ot quite compose herself, and stood near him, fanning him to
give herself a pretext for movement. MacLeod looked up at her, smiling.
He saw how pale she was.

"Why," he said, with his beguiling kindliness, "you mustn't look as if
you were afraid of me."

She moved a little, to escape his eyes.

"No," she said, in a low tone, "I don't mean to be afraid. But I am."

"What of, Rose?"

She wanted to say, from her confused suspicions, that he was inevitably
contemplating some course that would involve her freedom. But he had
turned, and was looking at her in a smiling candor. There was evidently
no more guile in him than in the impartial and cherishing sun.

"I wish life didn't present itself to you as a melodrama," he
volunteered, with almost a brightness of reproach.

She shook her head. The tremulous expectancy of her face remained
unchanged.

"I wish so, too," she answered.

"Well!" He spoke robustly, with a quick decision. "I'm going back. I
shall sail next week."

She drew a quick breath. Ready as she was to disbelieve him, it was
impossible to deny herself an unreasonable relief. She held herself
rigid with anticipation, knowing what the next words would be, and how
he would command or entreat her also to go. But they amazed her.

"Rose," said he, "this may be the last little talk we have together
here. I want to speak to you about your mother."

"My mother!" Unconsciously she drew nearer him. Her mother was--what? A
banished dream, not forgotten, but relegated to dim tapestried chambers
because the air of the present seemed to blur out memory by excess of
light. She had awakened from her girlhood's dreams; to them, chiefly,
her mother had belonged. Now that past beneficence was a faded flower
found in a casket, a scent of beauty touched by time.

"Sit down," said MacLeod, and she obeyed him. He stretched out his legs
at ease, and put his head back, his eyes closed, in an easy
contemplation. "We don't speak of her very often, do we, little girl?"

"No!" Her irrepressible comment was, "I thought you had forgotten her."

But he continued,--

"I was thinking the other day how much you lose in not having known her
as she was when I met her first."

"I have the miniature."

"I know. But that's only a suggestion. It doesn't help me bring her to
life for you. She had beauty--not so much as you have--and an
extraordinary grace and charm. She had, too, that something we trace
back to breeding."

He had