t doubt can you have, after all that you have been saying of
late?"

"But you don't marry a woman merely because you admire her cleverness
and kindness," he said; and then he added suddenly, "Sheila, would you
do me a great favor? Mrs. Lorraine and her mother are leaving for the
Continent to-night. They dine at five, and I am commissioned to ask
you and your papa if you would go up with me and have some dinner with
them, you know, before they start. Won't you do that, Sheila?"

The girl shook her head, without answering. She had not gone to any
friend's house since her husband had left London, and that
house, above all others, was calculated to awaken in her bitter
recollections.

"Won't you, Sheila?" he said. "You used to go there. I know they
like you very much. I have seen you very well pleased and comfortable
there, and I thought you were enjoying yourself."

"Yes, that is true," she said; and then she looked up, with a strange
sort of smile on her lips, "But 'what made the assembly shine?'"

That forced smile did not last long: the girl suddenly burst into
tears, and rose and went away to the window. Mackenzie came into the
room: he did not see his daughter was crying: "Well, Mr. Ingram, and
are you coming with us to the Lewis? We cannot always be staying in
London, for there will be many things wanting the looking after in
Borva, as you will know ferry well. And yet Sheila she will not go
back; and Mairi too, she will be forgetting the ferry sight of her own
people; but if you wass coming with us, Mr. Ingram, Sheila she would
come too, and it would be ferry good for her whatever."

"I have brought you another proposal. Will you take Sheila to see the
Tyrol, and I will go with you?"

"The Tyrol?" said Mr. Mackenzie. "Ay, it is a ferry long way away, but
if Sheila will care to go to the Tyrol--oh yes, I will go to the Tyrol
or anywhere if she will go out of London, for it is not good for
a young girl to be always in the one house, and no company and no
variety; and I was saying to Sheila what good will she do sitting by
the window and thinking over things, and crying sometimes? By Kott, it
is a foolish thing for a young girl, and I will hef no more of it!"

In other circumstances Ingram would have laughed at this dreadful
threat. Despite the frown on the old man's face, the sudden stamp of
his foot and the vehemence of his words, Ingram knew that if Sheila
had turned round and said that she wished to be shu