r forehead was rather low. Her
eyes were softly dark, and her features very regular--her nose perhaps
hardly large enough, or her chin. Her mouth was rather thin-lipped,
but would have been sweet except for a seemingly habitual expression of
pain. A pair of dark brows overhung her sweet eyes, and gave a look of
doubtful temper, yet restored something of the strength lacking a
little in nose and chin. It was an interesting--not a quite harmonious
face, and in happiness might, Donal thought, be beautiful even. Her
figure was eminently graceful--as Donal saw when he raised his eyes at
the sound of her retreat. He thought she needed not have run away as
from something dangerous: why did she not pass him like any other
servant of the house? But what seemed to him like contempt did not
hurt him. He was too full of realities to be much affected by opinion
however shown. Besides, he had had his sorrow and had learned his
lesson. He was a poet--but one of the few without any weak longing
after listening ears. The poet whose poetry needs an audience, can be
but little of a poet; neither can the poetry that is of no good to the
man himself, be of much good to anybody else. There are the song-poets
and the life-poets, or rather the God-poems. Sympathy is lovely and
dear--chiefly when it comes unsought; but the fame after which so many
would-be, yea, so many real poets sigh, is poorest froth. Donal could
sing his songs like the birds, content with the blue heaven or the
sheep for an audience--or any passing angel that cared to listen. On
the hill-sides he would sing them aloud, but it was of the merest
natural necessity. A look of estrangement on the face of a friend, a
look of suffering on that of any animal, would at once and sorely
affect him, but not a disparaging expression on the face of a
comparative stranger, were she the loveliest woman he had ever seen.
He was little troubled about the world, because little troubled about
himself.

Lady Arctura and lord Forgue lived together like brother and sister,
apparently without much in common, and still less of misunderstanding.
There would have been more chance of their taking a fancy to each other
if they had not been brought up together; they were now little
together, and never alone together.

Very few visitors came to the castle, and then only to call. Lord
Morven seldom saw any one, his excuse being his health.

But lady Arctura was on terms of intimacy with