heart. She's a guid lass--what should onybody ken aboot her that I do
not ken? Laddie, stop greetin'--Patsy would be terrible angry if she
kenned I telled ye--but she wants ye to be a strong man--'a leader and
not a follower.' Says she, 'I shall never care for a man that I can
maister.'"

"Then she will never care for me," mourned poor Louis. "I can do things
for her sake--I can do as she bids me, and I am always ready. But, Miss
Aline, it does not seem to be the least good. That prince--"

"Never ye mind aboot princes--they are kittle-cattle, and Patsy was
juist letting you see that ye should carry a speerit in ye that no
prince in ony land could daunt."

"Oh, if it were only fighting," said Louis, "I should not be afraid. But
as it is, I shall not set my foot here again till Patsy sends for me--"

"Which she is like to do the morn's mornin', just to see if ye are still
in the sulks! Laddie, can ye no see that it is just an amusement to her?
She doesna mean to be cruel, but only wants ye to be a man amang
men--and mair parteeclar amang weemen!"

"Yes, I know," said Louis, disconsolately, "she does it for my good. She
has explained that to me several times. But somehow it does not seem to
help much!"

"Louis Raincy," said the old lady, severe for the first time, "be a
worthy son of your forbears. There are forty of them in the Raincy
chapel up yonder in the wood. It wad be an awesome thing to be carried
in among them and you not worthy. I am a woman--an auld maid if you
like--but I am a Minto, and here I am braving the great ones of the
earth to look after Patsy--me that would a thousand times raither be at
Ladykirk with Eelen Young and that silly Babby Latheron, weighing out
the sugar and spices for the late conserves--the bramble and the damsons
and the elderberry wine."

In spite of all this good advice, or perhaps because of it, Louis Raincy
went off without returning to the drawing-room, and with what he took to
be despair in his heart. Patsy was by no means the old Patsy. She would
never be again. Yet when he began to turn matters over in his head after
he had reached his quarters, he could not remember a time when Patsy had
not tyrannized over him, trampled him under foot, and variously abused
him, even from the time of their infantile plays with sand castles and
sea-shells built, architected, and ornamented on the seashore between
the Black Head and the estuary of the Mays Water.

But somehow when Patsy