It was getting late, and presently Sheila retired.  As she bade “Good-night” to him, Lavender fancied her manners was a little less frank toward him than usual, and her eyes were cast down.  All the light of the room seemed to go with her when she went.

Mackenzie mixed another tumbler of toddy, and began to expound to Ingram his views upon deer-forests and sheep-farms.  Ingram lit a cigar, stretched out his legs and proceeded to listen with much complacent attention.  As for Lavender, he sat a while, hearing vaguely the sounds of his companions’ voices, and then, saying he was a trifle tired, he left and went to his own room.  The moon was then shining clearly over Suainabhal, and a pathway of glimmering light lay across Loch Roag.

He went to bed, but not to sleep.  He had resolved to ask Sheila Mackenzie to be his wife, and a thousand conjectures as to the future were floating about his imagination.  In the first place, would she listen to his prayer?  She knew nothing of him beyond what she might have heard from Ingram.  He had had no opportunity, during their friendly talking, of revealing to her what he thought of herself; but might she not have guessed it?  Then her father—­what action might not this determined old man take in the matter?  Would his love for his daughter prompt him to consider her happiness alone?  All these things, however, were mere preliminaries, and the imagination of the young man soon overleapt them.  He began to draw pictures of Sheila as his wife in their London home, among his friends, at Hastings, at Ascot, in Hyde Park.  What would people say of the beautiful sea-princess with the proud air, the fearless eyes and the gentle and musical voice?  Hour after hour he lay and could not sleep:  a fever of anticipation, of fear and of hope combined seemed to stir in his blood and throb in his brain.  At last, in a paroxysm of unrest, he rose, hastily dressed himself, stole down stairs, and made his way out into the cool air of the night.

It could not be the coming dawn that revealed to him the outlines of the shore and the mountains and the loch?  The moon had already sunk in the south-west:  not from her came that strange clearness by which all these objects were defined.  Then the young man bethought him of what Sheila had said of the twilight in these latitudes, and, turning to the north, he saw there a pale glow which looked as if it were the last faint traces of some former sunset.  All over the rest of the heavens something of the same metallic clearness reigned, so that the stars were pale, and a gray hue lay over the sea, and over the island, the white bays, the black rocks and the valleys, in which lay a scarcely perceptible mist.