"Not properly. I am on my way to it now."

He turned to walk with her, and they leant over the railing looking down on the blackness below. A few feet from the top of the dungeon a magnificent hart's-tongue fern sprang from a crevice, and curled its delicate, palegreen fronds over the dank, dark stone.

66

'How lovely!" said Mona.

Yes," he said.

"And it is not only the force of con

trast. Its gloomy surroundings really do make it more beautiful."

"Yes," said Mona relentlessly; "but it is not what Nature meant it to be."

"True," he replied. "Yet who would wish it transplanted!"

Presently he turned away, and looked over the rough blue sea.

"This place depresses me unspeakably," he said. "It reminds me of a book of 'martyr stories' I had when I was a child. I have a mental picture now of a family sitting round a blazing fire, and saying in awestruck whispers, 'It's no' sae cheery as this the nicht i' the sea tower by St Rules.' What appalling ideas of history they give us when we are children!" And he added half absently—

"Sitzt das kleine Menschenkind

An dem Ocean der Zeit,

Schöpft mit seiner kleinen Hand
Tropfen aus der Ewigkeit.'"

Mona looked up with sparkling eyes and made answer

'Schöpfte nicht das kleine Menschenkind
Tropfen aus dem Ocean der Zeit,
Was geschieht verwehte wie der Wind
In den Abgrund öder Ewigkeit.""

"Go on, go on," she said, regardless of his unconcealed surprise, "the best thought comes last." So he took up the strain again:

"Tropfen aus dem Ocean der Zeit

Schöpft das Menschenkind mit kleiner Hand.

Spiegelt doch, dem Lichte zugewandt,

Sich darin die ganze Ewigkeit.'"

"I don't know," he said moodily. "There was precious little of Eternity in the drops that were doled out to me." "Not then," said Mona; "but when you were old enough to turn them to the light, you could see the eternal even there." His face relaxed into a smile. This girl was like an outlying part of his own mind.

They strolled slowly back to Rachel.

"Do you enjoy sight-seeing?" he asked. "The question is too big. Cut it down."

"Nay, I will judge for myself,-if you are not too tired to turn back to the town."

"Not a bit."

When Rachel heard of the proposal, she rose to her feet, with considerable help from Mona and from a stout umbrella. She would fain have "rested her legs" a little longer, and the necessity of acting the part of chaperon never so much as crossed her mind; but the honour of Dr Dudley's escort through the streets of St Rules was not to be lightly foregone.

The first half-hour brought considerably more pain than pleasure to Mona. She was straining every nerve to draw out the best side of Rachel; and this, under the circumstances, was no easy task.

Rachel's manner was often simple, natural, and even admirable, when she was speaking to her inferiors; but the society of any one whom she chose to consider her superior was sure to draw out her innate vulgarity. Mona understood Dr Dudley well enough to know that he had no regal disregard for what are known as "appearances," and she suffered more for him than for herself.

It did not occur to her that Rachel was acting very effectively the part of the damp, black wall, which was throwing the dainty fern into more brilliant relief.

"It is all his own doing," she thought indignantly. Why has he brought this upon himself and me? And it will fall upon me to keep Rachel from talking about it for the next week."

Fortunately, though Rachel trudged about gallantly to the last, she soon became too tired to talk, and then Mona gave herself up to the enjoyment of the hour. Either Dr Dudley knew St Rules by heart, or he possessed a magnetic power of alighting on the things that were worth seeing. Curious manuscripts and half-effaced inscriptions; stainedglass windows and fine bits of carving; forgotten paintings, and quaint old vergers and janitors who had become a part of the buildings in which they had grown old ;-all served in turn as the text for his brilliant talk. He might well say that talking was his Verderben.

Finally they wandered again through the ruins of the cathedral.

"Pull down the nests and the rooks will fly away!'" quoted Dudley rather bitterly. "Here at least we have the other side of the 'martyr stories.'

"I think sight-seeing is simply delightful," said Mona, as he stowed them into the coach; "but one wants special eyes to do it with."

"Everything becomes more interesting when seen 'through a temperament,' '" he said. "I am glad if mine has served

as a makeshift."

"She won't spot that reference," he thought to himself. That evening all three made reflections about the day's outing.

"It came off wonderfully well, considering that I went in search of it," thought Dudley. "I fully expected it to be a dead failure. She must have met the draper accidentally."

"He is very gentlemanly and amazingly clever," thought Rachel; "and he seemed as pleased at the meeting as any of us. But how my legs do ache!"

"I'll no more of this masquerading!" thought Mona. "I will take the first opportunity of asking Rachel's per

L

mission to tell him the whole truth.

it all as a matter of course."

Perhaps he will take

But when she went up to dinner the next day, Rachel calmly informed her that Dr Dudley had gone. "He has just walked up to the station with a bag in his hand," she said, "and Bill had a lot of luggage on a hurley. I think it's a queer sort of thing that he didn't look in and say good-bye, after we were all so friendly-like yesterday."

Mona smiled a little drearily.

"He might well say 'so long,'" she said to herself, an hour later, as she sat on the battlements of Castle Maclean. "Looked at in the abstract, as a period of time, three months is a pretty fair sample of the commodity!"

Thus does the feminine mind, while striving to grasp the abstract, fall back inevitably into the concrete!

"As a man," said Mona, "he is not a patch upon the Sahib; but I never had such a playfellow in my life!"

CHAPTER XXI.

THE FLYING SCOTCHMAN.

"What do you think, my dear?" said Rachel, a few days later, with beaming face. "I have just had a letter from my niece. Would you like to hear it?"

"Very much," said Mona. "First Impressions of a New Continent.' Is it the first you have had?”

"No, it's the second. She's no great hand at the letterwriting. But there's more 'impressions' in this. She says the difficulty of getting servants is beyond everything."

Rachel proceeded to read the epistle; and for once Mona found herself in absolute accord with her cousin. Rachel's niece was certainly "no great hand at the letter-writing."

It was evening, and Mona had just come in from a stroll in the twilight. She did not often go out after tea, but there was no denying the fact that the last few days had not been very lively ones, and that physical exercise had become more desirable than ever. She had not realised, till he was gone, that Dr Dudley's occasional companionship made any appreciable difference in the world at Borrowness; but she did not now hesitate for a moment to acknowledge the truth to herself.

"It is almost as if I had lost Doris or Lucy," she said; "and of course, in a place like this, sympathetic companionship is at a premium. One might go into a melancholia here over the loss of an intelligent dog or a favourite canary. The fact that so many women have fallen in love throws a lurid light on the lives they must have led. Poor souls! I will write to Tilbury to-morrow to send me my little box of books. Two hours' hard reading a day is a panacea for most things."

With this wholesome resolution she returned from her walk, to find Rachel in a state of beatification over her niece's letter.

"I declare I quite forgot," she said; "there's a parcel. and letter for you too. I think you'll find them on the chair by the door."

"Nothing of much interest," said Mona; "at least I don't know the handwriting on either. A begging-letter, I expect."

She proceeded to open the parcel first, untying the knot very deliberately, and speculating vaguely as to the cause of the curious damp smell about the wrappings. "Fancy Ruching" in gilt letters on one end of the box was apparently a misleading title; for, when the cover was removed, a mass of damp vegetation came to view.

Rachel lifted her hands in horror. The idea of bringing caterpillars and earwigs and the like of that into the house!

On the top of the box lay a sheet of moist writing-paper folded lengthwise. Mona took it up.