But that evening, some little time before dinner, it was proposed they should go for a stroll down to the shore; and then it was that Miss White thought she would seize the occasion to let Macleod know of her arrangements for the coming autumn and winter.  Ordinarily, on such excursions, she managed to walk with Janet Macleod—­the old lady of Castle Dare seldom joined them—­leaving Macleod to follow with her father; but this time she so managed it that Macleod and she left the house together.  Was he greatly overjoyed?  There was a constrained and anxious look on his face that had been there too much of late.

“I suppose Oscar is more at home here than in Bury Street, St. James’s?” said she, as the handsome collie went down the path before them.

“No doubt,” said he, absently:  he was not thinking of any collie.

“What beautiful weather we are having,” said she, to this silent companion.  “It is always changing, but always beautiful.  There is only one other aspect I should like to see—­the snow time.”

“We have not much snow here,” said he.  “It seldom lies in the winter.”

This was a strange conversation for two engaged lovers it was not much more interesting than their talk—­how many ages ago?—­at Charing Cross station.  But then, when she had said to him, “Ought we to take tickets?” she had looked into his face with those appealing, innocent, beautiful eyes.  Now her eyes never met his.  She was afraid.

She managed to lead up to her announcement skilfully enough.  By the time they reached the shore an extraordinarily beautiful sunset was shining over the sea and the land, something so bewildering and wonderful that they all four stopped to look at it.  The Atlantic was a broad expanse of the palest and most brilliant green, with the pathway of the sun a flashing line of gold coming right across until it met the rocks, and there was a jet black against the glow.  Then the distant islands of Colonsay, and Staffa, and Lunga, and Fladda lying on this shining green sea, appeared to be of a perfectly transparent bronze; while nearer at hand the long ranges of cliffs were becoming a pale rose-red under the darkening blue-gray sky.  It was a blaze of color such as she had never even dreamed of as being possible in nature; nothing she had as yet seen in these northern latitudes had at all approached it.  And as she stood there, and looked at those transparent islands of bronze on the green sea, she said to him,—­

“Do you know, Keith, this is not at all like the place I had imagined as the scene of the gloomy stories you used to tell me about the revenges of the clans.  I have been frightened once or twice since I came here, no doubt, by the wild sea, and the darkness of the cathedral, and so forth; but the longer I stay the less I see to suggest those awful stories.  How could you associate such an evening as this with a frightful tragedy?  Do you think those people ever existed who were supposed to have suffocated, or slaughtered, or starved to death any one who opposed their wishes?”