How differently she spoke! And she used to call him Malcolm! The
girl Florimel was gone, and there sat--the marchioness, was it?
--or some phase of riper womanhood only? It mattered little to
Malcolm. He was no curious student of man or woman. He loved his
kind too well to study it. But one thing seemed plain: she had
forgotten the half friendship and whole service that had had place
betwixt them, and it made him feel as if the soul of man no less
than his life were but as a vapour that appeareth for a little and
then vanisheth away.

But Florimel had not so entirely forgotten the past as Malcolm
thought--not so entirely at least but that his appearance, and
certain difficulties in which she had begun to find herself, brought
something of it again to her mind.

"I thought," said Malcolm, assuming his best English, "your
ladyship might not choose to part with an old servant at the will
of a factor, and so took upon me to appeal to your ladyship to
decide the question."

"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,