‘Pale and wan was she when Glenlogie gaed ben,    But red rosy grew she whene’er he sat doun.
 
Glenlogie.
 
Just here the front door banged, and a manly step sounded on the stair. Francesca sat up straight in a big chair, and dried her eyes hastily with her poor little wet ball of a handkerchief; for she knows that Willie is a privileged visitor in my studio. The door opened (it was ajar) and Ronald Macdonald strode into the room. I hope I may never have the same sense of nothingness again! To be young, pleasing, gifted, and to be regarded no more than a fly upon the wall, is death to one’s self-respect.
 
He dropped on one knee beside Francesca, and took her two hands in his without removing his gaze from her speaking face. She burned, but did not flinch under the ordeal. The colour leaped into her cheeks. Love swam in her tears, but was not drowned there; it was too strong.
 
“Did you mean it?” he asked.
 
She looked at him, trembling, as she said, “I meant every word, and far, far more. I meant all that a girl can say to a man when she loves him, and wants to be everything she is capable of being to him, to his work, to his people, and to his—country.”
 
Even this brief colloquy had been embarrassing, but I knew that worse was still to come and could not be delayed much longer, so I left the room hastily and with no attempt at apology—not that they minded my presence in the least, or observed my exit, though I was obliged to leap over Mr. Macdonald’s feet in passing.
 
I found Mr. Beresford sitting on the stairs, in the lower hall.
 
“Willie, you angel, you idol, where did you find him?” I exclaimed.
 
“When I went into the post-office, an hour ago,” he replied, “I met Francesca. She asked me for Macdonald’s Edinburgh address, saying she had something that belonged to him and wished to send it after him. I offered to address the package and see that it reached him as expeditiously as possible. ‘That is what I wish,” she said, with elaborate formality. ‘This is something I have just discovered, something he needs very much, something he does not know he has left behind.’ I did not think it best to tell her at the moment that Macdonald had not yet deserted Inchcaldy.”
 
“Willie, you have the quickest intelligence and the most exquisite insight of any man I ever met!”
 
“But the fact was that I had been to see him off, and found him detained by the sudden illness of one of his elders. I rode over again to take him the little parcel. Of course I don’t know what it contained; by its size and shape I should judge it might be a thimble, or a collar-button, or a sixpence; but, at all events, he must have needed the thing, for he certainly did not let the grass grow under his feet after he received it! Let us go into the sitting-room until they come down,—as they will have to, poor wretches, sooner or later; I know that I am always being brought down against my will. Salemina wants your advice about the number of her Majesty’s portraits to be hung on the front of the cottage, and the number of............