of shadow lay in the wake of the boat, but otherwise the black
hull and the red sail seemed to be coming through a plain of molten
silver. When the young men turned to go into the house the hall seemed a
cavern of impenetrable darkness, and there was a flush of crimson light
dancing before their eyes.

When Ingram had had his room pointed out, Lavender followed him into it
and shut the door.

"By Jove, Ingram," he said, with a singular light of enthusiasm on his
handsome face, "what a beautiful voice that girl has! I have never heard
anything so soft and musical in all my life; and then when she smiles
what perfect teeth she has! And then, you know, there is an appearance,
a style, a grace about her figure--But, I say, do you seriously mean to
tell me you are not in love with her?"

"Of course I am not," said the other impatiently, as he was busily
engaged with his portmanteau.

"Then let me give you a word of information," said