“Oh no,” she answered; and that was true enough, though it had produced in her agonizing fears of becoming ill which had somewhat ruffled her temper.  And besides, she had a headache.  And then she had a nervous fear of small boats.

“It is a very small boat to be out in the open sea,” she remarked, looking at the long and shapely gig that was cleaving the summer waves.

“Not on a day like this, surely,” said he, laughing.  “But we will make a good sailor of you before you leave Dare, and you will think yourself safer in a boat like this than in a big steamer.  Do you know that the steamer you came in, big as it is, draws only five feet of water?”

If he had told her that the steamer drew five tons of coal she could just as well have understood him.  Indeed, she was not paying much attention to him.  She had an eye for the biggest of the waves that were running by the side of the white boat.

But she plucked up her spirits somewhat on getting ashore; and she made the prettiest of little courtesies to Lady Macleod; and she shook hands with Major Stuart, and gave him a charming smile; and she shook hands with Janet, too, whom she regarded with a quick scrutiny.  So this was the cousin that Keith Macleod was continually praising?

“Miss White has a headache, mother,” Macleod said, eager to account beforehand for any possible constraint in her manner.  “Shall we send for the pony?”

“Oh no,” Miss White said, looking up at the bare walls of Dare.  “I shall be very glad to have a short walk now—­unless you, papa, would like to ride?”

“Certainly not—­certainly not,” said Mr. White, who had been making a series of formal remarks to Lady Macleod about his impressions of the scenery of Scotland.

“We will get you a cup of tea,” said Janet Macleod, gently, to the new-comer, “and you will lie down for a little time, and I hope the sound of the waterfall will not disturb you.  It is a long way you have come:  and you will be very tired, I am sure.”

“Yes, it is a pretty long way,” she said; but she wished this over-friendly woman would not treat her as if she were a spoiled child.  And no doubt they thought, because she was English, she could not walk up to the farther end of that fir-wood?

So they all set out for Castle Dare; and Macleod was now walking—­as many a time he had dreamed of his walking—­with his beautiful sweetheart; and there were the very ferns that he thought she would admire; and here the very point in the fir-wood where he would stop her and ask her to look out on the blue sea, with Inch Kenneth, and Ulva, and Staffa, all lying in the sunlight, and the razor-fish of land—­Coll and Tiree—­at the horizon.  But instead of being proud and glad, he was almost afraid.  He was so anxious that everything should please her that he dared scarce bid her look at anything.  He had himself superintended the mending of the steep path; but even now the recent rains had left some puddles.  Would she not consider the moist, warm odors of this larch-wood as too oppressive?