at her parents
have had the experience of years in taking care of her, while he would
be a mere novice at the business. The pleasure with which he regards
the prospect of being constantly with her he transfers to her, and
she seems to demand it of him as a duty that he should confer upon her
this new happiness.

Lavender met Sheila in the evening, and he was yet undecided.
Sometimes he fancied, when their eyes met unexpectedly, that there
was something wistful as well as friendly in her look: was she too
dreaming of the vague possibilities of the future? This was strange,
too, that after each of those little chance reveries she seemed to be
moved by a resolution to be more than usually affectionate toward
her father, and would go round the table and place her hand on his
shoulder and talk to him. Perhaps these things were but delusions
begotten of his own imaginings, but the possibility of their being
real agitated him not a little, and he scarcely dared to think what
might follow.

That evening Sheila sang, and all his half-formed resolutions
vanished into air. He sat in a corner of the curious, dimly-lit and
old-fashioned chamber, and, lying back in the chair, abandoned himself
to dreams as Sheila sang the mystic songs of the northern coasts.
There was something strangely suggestive of the sea in the room
itself, and all her songs were of the sea. It was a smaller room than
the large apartment in which they had dined, and it was filled with
curiosities from distant shores and with the strange captures made by
the Borva fishermen. Everywhere, too, were the trophies of Mackenzie's
skill with rod and rifle. Deer's horns, seal skins, stuffed birds,
salmon in glass cases, masses of coral, enormous shells and a thousand
similar things made the little drawing-room a sort of grotto; but it
was a grotto within hearing of the sound of the sea, and there was no
musty atmosphere in a room that was open all day to the cold winds of
the Atlantic.

With a smoking tumbler of whisky and water before him, the King of
Borva sat at the table, poring over a large volume containing plans
for bridges. Ingram was seated at the piano, in continual consultation
with Sheila about her songs. Lavender, in this dusky corner, lay and
listened, with all sorts of fancies crowding in upon him as Sheila
sang of the sad and wild legends of her home. Was it by chance, then,
he asked himself, that these songs seemed so frequently to be the
lamentatio