I was full of this feeling as we sat together on the terrace and watched the moon.  I could scarcely look away from him.  He was rather pale that evening, but there seemed to be a light behind his pallor, and his eyes seemed to see so much more than the purple and yellow of the heather and gorse as they rested on them.

After I had watched him silently for a little while I leaned forward and pointed to a part of the moor where there was an unbroken blaze of gorse in full bloom like a big patch of gold.

“That is where I was sitting when Wee Brown Elspeth was first brought to me,” I said.

He sat upright and looked.  “Is it?” he answered.  “Will you take me there to-morrow?  I have always wanted to see the place.”

“Would you like to go early in the morning?  The mist is more likely to be there then, as it was that day.  It is so mysterious and beautiful.  Would you like to do that?” I asked him.

“Better than anything else!” he said.  “Yes, let us go in the morning.”

“Wee Brown Elspeth seems very near me this evening,” I said.  “I feel as if—­” I broke off and began again.  “I have a puzzled feeling about her.  This afternoon I found some manuscript pushed behind a book on a high shelf in the library.  Angus said he had hidden it there because it was a savage story he did not wish me to read.  It was the history of the feud between Ian Red Hand and Dark Malcolm of the Glen.  Dark Malcolm’s child was called Wee Brown Elspeth hundreds of years ago—­five hundred, I think.  It makes me feel so bewildered when I remember the one I played with.”

“It was a bloody story,” he said.  “I heard it only a few days before we met at Sir Ian’s house in London.”

That made me recall something.

“Was that why you started when I told you about Elspeth?” I asked.

“Yes.  Perhaps the one you played with was a little descendant who had inherited her name,” he answered, a trifle hurriedly.  “I confess I was startled for a moment.”

I put my hand up to my forehead and rubbed it unconsciously.  I could not help seeing a woesome picture.

“Poor little soul, with the blood pouring from her heart and her brown hair spread over her dead father’s breast!” I stopped, because a faint memory came back to me.  “Mine,” I stammered—­“mine—­how strange!—­had a great stain on the embroideries of her dress.  She looked at it—­and looked.  She looked as if she didn’t like it—­as if she didn’t understand how it came there.  She covered it with ferns and bluebells.”

I felt as if I were being drawn away into a dream.  I made a sudden effort to come back.  I ceased rubbing my forehead and dropped my hand, sitting upright.

“I must ask Angus and Jean to tell me about her,” I said.  “Of course, they must have known.  I wonder why I never thought of asking questions before.”

It was a strange look I met when I involuntarily turned toward him—­such an absorbed, strange, tender look!