“Oh, Frank!” she said, going over and putting her hand on his shoulder, “I cannot take that trouble.  I cannot try to be like those people.  And I see a great difference in you since you have come back to London, and you are getting to be like them and say the things they say.  If I could only see you, my own darling, up in the Lewis again, with rough clothes on and a gun in your hand, I should be happy.  You were yourself up there, when you were helping us in the boat, or when you were bringing home the salmon, or when we were all together at night in the little parlor, you know—­”

“My dear, don’t get so excited.  Now sit down, and I will tell you all about it.  You seem to have the notion that people lose all their finer sentiments simply because they don’t, in society, burst into raptures over them.  You mustn’t imagine all those people are selfish and callous merely because they preserve a decent reticence.  To tell you the truth, that constant profession of noble feelings you would like to see would have something of ostentation about it.”

Sheila only sighed.  “I do not wish them to be altered,” she said by and by, with her eyes grown pensive:  “all I know is, that I could not live the same life.  And you—­you seemed to be happier up in the Highlands than you have ever been since.”

“Well, you see, a man ought to be happy when he is enjoying a holiday in the country along with the girl he is engaged to.  But if I had lived all my life killing salmon and shooting wild-duck, I should have grown up an ignorant boor, with no more sense of—­”

He stopped, for he saw that the girl was thinking of her father.

“Well, look here, Sheila.  You see how you are placed—­how we are placed, rather.  Wouldn’t it be more sensible to get to understand those people you look askance at, and establish better relations with them, since you have got to live among them?  I can’t help thinking you are too much alone, and you can’t expect me to stay in the house always with you.  A husband and wife cannot be continually in each other’s company, unless they want to grow heartily tired of each other.  Now, if you would only lay aside those suspicions of yours, you would find the people just as honest and generous and friendly as any other sort of people you ever met, although they don’t happen to be fond of expressing their goodness in their talk.”

“I have tried, dear—­I will try again,” said Sheila.

She resolved that she would go down and visit Mrs. Lavender next day, and try to be interested in the talk of such people as might be there.  She would bring away some story about this or the other fashionable woman or noble lord, just to show her husband that she was doing her best to learn.  She would drive patiently round the Park in that close little brougham, and listen attentively to the moralities of Marcus Aurelius.  She would make an appointment to go with Mrs. Lavender to a morning concert; and she would endeavor to muster up courage to ask any ladies who might be there to lunch with her on that day, and go afterward to this same entertainment.  All these things and many more Sheila silently vowed to herself she would do, while her husband sat and expounded to her his theories of the obligations which society demanded of its members.