'It was as Jones Harvey that he--' said Lady Bude, and, blushing,
stopped.

'That he grasped the skirts of happy chance,' said Merton.

'Why don't _you_ grasp the skirts, Mr. Merton?' asked Lady Bude. 'Chance,
or rather Lady Fortune, who wears the skirts, would, I think, be happy to
have them grasped.'

'Whose skirts do you allude to?'

'The skirts, short enough in the Highlands, of Miss Macrae,' said Lady
Bude; 'she is a nice girl, and a pretty girl, and a clever girl, and,
after all, there are worse things than millions.'

Miss Emmeline Macrae was the daughter of the host with whom the Budes and
Merton were staying at Skrae Castle, on Loch Skrae, only an easy mile and
a half from the sea and the cove beside which Merton and Lady Bude were
sitting.

'There is a seal crawling out on to the shore of the little island!' said
Merton. 'What a brute a man must be who shoots a seal! I could watch
them all day--on a day like this.'

'That is not answering my question,' said Lady Bude. 'What do you think
of Miss Macrae? I _know_ what you think!'

'Can a humble person like myself aspire to the daughter of the greatest
living millionaire? Our host can do almost anything but bring a spate,
and even _that_ he could do by putting a dam with a sluice at the foot of
Loch Skrae: a matter of a few thousands only. As for the lady, her heart
it is another's, it never can be mine.'

'Whose it is?' asked Lady Bude.

'Is it not, or do my trained instincts deceive me, that of young Blake,
the new poet? Is she not "the girl who gives to song what gold could
never buy"? He is as handsome as a man has no business to be.'

'He uses belladonna for his eyes,' said Lady Bude. 'I am sure of it.'

'Well, she does not know, or does not mind, and they are pretty
inseparable the last day or two.'

'That is your own fault,' said Lady Bude; 'you banter the poet so
cruelly. She pities him.'

'I wonder that our host lets the fellow keep staying here,' said Merton.
'If Mr. Macrae has a foible, except that of the pedigree of the Macraes
(who were here before the Macdonalds or Mackenzies, and have come back in
his person), it is scientific inventions, electric lighting, and his new
toy, the wireless telegraph box in the observatory. You can see the
tower from here, and the pole with box on top. I don't care for that
kind of thing myself, but Macrae thinks it Paradise to get messages from
the Central News and the Stock Exchange