to look up,
and he saw what a clear light of sincerity there was shining in her
eyes.

"May I then call you Sheila?"

"Yes."

"But--but--" he said, with a timidity and embarrassment of which she
showed no trace whatever--"but people might think it strange, you know;
and yet I should greatly like to call you Sheila; only, not before other
people perhaps."

"But why not?" she said with her eyebrows just raised a little. "Why
should you wish to call me Sheila at one time and not at the other? It
is no difference whatever, and every one calls me Sheila."

Lavender was a little disappointed. He had hoped, when she consented in
so friendly a manner to his calling her by any name he chose, that he
could have established this little arrangement, which would have had
about it something of the nature of a personal confidence. Sheila would
evidently have none of that. Was it that she was really so simple and
frank in her ways that she did not understand why there should be such a
difference, and what it might imply, or was she well aware of
everything he had been wishing, and able to assume this air of
simplicity and ignorance with a perfect grace? Ingram, he reflected,
would have said at once that to suspect Sheila of such duplicity was to
insult her; but then Ingram was perhaps himself a trifle too easily
imposed on, and he had notions about women, despite all his
philosophical reading and such like, that a little more mingling in
society might have caused him to alter. Frank Lavender confessed to
himself that Sheila was either a miracle of ingenuousness or a thorough
mistress of the art of assuming it. On the one hand, he considered it
almost impossible for a woman to be so disingenuous; on the other hand,
how could this girl have taught herself, in the solitude of a savage
island, a species of histrionicism which women in London circles strove
for years to acquire, and rarely acquired in any perfection? At all
events, he said to himself, while he reserved his opinion on this point,
he was not going to call Sheila Sheila before folks who would know what
that meant. Mr. Mackenzie was evidently a most irascible old gentleman.
Goodness only knew what sort of law prevailed in these wild parts; and
to be seized at midnight by a couple of brawny fishermen, to be carried
down to a projecting ledge of rock--! Had not Ingram already hinted that
Mackenzie would straightway throw into Loch Roag the man who should
offer to carry aw