"But how is that? Did you not return to your fishing when the household was broken up?"

"No, my lady. Mr Crathie kept me to help Stoat, and do odd jobs about the place."

"And now he wants to discharge you?"

Then Malcolm told her the whole story, in which he gave such a description of Kelpie, that her owner, as she imagined herself, expressed a strong wish to see her; for Florimel was almost passionately fond of horses.

"You may soon do that, my lady," said Malcolm. "Mr Soutar, not being of the same mind as Mr Crathie, is going to send her up. It will be but the cost of the passage from Aberdeen, and she will fetch a better price here if your ladyship should resolve to part with her. She won't fetch the third of her value anywhere, though, on account of her bad temper and ugly tricks."

"But as to yourself, MacPhail—where are you going to go?" said Florimel. "I don't like to send you away, but, if I keep you, I don't know what to do with you. No doubt you could serve in the house, but that would not be suitable at all to your education and previous life."

"A body wad tak' you for a granny grown!" said Malcolm to himself. But to Florimel he replied—"If your ladyship should wish to keep Kelpie, you will have to keep me too, for not a creature else will she let near her."

"And pray tell me what use then can I make of such an animal," said Florimel.

"Your ladyship, I should imagine, will want a groom to attend you when you are out on horseback, and the groom will want a horse— and here am I and Kelpie!" answered Malcolm.

Florimel laughed.

"I see," she said. "You contrive I shall have a horse nobody can manage but yourself."

She rather liked the idea of a groom so mounted, and had too much well justified faith in Malcolm to anticipate dangerous results.

"My lady," said Malcolm, appealing to her knowledge of his character to secure credit, for he was about to use his last means of persuasion, and as he spoke, in his eagerness he relapsed into his mother tongue,—"My lady, did I ever tell ye a lee?"

"Certainly not, Malcolm, so far as I know. Indeed I am sure you never did," answered Florimel, looking up at him in a dominant yet kindly way.

"Then," continued Malcolm, "I'll tell your ladyship something you may find hard to believe, and yet is as true as that I loved your ladyship's father.—Your ladyship knows he had a kindness for me."

"I do know it," answered Florimel gently, moved by the tone of Malcolm's voice, and the expression of his countenance.

"Then I make bold to tell your ladyship that on his deathbed your father desired me to do my best for you—took my word that I would be your ladyship's true servant."

"Is it so, indeed, Malcolm?" returned Florimel, with a serious wonder in her tone, and looked him in the face with an earnest gaze. She had loved her father, and it sounded in her ears almost like a message from the tomb.

"It's as true as I stan' here, my leddy," said Malcolm.

Florimel was silent for a moment. Then she said, "How is it that only now you come to tell me?"

"Your father never desired me to tell you, my lady—only he never imagined you would want to part with me, I suppose. But when you did not care to keep me, and never said a word to me when you went away, I could not tell how to do as I had promised him. It wasn't that one hour I forgot his wish, but that I feared to presume; for if I should displease your ladyship my chance was gone. So I kept about Lossie House as long as I could, hoping to see my way to some plan or other. But when at length Mr Crathie turned me away, what was I to do but come to your ladyship? And if your ladyship will let things be as before in the way of service, I mean—I canna doot, my leddy, but it'll be pleesant i' the sicht o' yer father, whanever he may come to ken o' 't, my lady."

Florimel gave him a strange, half startled look. Hardly more than once since her father's funeral had she heard him alluded to, and now this fisher lad spoke of him as if he were still at Lossie House.

Malcolm understood the look.

"Ye mean, my leddy—I ken what ye mean," he said. "I canna help it. For to lo'e onything is to ken't immortal. He's livin' to me, my lady."

Florimel continued staring, and still said nothing.

I sometimes think that the present belief in mortality is nothing but the almost universal although unsuspected unbelief in immortality grown vocal and articulate.

But Malcolm gathered courage and went on,

"An' what for no, my leddy?" he said, floundering no more in attempted English, but soaring on the clumsy wings of his mother dialect. "Didna he turn his face to the licht afore he dee'd? an' him 'at rase frae the deid said 'at whaever believed in him sud never dee. Sae we maun believe 'at he's livin', for gien we dinna believe what he says, what are we to believe, my leddy?"

Florimel continued yet a moment looking him fixedly in the face. The thought did arise that perhaps he had lost his reason, but she could not look at him thus and even imagine it. She remembered how strange he had always been, and for a moment had a glimmering idea that in this young man's friendship she possessed an incorruptible treasure. The calm, truthful, believing, almost for the moment enthusiastic, expression of the young fisherman's face wrought upon her with a strangely quieting influence. It was as if one spoke to her out of a region of existence of which she had never even heard, but in whose reality she was compelled to believe because of the sound of the voice that came from it.

Malcolm seldom made the mistake of stamping into the earth any seeds of truth he might cast on it: he knew when to say no more, and for a time neither spoke. But now for all the coolness of her upper crust, Lady Florimel's heart glowed—not indeed with the power of the shining truth Malcolm had uttered, but with the light of gladness in the possession of such a strong, devoted, disinterested squire.

"I wish you to understand," she said at length, "that I am not at present mistress of this house, although it belongs to me. I am but the guest of Lady Bellair who has rented it of my guardians. I cannot therefore arrange for you to be here. But you can find accommodation in the neighbourhood, and come to me every day for orders. Let me know when your mare arrives: I shall not want you till then. You will find room for her in the stables. You had better consult the butler about your groom's livery."

Malcolm was astonished at the womanly sufficiency with which she gave her orders. He left her with the gladness of one who has had his righteous desire, held consultation with the butler on the matter of the livery, and went home to his lodging. There he sat down and meditated.

A strange new yearning pity rose in his heart as he thought about his sister and the sad facts of her lonely condition. He feared much that her stately composure was built mainly on her imagined position in society, and was not the outcome of her character. Would it be cruelty to destroy that false foundation, hardly the more false as a foundation for composure that beneath it lay a mistake? —or was it not rather a justice which her deeper and truer self had a right to demand of him? At present, however, he need not attempt to answer the question. Communication even such as a trusted groom might have with her, and familiarity with her surroundings, would probably reveal much. Meantime it was enough that he would now be so near her that no important change of which others might be aware, could well approach her without his knowledge, or anything take place without his being able to interfere if necessary.



CHAPTER XIII: TWO CONVERSATIONS

The next day Wallis came to see Malcolm and take him to the tailor's. They talked about the guests of the previous evening.

"There's a great change on Lord Meikleham," said Malcolm.

"There is that," said Wallis. "I consider him much improved. But you see he's succeeded; he's the earl now, and Lord Liftore—and a menseful, broad shouldered man to the boot of the bargain. He used to be such a windle straw!"

In order to speak good English, Wallis now and then, like some Scotch people of better education, anglicized a word ludicrously.

"Is there no news of his marriage?" asked Malcolm, adding, "they say he has great property."

"My love she's but a lassie yet," said Wallis, "—though she too has changed quite as much as my lord."

"Who are you speaking of?" asked Malcolm, anxious to hear the talk of the household on the matter.

"Why, Lady Lossie, of course. Anybody with half an eye can see as much as that."

"Is it settled then?"

"That would be hard to say. Her ladyship is too like her father: no one can tell what may be her mind the next minute. But, as I say, she's young, and ought to have her fling first—so far, that is, as we can permit it to a woman of her rank. Still, as I say, anybody with half an eye can see the end of it all: he's for ever hovering about her. My lady, too, has set her mind on it, and for my part I can't see what better she can do. I must say I approve of the match. I can see no possible objection to it."

"We used to think he drank too much," suggested Malcolm.

"Claret," said Wallis, in a tone that seemed to imply no one could drink too much of that.

"No, not claret only. I've seen the whisky follow the claret."

"Well, he don't now—not whisky at least. He don't drink too much—not much too much—not more than a gentleman should. He don't look like it—does he now? A good wife, such as my Lady Lossie will make him, will soon set him all right. I think of taking a similar protection myself, one of these days."

"He is not worthy of her," said Malcolm.

"Well, I confess his family won't compare with hers. There's a grandfather in it somewhere that was a banker or a brewer or a soap boiler, or something of the sort, and she and her people have been earls and marquises ever since they walked arm in arm out of the ark. But, bless you! all that's been changed since I came to town. So long as there's plenty of money and the mind to spend it, we have learned not to be exclusive. It's selfish that. It's not Christian. Everything lies in the mind to spend it though. Mrs Tredger— that's our lady's maid—only this is a secret—says it's all settled—she knows it for certain fact—only there's nothing to be said about it yet—she's so young, you know."

"Who was the man that sat nearly opposite my lady, on the other side of the table?" asked Malcolm.

"I know who you mean. Didn't look as if he'd got any business there —not like the rest of them, did he? No, they never do. Odd and end sort of people like he is, never do look the right thing— let them try ever so hard. How can they when they ain't it? That's a fellow that's painting Lady Lossie's portrait! Why he should be asked to dinner for that, I'm sure I can't tell. He ain't paid for it in victuals, is he? I never saw such land leapers let into Lossie House, I know! But London's an awful place. There's no such a thing as respect of persons here. Here you meet the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker, any night in my lady's drawing room. I declare to you, Mawlcolm MacPhail, it makes me quite uncomfortable at times to think who I may have been waiting upon without knowing it. For that painter fellow, Lenorme they call him, I could knock him on the teeth with the dish every time I hold it to him. And to see him stare at Lady Lossie as he does!"

"A painter must want to get a right good hold of the face he's got to paint," said Malcolm. "Is he here often?"

"He's been here five or six times already," answered Wallis, "and how many times more I may have to fill his glass, I don't know. I always give him second best sherry, I know. I'm sure the time that pictur' 's been on hand! He ought to be ashamed of himself. If she's been once to his studio, she's been twenty times—to give him sittings as they call it. He's making a pretty penny of it, I'll be bound! I wonder he has the cheek to show himself when my lady treats him so haughtily. But those sort of people have no proper feelin's, you see: it's not to be expected of such."

Wallis liked the sound of his own sentences, and a great deal more talk of similar character followed before they got back from the tailor's. Malcolm was tired enough of him, and never felt the difference between man and man more strongly than when, after leaving him, he set out for a walk with Blue Peter, whom he found waiting him at his lodging. On this same Blue Peter, however, Wallis would have looked down from the height of his share of the marquisate as one of the lower orders—ignorant, vulgar, even dirty.

They had already gazed together upon not a few of the marvels of London, but nothing had hitherto moved or drawn them so much as the ordinary flow of the currents of life through the huge city. Upon Malcolm, however, this had now begun to pall, while Peter already found it worse than irksome, and longed for Scaurnose. At the same time loyalty to Malcolm kept him from uttering a whisper of his homesickness. It was yet but the fourth day they had been in London.

"Eh, my lord!" said Blue Peter, when by chance they found themselves in the lull of a little quiet court, somewhere about Gray's Inn, with the roar of Holborn in their ears, "it's like a month sin' I was at the kirk. I'm feart the din's gotten into my heid, an' I'll never get it out again. I cud maist wuss I was a mackerel, for they tell me the fish hears naething. I ken weel noo what ye meant, my lord, whan ye said ye dreidit the din micht gar ye forget yer Macker."

"I hae been wussin' sair mysel', this last twa days," responded Malcolm, "'at I cud get ae sicht o' the jaws clashin' upo' the Scaurnose, or rowin up upo' the edge o' the links. The din o' natur' never troubles the guid thouchts in ye. I reckon it's 'cause it's a kin' o' a harmony in 'tsel', an' a harmony's jist, as the maister used to say, a higher kin' o' a peace. Yon organ 'at we hearkent till ae day ootside the kirk, ye min'—man, it was a quaietness in 'tsel', and cam' throu' the din like a bonny silence—like a lull i' the win' o' this warl'! It wasna a din at a', but a gran' repose like. But this noise tumultuous o' human strife, this din' o' iron shune an' iron wheels, this whurr and whuzz o' buyin' an' sellin' an' gettin' gain—it disna help a body to their prayers."

"Eh, na, my lord! Jist think o' the preevilege—I never saw nor thoucht o' 't afore—o' haein' 't i' yer pooer, ony nicht 'at ye're no efter the fish, to stap oot at yer ain door, an' be in the mids o' the temple! Be 't licht or dark, be 't foul or fair, the sea sleepin' or ragin', ye ha'e aye room, an' naething atween ye an' the throne o' the Almichty, to the whilk yer prayers ken the gait, as weel 's the herrin' to the shores o' Scotlan': ye ha'e but to lat them flee, an' they gang straucht there. But here ye ha'e aye to luik sae gleg efter yer boady, 'at, as ye say, my lord, yer sowl's like to come aff the waur, gien it binna clean forgotten."

"I doobt there's something no richt aboot it, Peter," returned Malcolm.

"There maun be a heap no richt aboot it" answered Peter

"Ay, but I'm no meanin' 't jist as ye du. I had the haill thing throu' my heid last nicht, an' I canna but think there's something wrang wi' a man gien he canna hear the word o' God as weel i' the mids o' a multitude no man can number, a' made ilk ane i' the image o' the Father—as weel, I say, as i' the hert o' win' an' watter an' the lift an' the starns an' a'. Ye canna say 'at thae things are a' made i' the image o' God, in the same w'y, at least, 'at ye can say 't o' the body an' face o' a man, for throu' them the God o' the whole earth revealed Himsel' in Christ."

"Ow, weel, I wad alloo what ye say, gien they war a' to be considered Christians."

"Ow, I grant we canna weel du that i' the full sense, but I doobt, gien they bena a' Christians 'at ca's themsel's that, there's a heap mair Christianity nor get's the credit o' its ain name. I min' weel hoo Maister Graham said to me ance 'at hoo there was something o' Him 'at made him luikin' oot o' the een o' ilka man 'at he had made; an' what wad ye ca' that but a scart or a straik o' Christianity."

"Weel, I kenna; but ony gait I canna think it can be again' the trowth o' the gospel to wuss yersel' mair alane wi' yer God nor ye ever can be in sic an awfu' Babylon o' a place as this."

"Na, na, Peter; I'm no sayin' that. I ken weel we're to gang intill the closet and shut to the door. I'm only afeart 'at there be something wrang in mysel' 'at tak's 't ill to be amon' sae mony neibors. I'm thinkin' 'at, gien a' was richt 'ithin me, gien I lo'ed my neibor as the Lord wad hae them 'at lo'ed Him lo'e ilk ane his brither, I micht be better able to pray amang them—ay, i' the verra face o' the bargainin' an' leein' a' aboot me."

"An' min' ye," said Peter, pursuing the train of his own thoughts, and heedless of Malcolm's, "'at oor Lord himsel' bude whiles to win awa', even frae his dissiples, to be him lane wi' the Father o' 'im."

"Ay, ye're richt there, Peter," answered Malcolm, "but there's ae p'int in 't ye maunna forget—and that is 'at it was never i' the day-time—sae far's I min'—'at he did sae. The lee lang day he was among 's fowk—workin' his michty wark. Whan the nicht cam', in which no man could wark, he gaed hame till 's Father, as 't war. Eh me! but it's weel to ha'e a man like the schuilmaister to put trowth intill ye. I kenna what comes o' them 'at ha'e drucken maisters, or sic as cares for naething but coontin' an Laitin, an' the likes o' that!"



CHAPTER XIV: FLORIMEL

That night Florimel had her thoughts as well as Malcolm. Already life was not what it had been to her, and the feeling of a difference is often what sets one a-thinking first. While her father lived, and the sureness of his love overarched her consciousness with a heaven of safety, the physical harmony of her nature had supplied her with a more than sufficient sense of well being. Since his death, too, there had been times when she even fancied an enlargement of life in the sense of freedom and power which came with the knowledge of being a great lady, possessed of the rare privilege of an ancient title and an inheritance which seemed to her a yet greater wealth than it was. But she had soon found that, as to freedom, she had less of that than before—less of the feeling of it within her: not much freedom of any sort is to be had without fighting for it, and she had yet to discover that the only freedom worth the name —that of heart, and soul, and mind—is not to be gained except through the hardest of battles. She was very lonely, too. Lady Bellair had never assumed with her any authority, and had always been kind even to petting, but there was nothing about her to make a home for the girl's heart. She felt in her no superiority, and for a spiritual home that is essential. As she learned to know her better, this sense of loneliness went on deepening, for she felt more and more that her guardian was not one in whom she could place genuine confidence, while yet her power over her was greater than she knew. The innocent nature of the girl had begun to recoil from what she saw in the woman of the world, and yet she had in herself worldliness enough to render her fully susceptible of her influences. Notwithstanding her fine health and natural spirits, Florimel had begun to know what it is to wake suddenly of a morning between three and four, and lie for a long weary time, sleepless. In youth bodily fatigue ensures falling asleep, but as soon as the body is tolerably rested, if there be unrest in the mind, that wakes it, and consciousness returns in the shape of a dull misgiving like the far echo of the approaching trump of the archangel. Indeed, those hours are as a vestibule to the great hall of judgment, and to such as, without rendering it absolute obedience, yet care to keep on some sort of terms with their conscience, is a time of anything but comfort. Nor does the court in those hours sitting, concern itself only with heavy questions of right or wrong, but whoever loves and cares himself for his appearance before the eyes of men, finds himself accused of paltry follies, stupidities, and indiscretions, and punished with paltry mortifications, chagrins, and anxieties. From such arraignment no man is free but him who walks in the perfect law of liberty—that is, the will of the Perfect—which alone is peace.

On the morning after she had thus taken Malcolm again into her service, Florimel had one of these experiences—a foretaste of the Valley of the Shadow: she awoke in the hour when judgment sits upon the hearts of men. Or is it not rather the hour for which a legion of gracious spirits are on the watch—when, fresh raised from the death of sleep, cleansed a little from the past and its evils by the gift of God, the heart and brain are most capable of their influences?—the hour when, besides, there is no refuge of external things wherein the man may shelter himself from the truths they would so gladly send conquering into the citadel of his nature, —no world of the senses to rampart the soul from thought, when the eye and the ear are as if they were not, and the soul lies naked before the infinite of reality. This live hour of the morning is the most real hour of the day, the hour of the motions of a prisoned and persecuted life, of its effort to break through and breathe. A good man then finds his refuge in the heart of the Purifying Fire; the bad man curses the swarms of Beelzebub that settle upon every sore spot in his conscious being.

But it was not the general sense of unfitness in the conditions of her life, neither was it dissatisfaction with Lady Bellair, or the want of the pressure of authority upon her unstable being; it was not the sense of loneliness and unshelteredness in the sterile waste of fashionable life, neither was it weariness with the same and its shows, or all these things together, that could have waked the youth of Florimel and kept it awake at this hour of the night —for night that hour is, however near the morning.

Some few weeks agone, she had accompanied to the study of a certain painter, a friend who was then sitting to him for her portrait. The moment she entered, the appearance of the man and his surroundings laid hold of her imagination. Although on the very verge of popularity, he was young—not more than five and twenty. His face, far from what is called handsome, had a certain almost grandeur in it, owed mainly to the dominant forehead, and the regnant life in the eyes. To this the rest of the countenance was submissive. The mouth was sweet yet strong, seeming to derive its strength from the will that towered above and overhung it, throned on the crags of those eyebrows. The nose was rather short, not unpleasantly so, and had mass enough. In figure he was scarcely above the usual height, but well formed. To a first glance even, the careless yet graceful freedom of his movements was remarkable, while his address was manly, and altogether devoid of self recommendation. Confident modesty and unobtrusive ease distinguished his demeanour. His father, Arnold Lenorme, descended from an old Norman family, had given him the Christian name of Raoul, which, although outlandish, tolerably fitted the surname, notwithstanding the contiguous l's, objectionable to the fastidious ear of their owner. The earlier and more important part of his education, the beginnings, namely, of everything he afterwards further followed, his mother herself gave him, partly because she was both poor and capable, and partly because she was more anxious than most mothers for his best welfare. The poverty they had crept through, as those that strive after better things always will, one way or another, with immeasurable advantage, and before the time came when he must leave home, her influence had armed him in adamant—a service which alas! few mothers seem capable of rendering the knights whom they send out into the battlefield of the world. Most of them give their children the best they have; but how shall a foolish woman ever be a wise mother? The result in his case was, that reverence for her as the type of womanhood, working along with a natural instinct for refinement, a keen feeling of the incompatibility with art of anything in itself low or unclean, and a healthful and successful activity of mind, had rendered him so far upright and honourable that he had never yet done that in one mood which in another he had looked back upon with loathing. As yet he had withstood the temptations belonging to his youth and his profession—in great measure also the temptations belonging to success; he had not yet been tried with disappointment, or sorrow, or failure.

As to the environment in which Florimel found him, it was to her a region of confused and broken colour and form—a kind of chaos out of which beauty was ever ready to start. Pictures stood on easels, leaned against chair backs, glowed from the wall—each contributing to the atmosphere of solved rainbow that seemed to fill the space. Lenorme was seated—not at his easel, but at a grand piano, which stood away, half hidden in a corner, as if it knew itself there on sufferance, with pictures all about the legs of it. For they had walked straight in without giving his servant time to announce them. A bar of a song, in a fine tenor voice, broke as they opened the door; and the painter came to meet them from the farther end of the study. He shook hands with Florimel's friend, and turned with a bow to her. At the first glance the eyes of both fell. Raised the same instant, they encountered each other point blank, and then the eloquent blood had its turn at betrayal. What the moment meant, Florimel did not understand; but it seemed as if Raoul and she had met somewhere long ago, were presumed not to know it, but could not help remembering it, and agreeing to recognise it as a fact. A strange pleasure filled her heart. While Mrs Barnardiston sat she flitted about the room like a butterfly, looking at one thing after another, and asking now the most ignorant, now the most penetrative question, disturbing not a little the work, but sweetening the temper of the painter, as he went on with his study of the mask and helmet into which the Gorgon stare of the Unideal had petrified the face and head of his sitter. He found the situation trying nevertheless. It was as if Cupid had been set by Jupiter to take a portrait of Io in her stall, while evermore he heard his Psyche fluttering about among the peacocks in the yard. For the girl had bewitched him at first sight. He thought it was only as an artist, though to be sure a certain throb, almost of pain, in the region of the heart, when first his eyes fell before hers, might have warned, and perhaps did in vain warn him otherwise. Sooner than usual he professed himself content with the sitting, and then proceeded to show the ladies some of his sketches and pictures. Florimel asked to see one standing as in disgrace with its front to the wall. He put it, half reluctantly, on an easel, and said it was meant for the unveiling of Isis, as presented in a maehrchen of Novalis, introduced in Die Lehrlinge zu Sais, in which the goddess of Nature reveals to the eager and anxious gaze of the beholder the person of his Rosenbluethchen, whom he had left behind him when he set out to visit the temple of the divinity. But on the great pedestal where should have sat the goddess there was no gracious form visible. That part of the picture was a blank. The youth stood below, gazing enraptured with parted lips and outstretched arms, as if he had already begun' to suspect what had begun to dawn through the slowly thinning veil—but to the eye of the beholder he gazed as yet only on vacancy, and the picture had not reached an attempt at self explanation. Florimel asked why he had left it so long unfinished, for the dust was thick on the back of the canvas.

"Because I have never seen the face or figure," the painter answered, "either in eye of mind or of body, that claimed the position."

As he spoke, his eyes seemed to Florimel to lighten strangely, and as if by common consent they turned away, and looked at something else. Presently Mrs Barnardiston, who cared more for sound than form or colour, because she could herself sing a little, began to glance over some music on the piano, curious to find what the young man had been singing, whereupon Lenorme said to Florimel hurriedly, and almost in a whisper, with a sort of hesitating assurance,

"If you would give me a sitting or two—I know I am presumptuous, but if you would—I—I should send the picture to the Academy in a week."

"I will," replied Florimel, flushing like a wild poppy, and as she said it, she looked up in his face and smiled.

"It would have been selfish," she said to herself as they drove away, "to refuse him."

This first interview, and all the interviews that had followed, now passed through her mind as she lay awake in the darkness preceding the dawn, and she reviewed them not without self reproach. But for some of my readers it will be hard to believe that one of the feelings that now tormented the girl was a sense of lowered dignity because of the relation in which she stood to the painter—seeing there was little or no ground for moral compunction, and the feeling had its root merely in the fact that he was a painter fellow, and she a marchioness. Her rank had already grown to seem to her so identified with herself that she was hardly any longer capable of the analysis that should show it distinct from her being. As to any duty arising from her position, she had never heard the word used except as representing something owing to, not owed by rank. Social standing in the eyes of the super excellent few of fashion was the Satan of unrighteousness worshipped around her. And the precepts of this worship fell upon soil prepared for it. For with all the simplicity of her nature, there was in it an inborn sense of rank, of elevation in the order of the universe above most others of the children of men—of greater intrinsic worth therefore in herself. How could it be otherwise with the offspring of generations of pride and falsely conscious superiority? Hence, as things were going now with the mere human part of her, some commotion, if not earthquake indeed, was imminent. Nay the commotion had already begun, as manifest in her sleeplessness and the thoughts that occupied it.

Rightly to understand the sense of shame and degradation she had not unfrequently felt of late, we must remember that in the circle in which she moved she heard professions, arts, and trades alluded to with the same unuttered, but the more strongly implied contempt —a contempt indeed regarded as so much a matter of course, so thoroughly understood, so reasonable in its nature, so absolute in its degree, that to utter it would have been bad taste from very superfluity. Yet she never entered the painter's study but with trembling heart, uncertain foot, and fluttering breath, as of one stepping within the gates of an enchanted paradise, whose joy is too much for the material weight of humanity to ballast even to the steadying of the bodily step, and the outward calm of the bodily carriage. How far things had gone between them we shall be able to judge by and by; it will be enough at present to add that it was this relation and the inward strife arising from it that had not only prematurely, but over rapidly ripened the girl into the woman.

This my disclosure of her condition, however, has not yet uncovered the sorest spot upon which the flies of Beelzebub settled in the darkness of this torture hour of the human clock. Although still the same lively, self operative nature she had been in other circumstances, she was so far from being insensible or indifferent to the opinions of others, that she had not even strength enough to keep a foreign will off the beam of her choice: the will of another, in no way directly brought to bear on hers, would yet weigh to her encouragement where her wish was doubtful, or to her restraint where impulse was strong; it would even move her towards a line of conduct whose anticipated results were distasteful to her. Ever and anon her pride would rise armed against the consciousness of slavery, .but its armour was too weak either for defence or for deliverance. She knew that the heart of Lady Bellair, what of heart she had, was set upon her marriage with her nephew, Lord Liftore. Now she recoiled from the idea of marriage, and dismissed it into a future of indefinite removal; she had no special desire to please Lady Bellair from the point of gratitude, for she was perfectly aware that her relation to herself was far from being without advantage to that lady's position as well as means: a whisper or two that had reached her had been enough to enlighten her in that direction; neither could she persuade herself that Lord Liftore was at all the sort of man she could become proud of as a husband; and yet she felt destined to be his wife. On the other hand she had no dislike to him: he was handsome, well informed, capable—a gentleman, she thought, of good regard in the circles in which they moved, and one who would not in any manner disgrace her, although to be sure he was her inferior in rank, and she would rather have married a duke. At the same time, to confess all the truth, she was by no means indifferent to the advantages of having for a husband a man with money enough to restore the somewhat tarnished prestige of her own family to its pristine brilliancy. She had never said a word to encourage the scheming of Lady Bellair; neither, on the other hand, had she ever said a word to discourage her hopes, or give her ground for doubting the acceptableness of her cherished project. Hence Lady Bellair had naturally come to regard the two as almost affianced. But Florimel's aversion to the idea of marriage, and her horror at the thought of the slightest whisper of what was between her and Lenorme, increased together.

There were times too when she asked herself in anxious discomfort whether she was not possibly a transgressor against a deeper and simpler law than that of station—whether she was altogether maidenly in the encouragement she had given and was giving to the painter. It must not be imagined that she had once visited him without a companion, though that companion was indeed sometimes only her maid—her real object being covered by the true pretext of sitting for her portrait, which Lady Bellair pleased herself with imagining would one day be presented to Lord Liftore. But she could not, upon such occasions of morning judgment as this, fail to doubt sorely whether the visits she paid him, and the liberties which upon fortunate occasions she allowed him, were such as could be justified on any ground other than that she was prepared to give him all. All, however, she was by no means prepared to give him: that involved consequences far too terrible to be contemplated even as possibilities.

With such causes for disquiet in her young heart and brain, it is not then wonderful that she should sometimes be unable to slip across this troubled region of the night in the boat of her dreams, but should suffer shipwreck on the waking coast, and have to encounter the staring and questioning eyes of more than one importunate truth. Nor is it any wonder either that, to such an inexperienced and so troubled a heart, the assurance of one absolutely devoted friend should come with healing and hope—even if that friend should be but a groom, altogether incapable of understanding her position, or perceiving the phantoms that crowded about her, threatening to embody themselves in her ruin. A clumsy, ridiculous fellow, she said to herself, from whose person she could never dissociate the smell of fish, who talked a horrible jargon called Scotch, and who could not be prevented from uttering unpalatable truths at uncomfortable moments; yet whose thoughts were as chivalrous as his person was powerful, and whose countenance was pleasing if only for the triumph of honesty therein: she actually felt stronger and safer to know he was near, and at her beck and call.



CHAPTER XV: PORTLOSSIE

Mr Crathie, seeing nothing more of Malcolm, believed himself at last well rid of him; but it was days before his wrath ceased to flame, and then it went on smouldering. Nothing occurred to take him to the Seaton, and no business brought any of the fisher people to his office during that time. Hence he heard nothing of the mode of Malcolm's departure. When at length in the course of ordinary undulatory propagation the news reached him that Malcolm had taken the yacht with him, he was enraged beyond measure at the impudence of the theft, as he called it, and ran to the Seaton in a fury. He had this consolation, however: the man who had accused him of dishonesty and hypocrisy had proved but a thief.

He found the boathouse indeed empty, and went storming from cottage to cottage, but came upon no one from whom his anger could draw nourishment, not to say gain satisfaction. At length he reached the Partan's, found him at home, and commenced, at haphazard, abusing him as an aider and abettor of the felony. But Meg Partan was at home also, as Mr Crathie soon learned to his cost; for, hearing him usurp her unique privilege of falling out upon her husband, she stole from the ben end, and having stood for a moment silent in the doorway, listening for comprehension, rushed out in a storm of tongue.

"An' what for sudna my man," she cried, at full height of her screeching voice, "lay tu his han' wi' ither honest fowk to du for the boat what him 'at was weel kent for the captain o' her, sin' ever she was a boat, wantit dune? Wad ye tak the comman' o' the boat, sir, as weel's o' a' thing ither aboot the place?"

"Hold your tongue, woman," said the factor; "I have nothing to say to you."

"Aigh, sirs! but it's a peety ye wasna foreordeent to be markis yersel'! It maun be a sair vex to ye 'at ye're naething but the factor."

"If ye don't mind your manners, Mistress Fin'lay," said Mr Crathie in glowing indignation, "perhaps you'll find that the factor is as much as the marquis, when he's all there is for one."

"Lord safe 's hear till 'im !" cried the Partaness. "Wha wad hae thoucht it o' 'im? There's fowk 'at it sets weel to tak upo' them! His father, honest man, wad ne'er hae spoken like that to Meg Partan; but syne he was an honest man, though he was but the heid shepherd upo' the estate. Man, I micht hae been yer mither—gien I had been auld eneuch for 's first wife, for he wad fain hae had me for 's second."

"I've a great mind to take out a warrant against you, John Fin'lay, otherwise called the Partan, as airt an' pairt in the stealing of the Marchioness of Lossie's pleasure boat," said the factor. "And for you, Mistress Fin'lay, I would have you please to remember that this house, as far at least as you are concerned, is mine, although I am but the factor, and not the marquis; and if you don't keep that unruly tongue of yours a little quieter in your head, I'll set you in the street the next quarter day but one, as sure's ever you gutted a herring, and then you may bid goodbye to Portlossie, for there's not a house, as you very well know, in all the Seaton, that belongs to another than her ladyship."

"'Deed, Mr Crathie," returned Meg Partan, a little sobered by the threat, "ye wad hae mair sense nor rin the risk o' an uprisin' o' the fisher fowk. They wad ill stan' to see my auld man an' me misused, no to say 'at her leddyship hersel' wad see ony o' her ain fowk turned oot o' hoose an' haudin' for naething ava."

"Her ladyship wad gi'e hersel' sma' concern gien the haill bilin' o' ye war whaur ye cam frae," returned the factor. "An' for the toon here, the fowk kens the guid o' a quaiet caus'ay ower weel to lament the loss o' ye."

"The deil's i' the man!" cried the Partaness in high scorn. "He wad threip upo' me 'at I was ane o' thae lang tongued limmers 'at maks themsel's h'ard frae ae toon's en' to the tither! But I s' gar him priv 's words yet!"

"Ye see, sir," interposed the mild Partan, anxious to shove extremities aside, "we didna ken 'at there was onything intill't by ord'nar. Gien we had but kent 'at he was oot o' your guid graces,—"

"Haud yer tongue afore ye lee, man," interrupted his wife. "Ye ken weel eneuch ye wad du what Ma'colm MacPhail wad hae ye du, for ony factor in braid Scotlan'."

"You must have known," said the factor to the Partan, apparently heedless of this last outbreak of the generous evil temper, and laying a cunning trap for the information he sorely wanted, but had as yet failed in procuring—"else why was it that not a soul went with him? He could ill manage the boat alone."

"What put sic buff an' styte i' yer heid, sir?" rejoined Meg; defiant of the hints her husband sought to convey to her. "There's mony ane wad hae been ready to gang, only wha sud gang but him 'at gaed wi' him an' 's lordship frae the first?"

"And who was that?" asked Mr Crathie.

"Ow! wha but Blue Peter?" answered Meg.

"Hm!" said the factor, in a tone that for almost the first time in her life made the woman regret that she had spoken, and therewith he rose and left the cottage.

"Eh, mither!" cried Lizzy, in her turn appearing from the ben end, with her child in her arms, "ye hae wroucht ruin i' the earth! He'll hae Peter an' Annie an' a' oot o' hoose an' ha', come midsummer."

"I daur him till't!" cried her mother, in the impotence and self despite of a mortifying blunder; "I'll raise the toon upon 'im."

"What wad that du, mither?" returned Lizzy, in distress about her friends. "It wad but mak' ill waur."

"An' wha are ye to oppen yer mou' sae wide to yer mither?" burst forth Meg Partan, glad of an object upon which the chagrin that consumed her might issue in flame. "Ye havena luikit to yer ain gait sae weel 'at ye can thriep to set richt them 'at broucht ye forth.—Wha are ye, I say?" she repeated in rage.

"Ane 'at folly's made wiser, maybe, mither," answered Lizzie sadly, and proceeded to take her shawl from behind the door: she would go to her friends at Scaurnose, and communicate her fears for their warning. But her words smote the mother within the mother, and she turned and looked at her daughter with more of the woman and less of the Partan in her rugged countenance than had been visible there since the first week of her married life. She had been greatly injured by the gaining of too easy a conquest and resultant supremacy over her husband, whence she had ever after revelled in a rule too absolute for good to any concerned. As she was turning away, her daughter caught a glimpse of her softened eyes, and went out of the house with more comfort in her heart than she had felt ever since first she had given her conscience cause to speak daggers to her.

The factor kept raging to himself all the way home, flung himself trembling on his horse, vouchsafing his anxious wife scarce any answer to her anxious enquiries, and galloped to Duff Harbour to Mr Soutar.

I will not occupy my tale with their interview. Suffice it to say that the lawyer succeeded at last in convincing the demented factor that it would be but prudent to delay measures for the recovery of the yacht and the arrest and punishment of its abductors, until he knew what Lady Lossie would say to the affair. She had always had a liking for the lad, Mr Soutar said, and he would not be in the least surprised to hear that Malcolm had gone straight to her ladyship and put himself under her protection. No doubt by this time the cutter was at its owner's disposal: it would be just like the fellow! He always went the nearest road anywhere. And to prosecute him for a thief would in any case but bring down the ridicule of the whole coast upon the factor, and breed him endless annoyance in the getting in of his rents—especially among the fishermen. The result was that Mr Crathie went home—not indeed a humbler or wiser man than he had gone, but a thwarted man, and therefore the more dangerous in the channels left open to the outrush of his angry power.

When Lizzy reached Scaurnose, her account of the factor's behaviour, to her surprise, did not take much effect upon Mrs Mair: a queer little smile broke over her countenance, and vanished. An enforced gravity succeeded, however, and she began to take counsel with Lizzy as to what they could do, or where they could go, should the worst come to the worst, and the doors, not only of her own house, but of Scaurnose and Portlossie as well, be shut against them. But through it all reigned a calm regard and fearlessness of the future which, to Lizzy's roused and apprehensive imagination, was strangely inexplicable. Annie Mair seemed possessed of some hidden and upholding assurance that raised her above the fear of man or what he could do to her. The girl concluded it must be the knowledge of God, and prayed more earnestly that night than she had prayed since the night on which Malcolm had talked to her so earnestly before he left. I must add this much, that she was not altogether astray: God was in Malcolm, giving new hope to his fisher folk.



CHAPTER XVI: ST JAMES THE APOSTLE

When Malcolm left his sister, he had a dim sense of having lapsed into Scotch, and set about buttressing and strengthening his determination to get rid of all unconscious and unintended use of the northern dialect, not only that, in his attendance upon Florimel, he might be neither offensive nor ridiculous, but that, when the time should come in which he must appear what he was, it might be less of an annoyance to her to yield the marquisate to one who could speak like a gentleman and one of the family. But not the less did he love the tongue he had spoken from his childhood, and in which were on record so many precious ballads and songs, old and new; and he resolved that, when he came out as a marquis, he would at Lossie House indemnify himself for the constraint of London. He would not have an English servant there except Mrs Courthope: he would not have the natural country speech corrupted with cockneyisms, and his people taught to speak like Wallis! To his old friends the fishers and their families, he would never utter a sentence but in the old tongue, haunted with all the memories of relations that were never to be obliterated or forgotten, its very tones reminding him and them of hardships together endured, pleasures shared, and help willingly given. At night, notwithstanding, he found that in talking with Blue Peter, he had forgotten all about his resolve, and it vexed him with himself not a little. He now saw that if he could but get into the way of speaking English to him, the victory would be gained, for with no one else would he find any difficulty then.

The next morning he went down to the stairs at London Bridge, and took a boat to the yacht. He had to cross several vessels to reach it. When at length he looked down from the last of them on the deck of the little cutter, he saw Blue Peter sitting on the coamings of the hatch, his feet hanging down within. He was lost in the book he was reading. Curious to see, without disturbing him, what it was that so absorbed him, Malcolm dropped quietly on the tiller, and thence on the deck, and approaching softly peeped over his shoulder. He was reading the epistle of James the apostle. Malcolm fell a-thinking. From Peter's thumbed bible his eyes went wandering through the thicket of masts, in which moved so many busy seafarers, and then turned to the docks and wharfs and huge warehouses lining the shores; and while they scanned the marvellous vision, the thoughts that arose and passed through his brain were like these: "What are ye duin' here, Jeames the Just? Ye was naething but a fisher body upon a sma' watter i' the hert o' the hills, 'at wasna even saut; an' what can the thochts that gaed throu' your fish catchin' brain hae to du wi' sic a sicht 's this? I won'er gien at this moment there be anither man in a' Lon'on sittin' readin' that epistle o' yours but Blue Peter here? He thinks there's naething o' mair importance, 'cep' maybe some ither pairts o' the same buik; but syne he's but a puir fisher body himsel', an' what kens he o' the wisdom an' riches an' pooer o' this michty queen o' the nations, thron't aboot him?—Is't possible the auld body kent something 'at was jist as necessar' to ilka man, the busiest in this croodit mairt, to ken an' gang by, as it was to Jeames an' the lave o' the michty apostles themsel's? For me, I dinna doobt it—but hoo it sud ever be onything but an auld warld story to the new warld o' Lon'on, I think it wad bleck Maister Graham himsel' til imaigine."

Before this, Blue Peter had become aware that some one was near him, but, intent on the words of his brother fisher of the old time, had half unconsciously put off looking up to see who was behind him. When now he did so, and saw Malcolm, he rose and touched his bonnet.

"It was jist i' my heid, my lord," he said, without any preamble, "sic a kin' o' a h'avenly Jacobin as this same Jacobus was! He's sic a leveller as was feow afore 'im, I doobt, wi' his gowd ringt man, an' his cloot cled brither! He pat me in twa min's, my lord, whan I got up, whether I wad touch my bonnet to yer lordship or no."

Malcolm laughed with hearty appreciation.

"When I am king of Lossie," he said, "be it known to all whom it may concern, that it is and shall be the right of Blue Peter, and all his descendants, to the end of time, to stand with bonneted heads in the presence of Lord or—no, not Lady, Peter—of the house of Lossie."

"Ay, but ye see, Ma'colm," said Peter, forgetting his address, and his eye twinkling in the humour of the moment, "it's no by your leave, or ony man's leave; it's the richt o' the thing; an' that I maun think aboot, an' see whether I be at leeberty to ca' ye my lord or no."

"Meantime, don't do it," said Malcolm, "lest you should have to change afterwards. You might find it difficult."

"Ye're cheengt a'ready," said Blue Peter, looking up at him sharply. "I ne'er h'ard ye speyk like that afore."

"Make nothing of it," returned Malcolm. "I am only airing my English on you; I have made up my mind to learn to speak in London as London people do, and so, even to you, in the meantime only, I am going to speak as good English as I can.—It's nothing between you and .me, Peter and you must not mind it," he added, seeing a slight cloud come over the fisherman's face.

Blue Peter turned away with a sigh. The sounds of English speech from the lips of Malcolm addressed to himself, seemed vaguely to indicate the opening of a gulf between them, destined ere long to widen to the whole social width between a fisherman and a marquis, swallowing up in it not only all old memories, but all later friendship and confidence. A shadow of bitterness crossed the poor fellow's mind, and in it the seed of distrust began to strike root, and all because a newer had been substituted for an older form of the same speech and language. Truly man's heart is a delicate piece of work, and takes gentle handling or hurt. But that the pain was not all of innocence is revealed in the strange fact, afterwards disclosed by the repentant Peter himself, that, in that same moment, what had just passed his mouth as a joke, put on an important, serious look, and appeared to involve a matter of doubtful duty: was it really right of one man to say my lord to another? Thus the fisherman, and not the marquis, was the first to sin against the other because of altered fortune. Distrust awoke pride in the heart of Blue Pete; and he erred in the lack of the charity that thinketh no evil.

But the lack and the doubt made little show as yet. The two men rowed in the dinghy down the river to the Aberdeen wharf to make arrangements about Kelpie, whose arrival Malcolm expected the following Monday, then dined together, and after that had a long row up the river.



CHAPTER XVII: A DIFFERENCE

Notwithstanding his keenness of judgment and sobriety in action, Malcolm had yet a certain love for effect, a delight, that is, in the show of concentrated results, which, as I believe I have elsewhere remarked, belongs especially to the Celtic nature, and is one form in which the poetic element vaguely embodies itself. Hence arose the temptation to try on Blue Peter the effect of a literally theatrical surprise. He knew well the prejudices of the greater portion of the Scots people against every possible form of artistic, most of all, dramatic representation. He knew, therefore, also, that Peter would never be persuaded to go with him to the theatre: to invite him would be like asking him to call upon Beelzebub; but as this feeling was cherished in utter ignorance of its object, he judged he would be doing him no wrong if he made experiment how the thing itself would affect the heart and judgment of the unsophisticated fisherman.

Finding that The Tempest was still the play represented, he contrived, as they walked together, so to direct their course that they should be near Drury Lane towards the hour of commencement. He did not want to take him in much before the time: he would not give him scope for thought, doubt, suspicion, discovery.

When they came in front of the theatre, people were crowding in, and carriages setting down their occupants. Blue Peter gave a glance at the building.

"This'll be ane o' the Lon'on kirks, I'm thinkin'?" he said. "It's a muckle place; an' there maun be a heap o' guid fowk in Lon'on, for as ill's it's ca'd, to see sae mony, an' i' their cairritches, comin' to the kirk—on a Setterday nicht tu. It maun be some kin' o' a prayer meetin', I'm thinkin'."

Malcolm said nothing, but led the way to the pit entrance.

"That's no an ill w'y o' getherin' the baubees," said Peter, seeing how the incomers paid their money. "I hae h'ard o' the plate bein' robbit in a muckle toon afore noo."

When at length they were seated, and he had time to glance reverently around him, he was a little staggered at sight of the decorations; and the thought crossed his mind of the pictures and statues he had heard of in catholic churches; but he remembered Westminster Abbey, its windows and monuments, and returned to his belief that he was, if in an episcopal, yet in a protestant church. But he could not help the thought that the galleries were a little too gaudily painted, while the high pews in them astonished him. Peter's nature, however, was one of those calm, slow ones which, when occupied by an idea or a belief, are by no means ready to doubt its correctness, and are even ingenious in reducing all apparent contradictions to theoretic harmony with it—whence it came that to him all this was only part of the church furniture according to the taste and magnificence of London. He sat quite tranquil, therefore, until the curtain rose, revealing the ship's company in all the confusion of the wildest of sea storms.

Malcolm watched him narrowly. But Peter was first so taken by surprise, and then so carried away with the interest of what he saw, that thinking had ceased in him utterly, and imagination lay passive as a mirror to the representation. Nor did the sudden change from the first to the second scene rouse him, for before his thinking machinery could be set in motion, the delight of the new show had again caught him in its meshes. For to him, as it had been to Malcolm, it was the shore at Portlossie, while the cave that opened behind was the Bailie's Barn, where his friends the fishers might at that moment, if it were a fine night, be holding one of their prayer meetings. The mood lasted all through the talk of Prospero and Miranda; but when Ariel entered there came a snap, and the spell was broken. With a look in which doubt wrestled with horror, Blue Peter turned to Malcolm, and whispered with bated breath—"I'm jaloosin'—it canna be—it's no a playhoose, this?"

Malcolm merely nodded, but from the nod Peter understood that he had had no discovery to make as to the character of the place they were in.

"Eh!" he groaned, overcome with dismay. Then rising suddenly— "Guid nicht to ye, my lord," he said, with indignation, and rudely forced his way from the crowded house.

Malcolm followed in his wake, but said nothing till they were in the street. Then, forgetting utterly his resolves concerning English in the distress of having given his friend ground to complain of his conduct towards him, he laid his hand on Blue Peter's arm, and stopped him in the middle of the narrow street.

"I but thoucht, Peter," he said, "to get ye to see wi' yer ain een, an' hear wi' yer ain ears, afore ye passed jeedgment; but ye're jist like the lave."

"An' what for sudna I be jist like the lave?" returned Peter, fiercely.

"'Cause it's no fair to set doon a' thing for wrang 'at ye ha'e been i' the w'y o' hearing aboot by them 'at kens as little aboot them as yersel'. I cam here mysel', ohn kent whaur I was gaein', the ither nicht, for the first time i' my life; but I wasna fleyt like you, 'cause I kent frae the buik a' 'at was comin'. I hae h'ard in a kirk in ae ten meenutes jist a sicht o' what maun ha'e been sair displeasin' to the hert a' the maister a' 's a'; but that nicht I saw nae ill an' h'ard nae ill, but was weel peyed back upo' them 'at did it an' said it afore the business was ower, an' that's mair nor ye'll see i' the streets o' Portlossie ilka day. The playhoose is whaur ye gang to see what comes o' things 'at ye canna follow oot in ordinar' life."

Whether Malcolm, after a year's theatre going, would have said precisely the same is hardly doubtful. He spoke of the ideal theatre to which Shakspere is true, and in regard to that he spoke rightly.

"Ye decoy't me intill the hoose o' ineequity!" was Peter's indignant reply; "an' it 's no what ye ever ga'e me cause to expec' o' ye, sae 'at I micht ha'e ta'en tent o' ye."

"I thoucht nae ill o' 't," returned Malcolm.

"Weel, I div," retorted Peter.

"Then perhaps you are wrong," said Malcolm, "for charity thinketh no evil. You wouldn't stay to see the thing out."

"There ye are at yer English again! an' misgugglin' Scriptur' wi' 't an' a' this upo' Setterday nicht—maist the Sawbath day! Weel, I ha'e aye h'ard 'at Lon'on was an awfu' place, but I little thoucht the verra air o' 't wad sae sune turn an honest laad like Ma'colm MacPhail intill a scoffer. But maybe it's the markis o' 'im, an' no the muckle toon 'at's made the differ. Ony gait, I'm thinkin' it'll be aboot time for me to be gauin' hame."

Malcolm was vexed with himself, and both disappointed and troubled at the change which had come over his friend, and threatened to destroy the lifelong relation between them; his feelings therefore held him silent. Peter concluded that the marquis was displeased, and it clenched his resolve to go.

"What w'y am I to win hame, my lord?" he said, when they had walked some distance without word spoken.

"By the Aberdeen smack," returned Malcolm. "She sails on Tuesday. I will see you on board. You must take young Davy with you, for I wouldn't have him here after you are gone. There will be nothing for him to do."

"Ye're unco ready to pairt wi' 's noo 'at ye ha'e nae mair use for 's," said Peter.

"No sae ready as ye seem to pairt wi' yer chairity," said Malcolm, now angry too.

"Ye see Annie 'ill be thinkin' lang," said Peter, softening a little.

No more angry words passed between them, but neither did any thoroughly cordial ones, and they parted at the stairs in mutual, though, with such men, it could not be more than superficial estrangement.



CHAPTER XVIII: LORD LIFTORE

The chief cause of Malcolm's anxiety had been, and perhaps still was, Lord Liftore. In his ignorance of Mr Lenorme there might lie equal cause with him, but he knew such evil of the other that his whole nature revolted against the thought of his marrying his sister. At Lossie he had made himself agreeable to her, and now, if not actually living in the same house, he was there at all hours of the day.

It took nothing from his anxiety to see that his lordship was greatly improved. Not only had the lanky youth passed into a well formed man, but in countenance, whether as regarded expression, complexion, or feature, he was not merely a handsomer but looked in every way a healthier and better man. Whether it was from some reviving sense of duty, or that, in his attachment to Florimel, he had begun to cherish a desire of being worthy of her, I cannot tell; but he looked altogether more of a man than the time that had elapsed would have given ground to expect, even had he then seemed on the mend, and indeed promised to become a really fine looking fellow. His features were far more regular if less informed than those of the painter and his carriage prouder if less graceful and energetic. His admiration of and consequent attachment to Florimel had been growing ever since his visit to Lossie House the preceding summer, and if he had said nothing quite definite, it was only because his aunt represented the impolicy of declaring himself just yet: she was too young. She judged thus, attributing her evident indifference to an incapacity as yet for falling in love. Hence, beyond paying her all sorts of attentions and what compliments he was capable of constructing, Lord Liftore had not gone far towards making himself understood—at least, not until just before Malcolm's arrival, when his behaviour had certainly grown warmer and more confidential.

All the time she had been under his aunt's care he had had abundant opportunity for recommending himself, and he had made use of the privilege. For one thing, credibly assured that he looked well in the saddle, he had constantly encouraged Florimel's love of riding and desire to become a thorough horse woman, and they had ridden a good deal together in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh. This practice they continued as much as possible after they came to London early in the spring; but the weather of late had not been favourable, and Florimel had been very little out with him.

For a long time Lady Bellair had had her mind set on a match between the daughter of her old friend the Marquis of Lossie and her nephew, and it was with this in view that, when invited to Lossie House, she had begged leave to bring Lord Meikleham with her. The young man was from the first sufficiently taken with the beautiful girl to satisfy his aunt, and would even then have shown greater fervour in his attentions, had he not met Lizzy Findlay at the wedding of Joseph Mair's sister, and found her more than pleasing. I will not say that from the first he purposed wrong to her: he was too inexperienced in the ways of evil for that; but even when he saw plainly enough to what their mutual attraction was tending, he gave himself no trouble to resist it; and through the whole unhappy affair had not had one smallest struggle with himself for the girl's sake. To himself he was all in all as yet, and such was his opinion of his own precious being, that, had he thought about it, he would have considered the honour of his attentions far more than sufficient to make up to any girl in such a position for whatever mishap his acquaintance might bring upon her. What were the grief and mortification of parents to put in the balance against his condescension? what the shame and the humiliation of the girl herself compared with the honour of having been shone upon for a period, however brief, by his enamoured countenance? Must not even the sorrow attendant upon her loss be rendered more than endurable—be radiantly consoled by the memory that she had held such a demigod in her arms? When he left her at last, with many promises, not one of which he ever had the intention of fulfilling, he did purpose sending her a present. But at that time he was poor—dependent, indeed, for his pocket money upon his aunt; and, up to this hour, he had never since his departure from Lossie House taken the least notice of her either by gift or letter. He had taken care also that it should not be in her power to write to him, and now he did not even know that he was a father. Once or twice the possibility of such being the case occurred to him, and he thought within himself that if he were, and it should come to be talked of, it might, in respect of his present hopes, be awkward and disagreeable; for, although such a predicament was nowise unusual, in this instance the circumstances were. More than one of his bachelor friends had a small family even, but then it was in the regular way of an open and understood secret: the fox had his nest in some pleasant nook, adroitly masked, where lay his vixen and her brood; one day he would abandon them for ever, and, with such gathered store of experience, set up for a respectable family man. A few tears, a neat legal arrangement, and all would be as it had never been, only that the blood of the Montmorencies or Cliffords would meander unclaimed in this or that obscure channel, beautifying the race, and rousing England to noble deeds! But in his case it would be unpleasant—a little—that every one of his future tenantry should know the relation in which he stood to a woman of the fisher people. He did not fear any resentment—not that he would have cared a straw for it, on such trifling grounds, but people in their low condition never thought anything of such slips on the part of their women especially where a great man was concerned. What he did fear was that the immediate relations of the woman—that was how he spoke of Lizzy to himself —might presume upon the honour he had done them. Lizzy, however, was a good girl, and had promised to keep the matter secret until she heard from him, whatever might be the consequences; and surely there was fascination enough in the holding of a secret with such as he to enable her to keep her promise. She must be perfectly aware, however appearances might be against him, that he was not one to fail in appreciation of her conduct, however easy and natural all that he required of her might be. He would requite her royally when he was Lord of Lossie. Meantime, although it was even now in his power to make her rich amends, he would prudently leave things as they were, and not run the risk that must lie in opening communications.

And so the young earl held his head high, looked as innocent as may be desirable for a gentleman, had many a fair clean hand laid in his, and many a maiden waist yielded to his arm, while "the woman" flitted about half an alien amongst her own, with his child wound in her old shawl of Lossie tartan; wandering not seldom in the gloaming when her little one slept, along the top of the dune, with the wind blowing keen upon her from the regions of eternal ice, sometimes the snow settling softly on her hair, sometimes the hailstones nestling in its meshes; the skies growing blacker about her, and the sea stormier, while hope retreated so far into the heavenly regions, that hope and heaven both were lost to her view. Thus, alas! the things in which he was superior to her, most of all that he was a gentleman, while she was but a peasant girl— the things whose witchery drew her to his will, he made the means of casting her down from the place of her excellency into the mire of shame and loss. The only love worthy of the name ever and always uplifts.

Of the people belonging to the upper town of Portlossie, which raised itself high above the sea town in other respects besides the topical, there were none who did not make poor Lizzy feel they were aware of her disgrace, and but one man who made her feel it by being kinder than before. That man, strange to say, was the factor. With all his faults he had some chivalry, and he showed it to the fisher girl. Nor did he alter his manner to her because of the rudeness with which her mother had taken Malcolm's part.

It was a sore proof to Mr Crathie that his discharged servant was in favour with the marchioness when the order came from Mr Soutar to send up Kelpie. She had written to himself when she wanted her own horse; now she sent for this brute through her lawyer. It was plain that Malcolm had been speaking against him; and he was the more embittered therefore against his friends.

Since his departure he had been twice on the point of poisoning the mare.

It was with difficulty he found two men to take her to Aberdeen. There they had an arduous job to get her on board and secure her. But it had been done, and all the Monday night Malcolm was waiting her arrival at the wharf—alone, for after what had passed between them, he would not ask Peter to go with him, and besides he was no use with horses. At length, in the grey of a gurly dawn, the smack came alongside. They had had a rough passage, and the mare was considerably subdued by sickness, so that there was less difficulty in getting her ashore, and she paced for a little while in tolerable quietness. But with every step on dry land, the evil spirit in her awoke, and soon Malcolm had to dismount and lead her. The morning was little advanced, and few vehicles were about, otherwise he could hardly have got her home uninjured, notwithstanding the sugar with which he had filled a pocket Before he reached the mews he was very near wishing he had never seen her. But when he led her into the stable, he was a little encouraged as well as surprised to find that she had not forgotten Florimel's horse. They had always been a little friendly, and now they greeted each other with an affectionate neigh; after which, with the help of all she could devour, the demoness was quieter.



CHAPTER XIX: KELPIE IN LONDON

Before noon Lord Liftore came round to the mews: his riding horses were there. Malcolm was not at the moment in the stable.

"What animal is that?" he asked of his own groom, catching sight of Kelpie in her loose box.

"One just come up from Scotland for Lady Lossie, my lord," answered the man.

"She looks a clipper! Lead her out, and let me see her."

"She's not sound in the temper, my lord, the groom that brought her says. He told me on no account to go near her till she got used to the sight of me."

"Oh! you're afraid, are you?" said his lordship, whose breeding had not taught him courtesy to his inferiors.

At the word the man walked into her box. As he did so he looked out for her hoofs, but his circumspection was in vain: in a moment she had wheeled, jammed him against the wall, and taken his shoulder in her teeth. He gave a yell of pain. His lordship caught up a stable broom, and attacked the mare with it over the door; but it flew from his hand to the other end of the stable, and the partition began to go after it. But she still kept her hold of the man. Happily, however, Malcolm was not far off and hearing the noise, rushed in. He was just in time to save the groom's life. Clearing the stall partition, and seizing the mare by the nose with a mighty grasp, he inserted a forefinger behind her tusk, for she was one of the few mares tusked like a horse, and soon compelled her to open her mouth. The groom staggered and would have fallen, so cruelly had she mauled him, but Malcolm's voice roused him.

"For God's sake gang oot, as lang's there twa limbs o' ye stickin' thegither."

The poor fellow just managed to open the door, and fell senseless on the stones. Lord Liftore called for help, and they carried him into the saddle room, while one ran for the nearest surgeon.

Meantime Malcolm was putting a muzzle on Kelpie, which he believed she understood as a punishment, and while he was thus occupied, his lordship came from the saddle room and approached the box.

"Who are you?" he said. "I think I have seen you before."

"I was servant to the late Marquis of Lossie, my lord, and now I am groom to her ladyship."

"What a fury you've brought up with you! She'll never do for London."

"I told the man not to go near her, my lord."

"What's the use of her if no one can go near her?"

"I can, my lord."

"By Jove, she's a splendid creature to look at! but I don't know what you can do with her here, my man. She's fit to go double with Satan himself."

"She'll do for me to ride after my lady well enough. If only I had room to exercise her a bit!"

"Take her into the park early in the morning, and gallop her round. Only mind she don't break your neck. What can have made Lady Lossie send for such a devil as that!"

Malcolm held his peace.

"I'll try her myself some morning," said his lordship, who thought himself a better horseman than he was.

"I wouldn't advise you, my lord."

"Who the devil asked your advice?"

"Ten to one she'll kill you, my lord."

"That's my look out," said Liftore, and went into the house.

As soon as he had done with Kelpie, Malcolm dressed himself in his new livery, and went to tell his mistress of her arrival. She sent him orders to bring the mare round in half an hour. He went back to her, took off her muzzle, fed her, and while she ate her corn, put on the spurs he had prepared expressly for her use—a spike without a rowel, rather blunt, but sharp indeed when sharply used —like those of the Gauchos of the Pampas. Then he saddled her, and rode her round.

Having had her fit of temper, she was, to all appearance, going to be fairly good for the rest of the day, and looked splendid. She was a large mare, nearly thoroughbred, but with more bone than usual for her breeding, which she carried triumphantly—an animal most men would have been pleased to possess—and proud to ride. Florimel came to the door to see her, accompanied by Liftore, and was so delighted with the very sight of her that she sent at once to the stables for her own horse, that she might ride out attended by Malcolm. His lordship also ordered his horse.

They went straight to Rotten Row for a little gallop, and Kelpie was behaving very well for her.

"What did you have two such savages, horse and groom both, up from Scotland for, Florimel?" asked his lordship, as they cantered gently along the Row, Kelpie coming sideways after them, as if she would fain alter the pairing of her legs..

Florimel turned and cast an admiring glance on the two.

"Do you know I am rather proud of them," she said.

"He's a clumsy fellow, the groom; and for the mare, she's downright wicked," said Liftore.

"At least neither is a hypocrite," returned Florimel, with Malcolm's account of his quarrel with the factor in her mind. "The mare is just as wicked as she looks, and the man as good. Believe me, my lord, that man you call a savage never told a lie in his life!"

As she spoke she looked him hard in the face—with her father in her eyes.

Liftore could not return the look with equal steadiness. It seemed for the moment to be inquiring too curiously.

"I know what you mean," he said. "You don't believe my professions."

As he spoke he edged his horse close up to hers.

"But," he went on, "if I know that I speak the truth when I swear that I love every breath of wind that has but touched your dress as it passed, that I would die gladly for one loving touch of your hand—why should you not let me ease my heart by saying so? Florimel, my life has been a different thing from the moment I saw you first. It has grown precious to me since I saw that it might be —Confound the fellow! what's he about now with his horse devil?"

For at that moment his lordship's horse, a high bred but timid animal, sprang away from the side of Florimel's, and there stood Kelpie on her hind legs, pawing the air between him and his lady, and Florimel, whose old confidence in Malcolm was now more than revived, was laughing merrily at the discomfiture of his attempt at love making. Her behaviour and his own frustration put him in such a rage that, wheeling quickly round, he struck Kelpie, just as she dropped on all fours, a great cut with his whip across the haunches. She plunged and kicked violently, came within an inch of breaking his horse's leg, and flew across the rail into the park. Nothing could have suited Malcolm better. He did not punish her as he would have done had she been to blame, for he was always just to lower as well as higher animals, but he took her a great round at racing speed, while his mistress and her companion looked on, and everyone in the Row stopped and stared. Finally, he hopped her over the rail again, and brought her up dripping and foaming to his mistress. Florimel's eyes were flashing, and Liftore looked still angry.

"Dinna du that again, my lord," said Malcolm. "Ye're no my maister; an' gien ye war, ye wad hae no richt to brak my neck."

"No fear of that! That's not how your neck will be broken, my man," said his lordship, with an attempted laugh; for though he was all the angrier that he was ashamed of what he had done, he dared not further wrong the servant before his mistress.

A policeman came up and laid his hand on Kelpie's bridle.

"Take care what you're about," said Malcolm; "the mare's not safe. —There's my mistress, the Marchioness of Lossie."

The man saw an ugly look in Kelpie's eye, withdrew his hand, and turned to Florimel.

"My groom is not to blame," said she. "Lord Liftore struck his mare, and she became ungovernable."

The man gave a look at Liftore, seemed to take his likeness, touched his hat, and withdrew.

"You'd better ride the jade home," said Liftore.

Malcolm only looked at his mistress. She moved on, and he followed.

He was not so innocent in the affair as he had seemed. The expression of Liftore's face as he drew nearer to Florimel, was to him so hateful, that he interfered in a very literal fashion: Kelpie had been doing no more than he had made her until the earl struck her.

"Let us ride to Richmond tomorrow," said Florimel, "and have a good gallop in the park. Did you ever see a finer sight than that animal on the grass?"

"The fellow's too heavy for her," said Liftore. "I should very much like to try her myself."

Florimel pulled up, and turned to Malcolm.

"MacPhail," she said, "have that mare of yours ready whenever Lord Liftore chooses to ride her."

"I beg your pardon, my lady," returned Malcolm, "but would your ladyship make a condition with my lord that he shall not mount her anywhere on the stones."

"By Jove!" said Liftore scornfully. "You fancy yourself the only man that can ride!"

"It's nothing to me, my lord, if you break your neck; but I am bound to tell you I do not think your lordship will sit my mare. Stoat can't; and I can only because I know her as well as my own palm."

The young earl made no answer and they rode on—Malcolm nearer than his lordship liked.

"I can't think, Florimel," he said, "why you should want that fellow about you again. He is not only very awkward, but insolent as well."

"I should call it straightforward," returned Florimel.

"My dear Lady Lossie! See how close he is riding to us now."

"He is anxious, I daresay, as to your Lordship's behaviour. He is like some dogs that are a little too careful of their mistresses— touchy as to how they are addressed—not a bad fault in dog—or groom either. He saved my life once, and he was a great favourite with my father: I won't hear anything against him."

"But for your own sake—just consider:—what will people say if you show any preference for a man like that?" said Liftore, who had already become jealous of the man who in his heart he feared could ride better than himself.

"My lord!" exclaimed Florimel, with a mingling of surprise and indignation in her voice, and suddenly quickening .her pace, dropped him behind.

Malcolm was after her so instantly that it brought him abreast of Liftore.

"Keep your own place," said his lordship, with stern rebuke.

"I keep my place to my mistress," returned Malcolm.

Liftore looked at him as it he would strike him. But he thought better of it apparently, and rode after Florimel.



CHAPTER XX: BLUE PETER

By the time he had put up Kelpie, Malcolm found that his only chance of seeing Blue Peter before he left London, lay in going direct to the wharf. On his road he reflected on what had just passed, and was not altogether pleased with himself. He had nearly lost his temper with Liftore; and if he should act in any way unbefitting the position he had assumed, from the duties of which he was in no degree exonerated by the fact that he had assumed it for a purpose, it would not only be a failure in himself, but an impediment perhaps insurmountable in the path of his service. To attract attention was almost to insure frustration. When he reached the wharf he found they had nearly got her freight on board the smack. Blue Peter stood on the forecastle. He went to him and explained how it was that he had been unable to join him sooner.

"I didna ken ye," said Blue Peter, "in sic playactor kin' o' claes."

"Nobody in London would look at me twice now. But you remember how we were stared at when first we came," said Malcolm.

"Ow ay!" returned Peter with almost a groan; "there's a sair cheenge past upo' you, but I'm gauin' hame to the auld w'y o' things. The herrin' 'll be aye to the fore, I'm thinkin'; an' gien we getna a harbour we'll get a h'aven."

Judging it better to take no notice of this pretty strong expression of distrust and disappointment, Malcolm led him aside, and putting a few sovereigns in his hand, said,

"Here, Peter, that will take you home."

"It's ower muckle—a heap ower muckle. I'll tak naething frae ye but what'll pay my w'y."

"And what is such a trifle between friends?"

"There was a time, Ma'colm, whan what was mine was yours, an' what was yours was mine, but that time's gane."

"I'm sorry to hear that, Peter; but still I owe you as much as that for bare wages."

"There was no word o' wages when ye said, Peter, come to Lon'on wi' me.—Davie there—he maun hae his wauges."

"Weel," said Malcolm, thinking it better to give way, "I'm no abune bein' obleeged to ye, Peter. I maun bide my time, I see, for ye winna lippen till me. Eh man! your faith's sune at the wa'."

"Faith! what faith?" returned Peter, almost fiercely. "We're tauld to put no faith in man; an' gien I bena come to that yet freely, I'm nearer till't nor ever I was afore."

"Weel, Peter, a' 'at I can say is, I ken my ain hert, an' ye dinna ken't."

"Daur ye tell me!" cried Peter. "Disna the Scriptur' itsel' say the hert o' man is deceitfu' an' despratly wickit: who can know it?"

"Peter," said Malcolm, and he spoke very gently, for he understood that love and not hate was at the root of his friend's anger and injustice, "gien ye winna lippen to me, there's naething for't but I maun lippen to you. Gang hame to yer wife, an' gi'e her my compliments, an' tell her a' 'at's past atween you an' me, as near, word for word, as ye can tell the same; an' say till her, I pray her to judge atween you an' me—an' to mak the best o' me to ye 'at she can, for I wad ill thole to loss yer freenship, Peter."

The same moment came the command for all but passengers to go ashore. The men grasped each other's hand, looked each other in the eyes with something of mutual reproach, and parted—Blue Peter down the river to Scaurnose and Annie, Malcolm to the yacht lying still in the Upper Pool.

He saw it taken properly in charge, and arranged for having it towed up the river and anchored in the Chelsea Reach.

When Blue Peter found himself once more safe out at sea, with twelve hundred yards of canvas spread above him in one mighty wing betwixt boom and gaff; and the wind blowing half a gale, the weather inside him began to change a little. He began to see that he had not been behaving altogether as a friend ought. It was not that he saw reason for being better satisfied with Malcolm or his conduct, but reason for being worse satisfied with himself; and the consequence was that he grew still angrier with Malcolm, and the wrong he had done him seemed more and more an unpardonable one.

When he was at length seated on the top of the coach running betwixt Aberdeen and Fochabers, which would set him down as near Scaurnose as coach could go, he began to be doubtful how Annie, formally retained on Malcolm's side by the message he had to give her, would judge in the question between them; for what did she know of theatres and such places? And the doubt strengthened as he neared home. The consequence was that he felt in no haste to execute Malcolm's commission; and hence, the delights of greeting over, Annie was the first to open her bag of troubles: Mr Crathie had given them notice to quit at Midsummer.

"Jist what I micht hae expeckit!" cried Blue Peter, starting up. "Woe be to the man 'at puts his trust in princes! I luikit till him to save the fisher fowk, an' no to the Lord; an' the tooer o' Siloam 's fa'en upo' my heid:—what does he, the first thing, but turn his ain auld freen's oot o' the sma beild they had! That his father nor his gran'father, 'at was naither o' them God fearin' men, wad never hae put their han' till. Eh, wuman! but my hert's sair 'ithin me. To think o' Ma'colm MacPhail turnin' his back upo' them 'at's been freens wi' 'im sin ever he was a wee loonie, rinnin' aboot in coaties!"