But when dinner was finally over, and the servants dismissed, Lavender placed Sheila’s easy-chair for her as usual, drew his own near hers, and lit a cigarette. “Now, tell me, Sheila,” he said, “were you really vexed with me when you went up stairs and locked yourself in your room? Did you think I meant to displease you or say anything harsh to you?” “No, not any of those things,” she said calmly; “I wished to be alone--to think over what had happened. And I was grieved by what you said, for I think you cannot help looking at many things not as I will look at them. That is all. It is my bringing up in the Highlands, perhaps.” “Do you know, Sheila, it sometimes occurs to me that you are not quite comfortable here? And I can’t make out what is the matter. I think you have a perverse fancy that you are different from the people you meet, and that you cannot be like them, and all that sort of thing. Now, dear, that is only a fancy. There need be no difference if you only will take a little trouble.” “Oh, Frank!” she said, going over and putting her hand on his shoulder, “I cannot take that trouble. I cannot try to be like those people. And I see a great difference in you since you have come back to London, and you are getting to be like them and say the things they say. If I could only see you, my own darling, up in the Lewis again, with rough clothes on and a gun in your hand, I should be happy. You were yourself up there, when you were helping us in the boat, or when you were bringing home the salmon, or when we were all together at night in the little parlor, you know--” “My dear, don’t get excited. Now sit down and I will tell you all about it. You seem to have the notion that people lose all their finer sentiments simply because they don’t, in society, burst into raptures over them. You mustn’t imagine all those people are selfish and callous merely because they preserve a decent reticence. To tell you the truth, that constant profession of noble feelings you would like to see would have something of ostentation about it.” Sheila only sighed. “I do not wish them to be altered,” she said by and by, with her eyes growing pensive; “all I know is, that I could not live the same life. And you--you seemed to be happier up in the Highlands than you have ever been since.” “Well, you see, a man ought to be happy when he is enjoying a holiday in the country along with the girl he is engaged to. But if I had lived all my life killing salmon and shooting wild duck, I should have grown up an ignorant boor, with no more sense of--” He stopped for he saw that the girl was thinking of her father.