"Esmé," Auber repeatedly it musically. fancy some traditions affixed to that name.'

"Yes, I could

"The name of Esmé came from my maternal grandmother's side of our family; there were ladies and countesses Esmé, in royal courts!" and she involuntarily erected her head a little.

Auber called for a screen, as the turf-fire at his back diffused a too glowing warmth. "The tenacity of life in your Highland peat-fires is wonderful," he remarked. "I have no doubt that bright little fire you kindled at the loch to-day is still reflecting itself in the dark water."

"Fire and water are my favourite elements," Esmé replied. "They are both such beautiful things, and so life inspiring. I have quite a passion for pure springs of water flowing on and refreshing the lips of successive generations for ages. There is a very old well at Glenbenrough, at the foot of a ruined stone cross on the banks of the river, which was consecrated soon after Christianity arrived with the monks from Ireland in the Highlands nearly twelve hundred years ago: I take a drink from it every day."

Marchmoram had talked with Glenbenrough, but he had also heard much of Auber and Esmé's low voiced conversation: his eye also had been studying her face. He now addressed her. "That well of the cross almost made me thirsty in anticipation, Miss Esmé, as we rowed past it that evening. sisters say you haunt it like a spirit!

Your

"Well, were it a legitimate future existence, I should like to be a water-spirit, Mr. Marchmoram; but then I would not wish to be imprisoned in a well: I would revel in sea and river; in mountain torrents and springs. Descriptions of mermaids always had a charm for me.

Dessert was placed on the table, and a movement made; chairs were placed in a broken circle by the end nearest the fire. Marchmoram sat next Esmé, and Auber moved to the opposite side, betwixt Ishbel and Glenbenrough.

Marchmoram said to Esmé, "I once saw a girl at a ball dressed as a water-spirit: by-the-by it was as a Scotch waterspirit too, for she represented Sir Walter Scott's White Lady of Avenel. She had long fair hair like yours, which hung in

heavy tresses past her waist; her face was pale, and lighted by eyes of lambent blue. Silver beads were strewn in her hair and hung on her white flowing veil and drapery, to represent drops of water. She danced in a Waverley quadrille. I could not discover her name or history: she came and went, to me, as a ghost, for I had never seen her before and have never seen her since. I think I can see her now as I speak, though."

It was now time to start. Farewell must be said to Dreumah. The ponies were neighing at the door: the Glenbenrough cart and men were also in attendance to start in company; for the moon had not yet risen, and the tract from the lodge, until they should reach the road, was dark and uncertain. The gillies clustered round with flaming torches of pine, snatched out of the fire in their dwelling-place; and two of the valets also stood at the door with wax lights to illuminate the scene: it was a still dark night. The gentlemen escorted the party a few paces, then farewells were exchanged, and hearty shakes of the hand. Marchmoram called out a parting wish for the speedy appearance of the moon, and Esmé looked back and met Auber's dark eye and soft shadowy smile, as he also waved adieu. The moon rose soon after they reached the road, which stretched like a white riband through the dark scenery around them; and the ponies' hoofs clattered on the rocky surface as they trotted on. The river Rouagh, which they could hear rushing nearly parallel with them on its course from Loch Nightach, now suddenly appeared in sight, sweeping through a ravine, whose steep bank had hitherto kept it out of view. The road spanned it by a one-arch bridge, and the river flowed on smooth and deep until the road again met its course. A gravelly ridge marked a ford, however; and when this ford was passed the road led on through woods of birch until it forked; you then might either follow it on for many miles, until it reached the market town of Braemorin, or turn down to the banks of the river again, where a pretty wooden bridge crossed it and led you up to the door of Glenbenrough. As they reached the onearch stone bridge, the cavalcade stopped for a few moments, and Esmé gazed from her saddle over the parapet. The water boiled in a huge caldron-like pool beneath, and frothed angrily round the black-based rocks: which, shelving lower down, let the water loose, and it flowed on in a broad sullen stream until the ford again shallowed it. There were no trees here, and the pool of the bridge looked gloomy always, but grand in the moonlight.

When the ford was passed, Glenbenrough and Norah were in advance, and they rode on following the road; but Esmé asked Ishbel to take the path which here led up the Roua Pass, and the two girls, alone, and at this late hour of night, wound fearlessly up it, leaving the reins on their ponies' necks. "Ride first, Ishbel, darling," Esmé said; "and don't speak to me, for I wish to think." Esmé had been thinking ever since they left Dreumah; the scenes of the day were flitting in mystic colours between her and the clouds, as she rode on, that night. She was too much given to this dangerous tendency to recal past scenes, and enact them over again in idea. Hours afterwards, when all was silent and the lights were fled, she would sit and work it out ;-repeat the intoxicating conversation (whether it were of love or intellect), adding to it all she would have expressed, but could not, before. Esmé was highly imaginative and of a susceptible temperament, but perfect health and sanguine spirits kept her mind vigorous; though the blood mounted to her brow readily when her feelings were excited, so that any sudden or severe shock to that beating heart of eighteen might have paled the colour in her cheeks for ever. But she was very young her constitution and her mind would brace with years.

During the summer and autumn months, life at Glenbenrough was enjoyed irregularly (in one sense of the word), and much out of doors. Glenbenrough was active and energetic in his habits; and from the interest he took in his people and estate, he daily walked and drove many a mile through the surrounding straths and glens. In a small library, long converted into his business room, he sat and gave audience to his tenants, and held frequent conference with a factor, who knew less of farming than did the laird himself. There were rarely any morning visitors at Glenbenrough; and as the dinner hour was generally fixed to suit the convenience of their father, the Miss Mac Neils were not bound down to hours, and might extend a ramble or a walk to any length of time they pleased. Norah was passionately fond of gardening; and after her morning household duties were attended to, she generally resorted with rake and spade to the garden, and there worked indefatigably. Ishbel's education was in progress, but she claimed holiday time while the fine weather lasted, and seldom submitted to longer durance than an hour or two spent at the piano, or in studying French beside Esmé seated in the

garden; Esmé being absorbed in some one of her few favourite authors, and a dumb companion for the time.

Then the ponies were within call, and one or other of them was sure to be ridden every day. Esmé would ride to Lochandhu to see Florh, or to gather water lilies; Norah and Ishbel must pay a visit at the manse, or go to see a patient some miles off: the latter was a duty which Norah never neglected, and which was a very necessary one. Norah's small skill in medicine was supernatural in its effects as compared with what the ignorant practice of the patient's friends might have been. She heard that a child was ill, and on riding to the bothie where it lay, she found it lying beneath heaps of plaids and blankets, with head and pulse throbbing in fever, the mother and father seated by a huge turf fire lamenting its inevitable death. Norah asked if they had given anything to the child. "Nothing but the drop whisky to keep the sickness from his heart." Whisky was the universal cure-and curse; and though Norah argued, and exemplified the good effects of an opposite treatment with success, yet if another child in the same family fell ill, they tried whisky again; and did not Norah again interpose, no other prescription would be given. The three sisters seldom required medical surveillance for themselves; the healthy life of exercise in the open air which they led in summer, made their eyes bright and their steps elastic all the year round.

When the snows of winter came, their out-door life perforce altered. The hills lay deep in their untrodden snow; and even the roads were dangerous, from their icy slipperiness, to the shaggy ponies in their rough winter coats. The brown stacks of peat were piled high, and cart loads carried daily to the house from the square (as the farm offices and stables are designated in Scotland); for blazings fires kept up in each and every grate. Books, and work, and the piano occupied stated hours; the former selected from the old library downstairs, with, at rare intervals, a new selection ordered from London, or borrowed from friends: they had no reviews, to enable them to skim a book and to talk of it superficially afterwards. Their reading was literal, and they reviewed the work amongst themselves with individual criticism or discussion; and sometimes when a Review fell later into their hands, it was delightful to see their judgment often there forestalled.

Norah and Ishbel worked usefully as they sat in the drawingroom on wintry days; many warm flannel petticoats and dresses

wild Gaelic laments and stirring pibrochs alternating with German marches and valses. Her music-books were untidy with pencilled writing, and astounding to a professional teacher would have appeared the passionate words written beneath the passages expressing pianissimo or fortissimo.

Mrs. Mac Neil had carried on the education of her daughters, with a quiet love and duty, until Esmé reached her eleventh or twelfth year; and then her health began to fail. She wrote to friends in the south, who sent a good Protestant German governess to Glenbenrough; and soon after, resigning her children to the care of their governess, Mrs. Mac Neil gently bade farewell to them, to her husband, and all else so dear to her below, and fled away to the untroubled regions beyond. She had been a devoted, amiable woman, loved and loving in her generation; and though transplanted from a Lowland home to a Highland soil, the people had never felt her to be alien. It was she who built the first proprietary school in that district, and set the example of a cultivated mind and refined habits to many neighbouring homes. Mademoiselle Backhacker remained as governess until Norah had reached her eighteenth year, about two years previously; and then, with longing steps, she retraced her way home again to the beloved Vaterland: the history and language of which she had thoroughly taught to her pupils; as also French, but no other accomplishment. She was a good, simple woman, very indulgent; but her influence had had little part in the formation of her pupils' character. Perhaps her superstition and German idiosyncrasy had been of a slightly dangerous tendency in connection with Esmé's imaginative bias.