Mr. White said nothing.  He had watched this daughter of his through the long winter months.  Occasionally, when he heard her utter sentiments such as these—­and when he saw her keenly sensitive to the flattery bestowed upon her by the people assembled at Mr. Lemuel’s little gatherings, he had asked himself whether it was possible she could ever marry Sir Keith Macleod.  But he was too wise to risk reawakening her rebellious fits by any encouragement.  In any case, he had some experience of this young lady; and what was the use of combatting one of her moods at five o’clock when at six o’clock she would be arguing in the contrary direction, and at seven convinced that the viv media was the straight road?  Moreover, if the worst came to the worst, there would be some compensation in the fact of Miss White changing her name for that of Lady Macleod.

Just as quickly she changed her mood on the present occasion.  She was looking again far over the darkly blue and ruffled seas toward the white-sailed yacht.

“He must have gone away in the dark to get that boat for us,” said she, musingly.  “Poor fellow, how very generous and kind he is!  Sometimes—­shall I make the confession, pappy?—­I wish he had picked out some one who could better have returned his warmth of feeling.”

She called it a confession; but it was a question.  And her father answered more bluntly than she had quite expected.

“I am not much of an authority on such points,” said he, with a dry smile; “but I should have said, Gerty, that you have not been quite so effusive towards Sir Keith Macleod as some young ladies would have been on meeting their sweetheart after a long absence.”

The pale face flushed, and she answered, hastily,

“But you know, papa, when you are knocked about from one boat to another, and expecting to be ill one minute and drowned the next, you don’t have your temper improved, do you?  And then perhaps you have been expecting a little too much romance?—­and you find your Highland chieftain handing down loaves, with all the people in the steamer staring at him.  But I really mean to make it up to him, papa, if I could only get settled down for a day or two and get into my own ways.  Oh dear me!—­this sun—­it is too awfully dreadful!  When I appear before Mr. Lemuel again, I shall be a mulatto!”

And as they walked along the burning sands, with the waves monotonously breaking, the white-sailed yacht came nearer and more near; and, indeed, the old Umpire, broad-beamed and heavy as she was, looked quite stately and swanlike as she came over the blue water.  And they saw the gig lowered; and the four oars keeping rhythmical time; and presently they could make out the browned and glad face of Macleod.

“Why did you take so much trouble?” said she to him—­and she took his hand in a very kind way as he stepped on shore.  “We could very well have gone back in the boat.”