u would, my lady," said Hannah. "I know that finely, I'd have liked
it myself when I was young and frisky like you."

"What would you have liked, Hannah?" asked the Comtesse.

"Eh! just what you liked yourself, my lady; just seeing a man making
himself a bigger fool nor the Lord meant him to be for the sake of my
bonny face. I'm thinking you're the same as another for a' you're a
countess and have a braw foreign name. You just like what I'd have
liked, and what all women ever I heard tell on liked in their hearts,
though maybe they wouldna own up till it, from thon wench, that might
have been a gran' lady, too, for a' I ken, who made the great silly gaby
of a Samson lie still while she clipped the seven locks off of his head.
She liked fine to see him sleeping there like the tap he was for all the
strongness of him."

"You are right, Hannah, you are right. Oh, Una dear, if you could have
seen him--but you wouldn't understand. What's the good of telling you?
Hannah, if you'd seen him sitting there like a great woolly sheep, with
the silliest expression in his eyes; if you'd seen him putting out his
hand to touch me, pretending he did it by accident, and then pulling it
away again like one of those snails that crawl about in the sandhills
when you touch his horns with the end of a blade of grass. If you'd seen
him. Oh, I wish you'd seen him!"

"Faith, I seen plenty."

"You did not, Hannah; you didn't see half. He was far, far better before
you came back."

She burst into a peal of half hysterical laughter. She may have enjoyed
the captain's company, but he had evidently tried her nerves.

"But, Una dear," she said, when she grew calm again, "I hope Maurice
will come soon, or that American ship, or something. I won't be able to
go on very long."

"There's been an easterly breeze since noon," said Una, "and there's a
haze out at sea."

"Do talk sense, Una. Here I've been sacrificing myself for you all day,
and when I ask you for a little sympathy you talk to me about an east
wind."

"But the east wind will bring the brig, aunt. How could she get here
from Glasgow without the wind?"

CHAPTER XVIII

The Comtesse underrated her powers of endurance. For two more whole days
she encouraged Captain Twinely to make love to her. She sat with him in
the sandhills, she walked with him along the strand, she flattered him,
ogled him, enticed him, till the man was beside himself with the
desire of her. But in privat