The roar of the steam-pipes ceased, the throb of the engines struck the water, and the great steamer steamed away from the quay and out of the plain of the harbor into a wide world of gray waves and wind and rain. There stood Mackenzie as they passed, the dark figure clearly seen against the pallid colors of the dismal day; and Sheila waved a handkerchief to him until Stornoway and its lighthouse and all the promontories and bays of the great island had faded into the white mists that lay along the horizon. And then, her arm fell to her side, and for a moment she stood bewildered, with a strange look in her eyes of grief, and almost of despair. “Sheila, my darling, you must go below now,” said her companion; “you are almost dead with cold.” She looked at him for a moment as though she had scarcely heard what he said. But his eyes were full of pity for her; he drew her closer to him, and put his arms around her, and then she hid her head in his bosom and sobbed there like a child. PART V. CHAPTER X. FAIRY-LAND. “Welcome to London--!” He was about to add “Sheila,” but suddenly stopped. The girl, who had hastily come forward to meet him with a glad look in her eyes and with both hands out-stretched, doubtless perceived the brief embarrassment of the moment, and was perhaps a little amused by it. But she took no notice of it; she merely advanced to him and caught both his hands, and said, “And are you very well?” It was the old and familiar salutation, uttered in the same odd, gentle, insinuating fashion, and in the same low and sweet voice. Sheila’s stay in Oban and the few days she had already spent in London, had not taught her the difference between “very” and “ferry.” “It is so strange to hear you speak in London--Mrs. Lavender,” he said, with rather a wry face as he pronounced her full and proper title. And now it was Sheila’s turn to look a bit embarrassed and color, and appear uncertain whether to be vexed or pleased, when her husband himself broke in in his usual impetuous fashion: “I say, Ingram, don’t be a fool! Of course you must call her Sheila--unless when there are people here, and then you must please yourself. Why, the poor girl has enough of strange things and names about her already. I don’t know how she keeps her head. It would bewilder me, I know; but I can see that, after she has stood at the window for a time, and begun to get dazed by all the wonderful sights and sounds outside, she suddenly withdraws and fixes all her attention on some little domestic duty, just as if she were hanging on to the practical things of life to assure herself it isn’t all a dream. Isn’t that so, Sheila?” he said, putting his hand on her shoulder.