“Mairi!” said her father impatiently, for he never lost an opportunity of indirectly justifying Lavender.  Mairi has more sense than you, Sheila, and she knows that a servant-lass has to stay at home, and she knows that she is ferry different from you; and she is a ferry good girl whatever, and hass no pride, and she does not expect nonsense in going about and such things.”

“I am quite sure, papa, you would rather go home and sit down and have a talk with Mr. Ingram, and a pipe and a little whisky, than go to any theatre.”

“What I would do!  And what I would like!” said her father in a vexed way.  “Sheila, you have no more sense as a lass that wass still at the school.  I want you to go to the theatre and amuse yourself, instead of sitting in the house and thinking, thinking, thinking.  And all for what?”

“But if one has something to be sorry for, is it not better to think of it?”

“And what hef you to be sorry for?” said her father in amazement, and forgetting that, in his diplomatic fashion, he had been accustoming Sheila to the notion that she too might have erred grievously and been in part responsible for all that had occurred.

“I have a great deal to be sorry for, papa,” she said; and then she renewed her entreaties that her two companions should abandon their notion of going to a theatre, and resolve to spend the rest of the evening in what she consented to call her home.

After all, they found a comfortable little company when they sat round the fire, which had been lit for cheerfulness rather than for warmth, and Ingram at least was in a particularly pleasant mood.  For Sheila had seized the opportunity, when her father had gone out of the room for a few minutes, to say suddenly, “Oh, my dear friend, if you care for her, you have a great happiness before you.”

“Why, Sheila!” he said, staring.

“She cares for you more than you can think:  I saw it to-night in everything she said and did.”

“I thought she was just a trifle saucy, do you know.  She shunted me out of the conversation altogether.”

Sheila shook her head and smiled:  “She was embarrassed.  She suspects that you like her, and that I know it, and that I came to see her.  If you ask her to marry you, she will do it gladly.”

“Sheila,” Ingram said with a severity that was not in his heart, “you must not say such things.  You might make fearful mischief by putting these wild notions into people’s heads.”

“They are not wild notions,” she said quietly.  “A woman can tell what another woman is thinking about better than a man.”

“And am I to go to the Tyrol and ask her to marry me?” he said with the air of a meek scholar.

“I should like to see you married—­very, very much indeed,” Sheila said.

“And to her?”

“Yes to her,” the girl said frankly.  “For I am sure she has great regard for you, and she is clever enough to put value on—­on—­But I cannot flatter you, Mr. Ingram.”