and got up on a chair to get fresh seed put in for her canary. It was
all done so simply, and naturally, and gracefully that in an instant a
fire of life and reality sprang into the whole of this sham thing. The
woman was no longer a marionette, but the anguish-stricken mother of
this gay and heedless girl. And when the daughter jumped down from the
chair again--her canary on her finger--and when she came forward to pet,
and caress, and remonstrate with her mother, and when the glare of the
lights flashed on the merry eyes, and on the white teeth and laughing
lips, there was no longer any doubt possible. Macleod's face was quite
pale. He took the programme from Ogilvie's hand, and for a minute or two
stared mechanically at the name of Miss Gertrude White, printed on the
pink-tinted paper. He gave it him back without a word. Ogilvie only
smiled; he was proud of the surprise he had planned.

And now the fancies and recollections that came rushing into Macleod's
head were of a sufficiently chaotic and bewildering character. He tried
to separate that grave, and gentle, and sensitive girl he had met at
Prince's Gate from this gay madcap, and he could not at all succeed. His
heart laughed with the laughter of this wild creature; he enjoyed the
discomfiture and despair of the old lawyer as she stood before him
twirling her garden hat by a solitary ribbon; and when the small, white
fingers raised the canary to be kissed by the pouting lips, the action
was more graceful than anything he had ever seen in the world. But where
was the silent and serious girl who had listened with such rapt
attention to his tales of passion and revenge, who seemed to have some
mysterious longing for those gloomy shores he came from, who had sung
with such exquisite pathos "A wee bird cam' to our ha' door?" Her cheek
had turned white when she heard of the fate of the son of Maclean:
surely that sensitive and vivid imagination could not belong to this
audacious girl, with her laughing, and teasings, and demure coquetry?