did. He knew the latent force of character that underlay all her

submissive gentleness. He knew the keen sense of pride her Highland birth had given her; and he feared what might happen if this sensitive and proud heart of hers were driven into rebellion by some possibly unintentional wrong. And this high-spirited, fearless, honor-loving girl--who was gentle and obedient, not through any timidity or limpness of character, but because she considered it her duty to be gentle and obedient--was to be cast aside and have her tenderest feelings outraged and wounded for the sake of an unscrupulous, shallow-brained woman of fashion, who was not fit to be Sheila’s waiting-maid. Ingram had never seen Mrs. Lorraine, but he had formed his own opinion of her. The opinion, based upon nothing, was wholly wrong, but it served to increase, if that were possible, his sympathy with Sheila, and his resolve to interfere on her behalf at whatever cost.

“Sheila,” he said, gravely putting his hand on her shoulder as if she were still the little girl who used to run wild with him about the Borva rocks, “you are a good woman.”

He added to himself that Lavender knew little of the value of the wife he had got, but he dared not say that to Sheila, who would suffer no imputation against her husband to be uttered in her presence, however true it might be, or however much she had cause to know it to be true.

“And, after all,” he said in a lighter voice, “I think I can do something to mend all this. I will say for Frank Lavender that he is a thoroughly good fellow at heart, and that when you appeal to him, and put things fairly before him, and show him what he ought to do, there is not a more honorable and straightforward man in the world. He has been forgetful, Sheila. He has been led away by these people, you know, and has not been aware of what you were suffering. When I put the matter before him, you will see it will be all right; and I hope to persuade him to give up this constant idling and take to his work, and have something to live for. I wish you and I together could get him to go away from London altogether--get him to take to serious landscape painting on some wild coast--the Galway coast, for example.”

“Why not the Lewis?” said Sheila, her heart turning to the North as naturally as the needle.

“Or the Lewis. And I should like you and him to live away from hotels and luxuries, and all such things; and he would work all day, and you would do the cooking in some small cottage you could rent, you know.”

“You make me so happy in thinking of that,” she said, with her eyes growing well again.

“And why should he not do so? There is nothing romantic or idyllic about it, but a good, wholesome, plain sort of life, that is likely to make an honest painter of him, and bring both of you some well-earned money. And you might have a boat like this.”

“We are drifting too far in,” said Sheila, suddenly rising. “Shall we go back now?”

“By all means,” he said; and so the small boat was put under canvas again, and was soon making way through the breezy water.

“Well, all this seems simple enough, doesn’t it?” said Ingram.

“Yes,” said the girl, with her face full of hope.

“And then, of course, when you are quite comfortable together, and making heaps of money, you can turn around and abuse me, and say I made all the misery to begin with.”

“Did we do so before when you were very kind to us?” she said in a low voice.

“Oh, but that was different. To interfere on behalf of two young folks who are in love with each other is dangerous, but to interfere between two people who are married--that is a certain quarrel. I wonder what you will say when you are scolding me, Sheila, and bidding me get out of the house? I have never heard you scold. Is it Gaelic or English you prefer?”

“I prefer whichever can say the nicest things to my very good friends, and tell them how grateful I am for their kindness to me.”

“Ah, well, we’ll see.”

When they got back to shore it was half-past one.

“You will come and have some luncheon with us?” said Sheila when they had gone up the steps and into the King’s road.

“Will that lady be there?”

“Mrs. Lorraine? Yes.”

“Then I’ll come some other time.”

“But why not come now?” said Sheila. “It is not necessary that you will see us only to speak about those things we have been talking over?”

“Oh, no, not at all. If you and Mr. Lavender were by yourselves, I should come at once.”

“And are you afraid of Mrs. Lorraine?” said Sheila, with a smile. “She is a very nice lady, indeed: you have no cause to dislike her.”

“But I don’t want to meet her, Sheila, that is all,” he said; and she knew well, by the precision of his manner, that there was no use trying to persuade him further.

He walked along to the hotel with her, meeting a considerable stream of fashionably-dressed folks on the way; and neither he nor she seemed to remember that his costume--a blue pilot jacket, not a little worn and soiled with the salt water, and a beaver hat that had seen a good deal of rough weather in the Highlands--was a good deal more comfortable than elegant. He said to her, as he left her at the hotel: “Would you mind telling Lavender I shall drop in at half-past three, and that I expect to see him in the coffee-room? I shan’t keep him five minutes.”

She looked at him for a moment, and he saw that she knew what this appointment meant, for her eyes were full of gladness and gratitude. He went away pleased at heart that she put so much trust in him. And in this case he should be able to reward that confidence, for Lavender was really a good sort of fellow, and would at once be sorry for the wrong he had unintentionally done, and be only too anxious to set it right. He ought to leave Brighton at once, and London, too. He ought to go away into the country or by the seaside, and begin working hard to earn money and self-respect at the same time; and then, in his friendly solitude, he would get to know something about Sheila’s character, and begin to perceive how much more valuable were these genuine qualities of heart and mind than any social graces such as might lighten up a dull drawing-room. Had Lavender yet learnt to know the worth of an honest woman’s perfect love and unquestioning devotion? Let these things be put before him, and he would go and do the right thing, as he had many a time done before, in obedience to the lecturing of his friend.

Ingram called at half-past three, and went into the coffee-room. There was no one in the long, large room, and he sat down at one of the small tables by the windows, from which a bit of lawn, the King’s road and the sea beyond were visible. He had scarcely taken his seat when Lavender came in.

“Halloo, Ingram! how are you?” he said in his freest and friendliest way. “Won’t you come up-stairs? Have you had lunch? Why did you go to the Ship?”

“I always go to the Ship,” he said. “No, thank you, I won’t go up-stairs.”

“You are a most unsociable sort of brute!” said Lavender frankly. “Will you take a glass of sherry?”

“No, thank you.”

“Will you have a game of billiards?”

“No, thank you. You don’t mean to say you would play billiards on such a day as this?”

“It _is_ a fine day, isn’t it?” said. Lavender, turning carelessly to look at the sunlit road and the blue sea. “By the way, Sheila tells me you and she were out sailing this morning. It must have been very pleasant, especially for her; for she is mad about such things. What a curious girl she is, to be sure! Don’t you think so?”

“I don’t know what you mean by curious,” said Ingram, coldly.

“Well, you know, strange--odd--unlike other people in her ways and her fancies. Did I tell you about my aunt taking her to see some friends of hers at Norwood? No? Well, Sheila had got out of the house somehow (I suppose their talking did not interest her), and when they went in search of her they found her in the cemetery, crying like a child.”

“What about?”

“Why,” said Lavender, with a smile, “merely because so many people had died. She had never seen anything like that before; you know the small church-yards up in Lewis, with their inscriptions in Norwegian and Danish and German. I suppose the first sight of all the white stones at Norwood was too much for her.”

“Well, I don’t see much of a joke in that,” said Ingram.

“Who said there was any joke in it?” cried Lavender, impatiently. “I never knew such a cantankerous fellow as you are. You are always fancying I am finding fault with Sheila, and I never do anything of the kind. She is a very good girl indeed. I have every reason to be satisfied with the way our marriage has turned out.”

“_Has she?_”

The words were not important, but there was something in the tone in which they were spoken that suddenly checked Frank Lavender’s careless flow of speech. He looked at Ingram for a moment with some surprise, and then he said, “What do you mean?”

“Well, I will tell you what I mean,” said Ingram, slowly. “It is an awkward thing for a man to interfere between husband and wife, I am aware--he gets something else than thanks for his pains, ordinarily--but sometimes it has to be done, thanks or kicks. Now, you know, Lavender, I had a good deal to do with helping forward your marriage in the North; and I don’t remind you of that to claim anything in the way of consideration, but to explain why I think I am called on to speak to you now.”

Lavender was at once a little frightened and a little irritated. He half guessed what might be coming, from the slow and precise manner in which Ingram talked. That form of speech had vexed him many a time before, for he would rather have had any amount of wild contention and bandying about of reproaches than the calm, unimpassioned and sententious setting forth of his shortcomings to which this sallow little man was, perhaps, too much addicted.

“I suppose Sheila has been complaining to you, then?” said Lavender, hotly.

“You may suppose what absurdities you like,” said Ingram, quietly; “but it would be a good deal better if you would listen to me patiently, and deal in a common sense fashion with what I have got to say. It is nothing very desperate. Nothing has happened that is not of easy remedy, while the remedy would leave you and her in a much better position, both as regards your own estimation of yourselves and the opinion of your friends.”

“You are a little roundabout, Ingram,” said Lavender, “and ornate. But I suppose all lectures begin so. Go on.”

Ingram laughed: “If I am too formal it is because I don’t want to make mischief by any exaggeration. Look here! A long time before you were married I warned you that Sheila had very keen and sensitive notions about the duties that people ought to perform, about the dignity of labor, about the proper occupations of a man, and so forth. These notions you may regard as romantic and absurd, if you like, but you might as well try to change the color of her eyes as attempt to alter any of her beliefs in that direction.”

“And she thinks that I am idle and indolent because I don’t care what a washerwoman pays for her candles?” said Lavender, with impetuous contempt. “Well, be it so. She is welcome to her opinion. But if she is grieved at heart because I can’t make hob-nailed boots, it seems to me that she might as well come and complain to myself, instead of going and detailing her wrongs to a third person, and calling for his sympathy in the character of an injured wife.”

For an instant the dark eyes of the man opposite him blazed with a quick fire, for a sneer at Sheila was worse than an insult to himself; but he kept quite calm, and said, “That, unfortunately, is not what is troubling her.”

Lavender rose abruptly, took a turn up and down the empty room, and said, “If there is anything the matter, I prefer to hear it from herself. It is not respectful to me that she should call in a third person to humor her whims and fancies.”

“Whims and fancies!” said Ingram, with that dark light returning to his eyes. “Do you know what you are talking about? Do you know that while you are living on the charity of a woman you despise, and dawdling about the skirts of a woman who laughs at you, you are breaking the heart of a girl who has not her equal in England? Whims and fancies! Good God, I wonder how she ever could have--”

He stopped, but the mischief was done. These were not prudent words to come from a man who wished to step in as a mediator between husband and wife; but Ingram’s blaze of wrath, kindled by what he considered the insufferable insolence of Lavender in thus speaking of Sheila, had swept all notions of prudence before it. Lavender, indeed, was much cooler than he was, and said, with an affectation of carelessness, “I am sorry you should vex yourself so much about Sheila. One would think you had had the ambition yourself, at some time or other, to play the part of husband to her; and doubtless then you would have made sure that all her idle fancies were gratified. As it is, I was about to relieve you from the trouble of further explanation by saying that I am quite competent to manage my own affairs, and that if Sheila has any complaint to make she must make it to me.”

Ingram rose, and was silent for a moment.

“Lavender,” he said, “it does not matter much whether you and I quarrel--I was prepared for that, in any case--but I ask you to give Sheila a chance of telling you what I had intended to tell you.”

“Indeed, I shall do nothing of the sort. I never invite confidence. When she wishes to tell me anything she knows I am ready to listen. But I am quite satisfied with the position of affairs as they are at present.”

“God help you, then!” said his friend, and went away, scarcely daring to confess to himself how dark the future looked.