There was a moment’s silence.  Everyone stared.  The blood burned in my veins,—­I felt my face crimsoning, yet I knew not why I should be embarrassed or at a loss for words.  Santoris came to my relief.

“There’s nothing remarkable in that, is there?” he queried, lightly--"Bell-heather is quite common in this part of the world.  I shouldn’t like to try and count up the number of tourists I’ve lately seen wearing it!”

“Ah, but you don’t know the interest attaching to this particular specimen!” persisted Mr. Harland—­“It was given to our little friend by a wild Highland fellow, presumably a native of Mull, the very morning after she had seen your yacht for the first time, and he told her that on the previous night he had brought all of the same kind he could gather to you!  Surely you see the connection?”

Santoris shook his head.

“I’m afraid I don’t!” he said, smilingly.  “Did the ’wild Highland fellow’ name me?”

“No—­I believe he called you ‘the shentleman that owns the yacht.’”

“Oh well!” and Santoris laughed—­“There are so many ‘shentlemen’ that own yachts!  He may have got mixed in his customers.  In any case, I am glad to have some little thing in common with your friend—­if only a bunch of heather!”

“Her bunch behaves very curiously,”—­put in Catherine—­“It never fades.”

Santoris made no comment.  It seemed as if he had not heard, or did not wish to hear.  He changed the conversation, much to my comfort, and for the rest of the time he stayed with us, rather avoided speaking to me, though once or twice I met his eyes fixed earnestly upon me.  The talk drifted in a desultory manner round various ordinary topics, and I, moving a little aside, took a seat near the window where I could watch the moon-rays striking a steel-like glitter on the still waters of Loch Scavaig, and at the same time hear all that was being said without taking any part in it.  I did not wish to speak,—­the uplifted joy of my soul was too intense for anything but silence.  I could not tell why I was so happy,—­I only knew by inward instinct that some point in my life had been reached towards which I had striven for a far longer period than I myself was aware of.  There was nothing for me now but to wait with faith and patience for the next step forward—­a step which I felt would not be taken alone.  And I listened with interest while Mr. Harland put his former college friend through a kind of inquisitorial examination as to what he had been doing and where he had been journeying since they last met.  Santoris seemed not at all unwilling to be catechised.

“When I escaped from Oxford,”—­he said—­but here Mr. Harland interposed.

“Escaped!” he exclaimed—­“You talk as if you had been kept in prison.”

“So I was”—­Santoris replied—­“Oxford is a prison, to all who want to feed on something more than the dry bones of learning.  While there I was like the prodigal son,—­exiled from my Father’s House.  And I ‘did eat the husks that the swine did eat.’  Many fellows have to do the same.  Sometimes—­though not often—­a man arrives with a constitution unsuited to husks.  Mine was—­and is—­such an one.”