Mrs. Ross, no doubt, sees that it is pleasant enough for a young actress, who is fortunate enough to have won some public favor, to go sailing in a yacht on the Thames, on a summer day, with nice companions around her.  She does not see her on a wet day in Newcastle, practising scales for an hour at a stretch, though her throat is half choked with the fog, in a dismal parlor with a piano out of tune, and with the prospect of having to go out through the wet to a rehearsal in a damp and draughty theatre, with escaped gas added to the fog.  That is very nice, isn’t it?”

It almost seemed to him—­so intense and eager was his involuntary sympathy—­as though he himself were breathing fog, and gas, and the foul odors of an empty theatre.  He went to the window and threw it open, and sat down there.  The stars were no longer quivering white on the black surface of the water, for the moon had risen now in the south, and there was a soft glow all shining over the smooth Atlantic.  Sharp and white was the light on the stone-walls of Castle Dare, and on the gravelled path, and the rocks and the trees around; but faraway it was a milder radiance that lay over the sea, and touched here and there the shores of Inch Kenneth and Ulva and Colonsay.  It was a fair and peaceful night, with no sound of human unrest to break the sleep of the world.  Sleep, solemn and profound, dwelt over the lonely islands—­over Staffa, with her resounding caves, and Fiadda, with her desolate rocks, and Iona, with her fairy-white sands, and the distant Dutchman, and Coll, and Tiree, all haunted by the wild sea-birds’ cry; and a sleep as deep dwelt over the silent hills, far up under the cold light of the skies.  Surely, if any poor suffering heart was vexed by the contentions of crowded cities, here, if anywhere in the world, might rest and peace and loving solace be found.  He sat dreaming there; he had half forgotten the letter.

He roused himself from his reverie, and returned to the light.

“And yet I would not complain of mere discomfort,” she continued, “if that were all.  People who have to work for their living must not be too particular.  What pains me most of all is the effect that this sort of work is having on myself.  You would not believe—­and I am almost ashamed to confess—­how I am worried by small and mean jealousies and anxieties, and how I am tortured by the expression of opinions which, all the same, I hold in contempt.  I reason with myself to no purpose.  It ought to be no concern of mine if some girl in a burlesque makes the house roar, by the manner in which she walks up and down the stage smoking a cigar; and yet I feel angry at the audience for applauding such stuff, and I wince when I see her praised in the papers.  Oh! these papers!  I have been making minute inquiries of late; and I find that the usual way in these towns is to let the young literary aspirant who has just joined the office, or the clever compositor who has been promoted to the