“Your papa is a very handsome man,” said Mrs. Lorraine to Sheila, bringing the conversation back to their own end of the table.  “I have seen few finer heads than that drawing you have.  Mr. Lavender did that, did he not?  Why has he never done one of you?”

“He is too busy, I think, just now,” Sheila said, perhaps not knowing that from Mrs. Lorraine’s waist-belt at that moment depended a fan which might have given evidence as to the extreme scarcity of time under which Lavender was supposed to labor.

“He has a splendid head,” said Ingram.  “Did you know that he is called the King of Borva up there?”

“I have heard of him being called the King of Thule,” said Mrs. Lorraine, turning with a smile to Sheila, “and of his daughter being styled a princess.  Do you know the ballad of the King of Thule in Faust, Mrs. Lavender?’”

“In the opera?—­yes,” said Sheila.

“Will you sing it for us after dinner?”

“If you like.”

The promise was fulfilled, in a fashion.  The notion that Mr. Ingram was about to go away up to Lewis, to the people who knew her and to her father’s house, with no possible answer to the questions which would certainly be showered upon him as to why she had not come also, troubled Sheila deeply.  The ladies went into the drawing-room, and Mrs. Lorraine got out the song.  Sheila sat down to the piano, thinking far more of that small stone house at Borva than of the King of Thule’s castle overlooking the sea; and yet somehow the first lines of the song, though she knew them well enough, sent a pang to her heart as she glanced at them.  She touched the first notes of the accompaniment, and she looked at the words again: 

  Over the sea, in Thule of old,
  Reigned a king who was true-hearted,
  Who, in remembrance of one departed—­

A mist came over her eyes.  Was she the one who had departed, leaving the old king in his desolate house by the sea, where he could only think of her as he sat in his solitary chamber, with the night-winds howling round the shore outside?  When her birthday had come round she knew that he must have silently drank to her, though not out of a beaker of gold.  And now, when mere friends and acquaintances were free to speed away to the North, and get a welcome from the folks in Borva, and listen to the Atlantic waves dashing lightly in among the rocks, her hope of getting thither had almost died out.  Among such people as landed on Stornoway quay from the big Clansman her father would seek one face, and seek it in vain.  And Duncan and Scarlett, and even John the Piper—­all the well-remembered folks who lived far away across the Minch—­they would ask why Miss Sheila was never coming back.

Mrs. Lorraine had been standing aside from the piano.  Noticing that Sheila had played the introduction to the song twice over in an undetermined manner, she came forward a step or two and pretended to be looking at the music.  Tears were running down Sheila’s face.  Mrs. Lorraine put her hand on the girl’s shoulder, and sheltered her from observation, and said aloud, “You have it in a different key, have you not?  Pray don’t sing it.  Sing something else.  Do you know any of Gounod’s sacred songs?  Let me see if we can find anything for you in this volume.”