With a smoking tumbler of whisky and water before him, the King of Borva sat at the table, poring over a large volume containing plans for bridges.  Ingram was seated at the piano, in continual consultation with Sheila about her songs.  Lavender, in this dusky corner, lay and listened, with all sorts of fancies crowding in upon him as Sheila sang of the sad and wild legends of her home.  Was it by chance, then, he asked himself, that these songs seemed so frequently to be the lamentation of a Highland girl for a fair-haired lover beyond the sea?  First of all she sang the “Wail of Dunevegan,” and how strangely her voice thrilled with the sadness of the song!—­

  Morn, oh mantle thy smiles of gladness! 
  Night, oh come with thy clouds of sadness! 
  Earth, thy pleasures to me seem madness! 
  Macleod, my leal love, since thou art gone. 
        Dunevegan, oh!  Dunevegan, oh! 
        Dunevegan!  Dunevegan!

It was as in a dream that he heard Ingram talking in a matter-of-fact way about the various airs, and asking the meaning of certain lines of Gaelic to compare them with the stiff and old-fashioned phrases of the translation.  Surely this girl must have sat by the shore and waited for her absent lover, or how could she sing with such feeling?—­

  Say, my love, why didst thou tarry
        Far over the deep sea? 
  Knew’st thou not my heart was weary,
  Heard’st thou not how I sighed for thee! 
  Did no light wind bear my wild despair
        Far over the deep sea?

He could imagine that beautiful face grown pale and wild with anguish.  And then some day, as she went along the lonely island, with all the light of hope gone out of her eyes, and with no more wistful glances cast across the desolate sea, might not the fair-haired lover come at last, and leap ashore to clasp her in his arms, and hide the wonder-stricken eyes and the glad face in his bosom?  But Sheila sang of no such meeting.  The girl was always alone, her lover gone away from her across the sea or into the wilds.

  Oh long on the mountain he tarries, he tarries: 
    Why tarries the youth with the bright yellow hair: 
  Oh long on the mountain he tarries, he tarries: 
    Why seeks he the hill when his flock is not there?

That was what he heard her sing, until it seemed to him that her singing was a cry to be taken away from these melancholy surroundings of sea and shore, and carried to the secure and comfortable South, to be cherished and tended and loved.  Why should this girl be left to live a cruel life up in these wilds, and to go through the world without knowing anything of the happy existence that might have been hers?  It was well for harder and stronger natures to withstand the buffetings of wind and rain, and to be indifferent to the melancholy influences of the lonely sea and the darkness of the northern winters; but for her—­for this beautiful, sensitive, tender-hearted girl—­surely some other and gentler fate was in store.  What he, at least, could do he would.  He would lay his life at her feet; and if she chose to go away from this bleak and cruel home to the sunnier South, would not he devote himself, as never a man had given himself to a woman before, to the constant duty of enriching her life with all the treasures of admiration and respect and love?