anxiety to myself or to any one about me. I was sufficiently
restored to be capable of making the journey to Lerwick, if I
rested for one night at a farm half-way between the town and Mr.
Dunross's house. Knowing this, I had nevertheless left the
question of rejoining the vessel undecided to the very latest
moment. The motive which I pleaded to my friends was--uncertainty
as to the sufficient recovery of my strength. The motive which I
now confessed to myself was reluctance to leave Miss Dunross.

What was the secret of her power over me? What emotion, what
passion, had she awakened in me? Was it love?

No: not love. The place which Mary had once held in my heart, the
place which Mrs. Van Brandt had taken in the after-time, was not
the place occupied by Miss Dunross. How could I (in the ordinary
sense of the word) be in love with a woman whose face I had never
seen? whose beauty had faded, never to bloom again? whose wasted
life hung by a thread which the accident of a moment might snap?
The senses have their share in all love between the sexes which
is worthy of the name. They had no share in the feeling with
which I regarded Miss Dunross. What _was_ the feeling, then? I
can only answer the question in one way. The feeling lay too deep
in me for my sounding.

What impression had I produced on her? What sensitive chord had I
ignorantly touched, when my lips touched her hand?

I confess I recoiled from pursuing the inquiry which I had
deliberately set myself to make. I thought of her shattered
health; of her melancholy existence in shadow and solitude; of
the rich treasures of such a heart and such a mind as hers,
wasted with her wasting life; and I said to myself, Let her
secret be sacred! let me never again, by word or deed, bring the
trouble which tells of it to the surface! let her heart be veiled
from me in the darkness which veils her face!

In this frame of mind toward her, I waited her return.

I had no doubt of seeing her again, sooner or later, on that day.
The post to the south went out on the next day; and the early
hour of the morning at which the messenger called for our letters
made it a matter of ordinary convenience to write overnight. In
the disabled state of my hand, Miss Dunross had been accustomed
to write home for me, under my dictation: she knew that I owed a
letter to my mother, and that I relied as usual on her help. Her
return to me, under these circumstances, was simply a question of
time: any duty which she had once undertaken was an imperative
duty in her estimation, no matter how trifling it might be.

The hours wore on; the day drew to its end--and still she never
appeared.

I left my room to enjoy the last sunny gleam of the daylight in
the garden attached to the house; first telling Peter where I
might be found, if Miss Dunross wanted me. The garden was a wild
place, to my southern notions; but it extended for some distance
along the shore of the island, and it offered some pleasant views
of the lake and the moorland country beyond. Slowly pursuing my
walk, I proposed to myself to occupy my mind to some useful
purpose by arranging beforehand the composition of the letter
which Miss Dunross was to write.

To my great surprise, I found it simply impossible to fix my mind
on the subject. Try as I might, my thoughts persisted in
wandering from the letter to my mother, and concentrated
themselves instead--on Miss Dunross? No. On the question of my
returning, or not returning, to Perthshire by the Government
vessel? No. By some capricious revulsion of feeling which it
seemed impossible to account for, my whole mind was now absorbed
on the one subject which had been hitherto so strangely absent
from it--the subject of Mrs. Van Brandt!

My memory went back, in defiance of all exercise of my own will,
to my last interview with her. I saw her again; I heard her
again. I tasted once more the momentary rapture of our last kiss;
I felt once more the pang of sorrow that wrung me when I had
parted with her and found myself alone in the street. Tears--of
which I was ashamed, though nobody was near to see them--filled
my eyes when I thought of the months that had passed since we had
last looked on one another, and of all that she might have
suffered, must have suffered, in that time. Hundreds on hundreds
of miles were between us--and yet she was now as near me as if
she were walking in the garden by my side!

This strange condition of my mind was matched by an equally
strange condition of my body. A mysterious trembling shuddered
over me faintly from head to foot. I walked without feeling the
ground as I trod on it; I looked about me with no distinct
consciousness of what the objects were on which my eyes rested.
My hands were cold--and yet I hardly felt it. My head throbbed
hotly--and yet I was not sensible of any pain. It seemed as if I
were surrounded and enwrapped in some electric atmosphere which
altered all the ordinary conditions of sensation. I looked up at
the clear, calm sky, and wondered if a thunderstorm was coming. I
stopped, and buttoned my coat round me, and questioned myself if
I had caught a cold, or if I was going to have a fever. The sun
sank below the moorland horizon; the gray twilight trembled over
the dark waters of the lake. I went back to the house; and the
vivid memory of Mrs. Van Brandt, still in close companionship,
went back with me.


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