And he stepped inside.  The small girl obediently shut the door, and then led the way up stairs.  The next minute Mr. Mackenzie had entered the room, and there before him was Sheila bending over Mairi and teaching her how to do some fancy-work.

The girl looked up on hearing some one enter, and then, when she suddenly saw her father there, she uttered a slight cry of alarm and shrunk back.  If he had been less intent on his own plans he would have been amazed and pained by this action on the part of his daughter, who used to run to him, on great occasions and small, whenever she saw him; but the girl had for the last few days been so habitually schooling herself into the notion that she was keeping a secret from him—­she had become so deeply conscious of the concealment intended in that brief letter—­that she instinctively shrank from him when he suddenly appeared.  It was but for a moment.

Mr. Mackenzie came forward with a fine assumption of carelessness and shook hands with Sheila and with Mairi, and said, “How do you do, Mairi?  And are you ferry well, Sheila?  And you will not expect me this morning; but when a man will not pay you what he wass owing, it wass no good letting it go on in that way; and I hef come to London—­“.

He shook the rain-drops from his cap, and was a little embarrassed.

“Yes, I hef come to London to have the account settled up; for it wass no good letting him go on for effer and effer.  Ay, and how are you, Sheila?”

He looked about the room:  he would not look at her.  She stood there unable to speak, and with her face grown wild and pale.

“Ay, it wass raining hard all the last night, and there wass a good deal of water came into the carriage; and it is a ferry hard bed you will make of a third-class carriage.  Ay, it wass so.  And this is a new house you will hef, Sheila?”

She had been coming nearer to him, with her face down and the speechless lips trembling.  And then suddenly, with a strange sob, she threw herself into his arms and hid her head, and burst into a wild fit of crying.

“Sheila,” he said, “what ails you?  What iss all the matter?”

Mairi had covertly got out of the room.

“Oh, papa, I have left him,” the girl cried.

“Ay,” said her father quite cheerfully—­“oh ay, I thought there was some little thing wrong when your letter wass come to us the other day.  But it is no use making a great deal of trouble about it, Sheila, for it is easy to have all those things put right again—­oh yes, ferry easy.  And you have left your own home, Sheila?  And where is Mr. Lavender?”

“Oh, papa,” she cried, “you must not try to see him.  You must promise not to go to see him.  I should have told you everything when I wrote, but I thought you would come up and blame it all on him and I think it is I who am to blame.”

“But I do not want to blame any one,” said her father.  “You must not make so much of these things, Sheila.  It is a pity—­yes, it is a ferry great pity—­your husband and you will hef a quarrel; but it iss no uncommon thing for these troubles to happen; and I am coming to you this morning, not to make any more trouble, but to see if it cannot be put right again.  And I do not want to know any more than that, and I will not blame any one; but if I wass to see Mr. Lavender—­”