athom the sea of dreams that lies there,
or tell what strange fancies and reminiscences may be involved in an
absent look? Is she thinking of starlit nights on some distant lake,
or of the old bygone days on the hills? All her former life is told
there, and yet but half told, and he longs to become possessed of all
the beautiful past that she has seen. Here is a constant mystery to
him, and there is a singular and wistful attraction for him in those
still deeps where the thoughts and dreams of an innocent soul lie but
half revealed. He does not see those things in the eyes of women he is
not in love with; but when in after years he is carelessly regarding
this or the other woman, some chance look, some brief and sudden turn
of expression, will recall to him, as with a stroke of lightning, all
the old wonder-time, and his heart will go nigh to breaking to think
that he has grown old, that he has forgotten so much, and that the
fair, wild days of romance and longing are passed away for ever.

"Ingram thinks I don't understand you yet, Sheila," he said to her
after they had got home and their friend had gone.

Sheila only laughed, and said, "I don't understand myself sometimes."

"Eh? What?" he cried. "Do you mean to say that I have married a
conundrum? If I have, I don't mean to give you up, any way; so you may
go and get me a biscuit and a drop of the whisky we brought from the
North with us."

CHAPTER XI.

THE FIRST PLUNGE.

Frank Lavender was a good deal more concerned than he chose to show
about the effect that Sheila was likely to produce on his aunt; and
when at length the day arrived on which the young folks were to go
down to Kensington Gore, he had inwardly to confess that Sheila seemed
a great deal less perturbed than himself. Her perfect calmness and
self-possession surprised him. The manner in which she had dressed
herself, with certain modifications which he could not help approving,
according to the fashion of the time, seemed to him a miracle of
dexterity; and how had she acquired the art of looking at ease in this
attire, which was much more cumbrous than that she had usually worn in
Borva?

If Lavender had but known the truth, he would have begun to believe
something of what Ingram had vaguely hinted. This poor girl was
looking toward her visit to Kensington Gore as the most painful trial
of her life. While she was outwardly calm and firm, and even cheerful,
her heart sank within her as s