“It has been the happiest month of my life—­I know that,” he said to Mackenzie as they stood together on the quay at Stornoway.

“And I hope you will hef many like it in the Lewis,” said the old man cheerfully.

“I think I should soon learn to become a Highlander up here,” said Lavender, “if Sheila would only teach me the Gaelic.”

“The Gaelic!” cried Mackenzie impatiently.  “The Gaelic!  It is none of the gentlemen who will come here in the autumn will want the Gaelic; and what for would you want the Gaelic—­ay, if you was staying here the whole year round?”

“But Sheila will teach me all the same—­won’t you, Sheila?” he said, turning to his companion, who was gazing somewhat blankly at the rough steamer and at the rough gray sea beyond the harbor.

“Yes,” said the girl:  she seemed in no mood for joking.

Lavender returned to town more in love than ever; and soon the news of his engagement was spread abroad, he nothing loath.  Most of his club-friends laughed, and prophesied it would come to nothing.  How could a man in Lavender’s position marry anybody but an heiress?  He could not afford to go and marry a fisherman’s daughter.  Others came to the conclusion that artists and writers and all that sort of people were incomprehensible, and said “Poor beggar!” when they thought of the fashion in which Lavender had ruined his chances in life.  His lady friends, however, were much more sympathetic.  There was a dash of romance in the story; and would not the Highland girl be a curiosity for a little while after she came to town?  Was she like any of the pictures Mr. Lavender had hanging up in his rooms?  Had he not even a sketch of her?  An artist, and yet not have a portrait of the girl he had chosen to marry?  Lavender had no portrait of Sheila to show.  Some little photographs he had he kept for his own pocket-book, while in vain had he tried to get some sketch or picture that would convey to the little world of his friends and acquaintances some notion of his future bride.  They were left to draw on their imagination for some presentiment of the coming princess.

He told Mrs. Lavender, of course.  She said little, but sent for Edward Ingram.  Him she questioned in a cautious, close and yet apparently indifferent way, and then merely said that Frank was very impetuous, that it was a pity he had resolved on marrying out of his own sphere of life, but that she hoped the young lady from the Highlands would prove a good wife to him.

“I hope he will prove a good husband to her,” said Ingram with unusual sharpness.

“Frank is very impetuous.”  That was all Mrs. Lavender would say.