bring Mr. Ogilvie to task for representing this decent and respectable
woman as a graceless and dangerous coquette. No doubt she was the mother
of children. At her time of life she was better employed in the nursery
or in the kitchen than in flirting with young men; and could he doubt
that she was a good house-mistress when he saw with his own eyes how
spick and span everything was, and how accurately everything was served?
Even if his cousin Janet lived in the south, with all these fine flowers
and hot-house fruits to serve her purpose, she could not have done
better. He began to like this pleasant-eyed woman, though she seemed
delicate, and a trifle languid, and in consequence he sometimes could
not quite make out what she said. But then he noticed that the other
people talked in this limp fashion too: there was no precision about
their words; frequently they seemed to leave you to guess the end of
their sentences. As for the young lady next him, was she not very
delicate also? He had never seen such hands--so small, and fine, and
white. And although she talked only to her neighbor on the other side of
her, he could hear that her voice, low and musical as it was, was only a
murmur.

"Miss White and I," said Mrs. Ross to him--and at this moment the young
lady turned to them--"were talking before you came in of the beautiful
country you must know so well, and of its romantic stories and
associations with Prince Charlie. Gertrude, let me introduce Sir Keith
Macleod to you. I told Miss White you might come to us to-day; and she
was saying what a pity it was that Flora MacDonald was not a Macleod."

"That was very kind" said he, frankly, turning to this tall, pale girl,
with the rippling hair of golden brown and the heavy-lidded and downcast
eyes. And then he laughed. "We would not like to steal the honor from a
woman, even though she was a Macdonald, and you know the Macdonalds and