lding out her hand.

Could it be that he had seen her only yesterday? Or was his visual
memory so fickle that he had forgotten what she was like? She was so
different from what he had been fancying her!

The fact was merely this--that she had been writing to an old friend,
and her manner for the time, as well as her expression, was affected by
her mental proximity to that friend;--so plastic--so fluent even--was
her whole nature. Indeed Alec was not long in finding out that one of
her witcheries was, that she was never the same. But on this the first
occasion, the alteration in her bewildered him.

"I am glad to find your uncle better," he said.

"Yes.--You have seen him, then?"

"Yes. I was very busy in the dissecting-room, till--"

He stopped; for he saw her shudder.

"I beg your pardon," he hastened to substitute.--"We are so used to
those things, that--"

"Don't say a word more about it, please," she said hastily. Then, in a
vague kind of way--"Won't you sit down?"

"No, thank you. I must go home," answered Alec, feeling that she did
not want him. "Good night," he added, advancing a step.

"Good night, Mr Forbes," she returned in the same vague manner, and
without extending her hand.

Alec checked himself, bowed, and went with a feeling of mortification,
and the resolution not to repeat his visit too soon.

She interfered with his studies notwithstanding, and sent him wandering
in the streets, when he ought to have been reading at home. One bright
moonlight night he found himself on the quay, and spying a boat at the
foot of one of the stairs, asked the man in it if he was ready for a
row. The man agreed. Alec got in, and they rowed out of the river, and
along the coast to a fishing village where the man lived, and whence
Alec walked home. This was the beginning of many such boating
excursions made by Alec in the close of this session. They greatly
improved his boatmanship, and strengthened his growing muscles. The end
of the winter was mild, and there were not many days unfit for the
exercise.

CHAPTER XLII.

The next Saturday but one Alec received a note from Mr Fraser, hoping
that his new cousin had not driven him away, and inviting him to dine
that same afternoon.

He went. After dinner the old man fell asleep in his chair.

"Where were you born?" Alec asked Kate.

She was more like his first impression of her.

"Don't you know?" she replied. "In the north of Sutherlandshire--n