“I wonder, Miss Mackenzie,” said Lavender, as they went along the path down the hill--“I wonder what you would say if I happened to call you Sheila by mistake?” “I should be glad if you did that. Every one calls me Sheila,” said the girl quietly enough. “You would not be vexed?” he said, regarding her with a little surprise. “No; why should I be vexed?” she answered; and she happened to look up, and he saw what a clear light of sincerity there was shining in her eyes. “May I then call you Sheila?” “Yes.” “But--but--” he said, with a timidity and embarrassment of which she showed no trace whatever--“but people might think it strange, you know; and yet I should greatly like to call you Sheila; only, not before other people perhaps.” “But why not?” she said, with her eyebrows just raised a little. “Why should you wish to call me Sheila at one time and not at the other? It is no difference whatever, and every one calls me Sheila.” Lavender was a little disappointed. He had hoped, when she consented in so friendly a manner to his calling her by any name he chose, that he could have established this little arrangement, which would have had about it something of the nature of a personal confidence. Sheila would evidently have none of that. Was it that she was really so simple and frank in her ways that she did not understand why there should be such a difference, and what it might imply, or was she well aware of everything he had been wishing, and able to assume this air of simplicity and ignorance with a perfect grace? Ingram, he reflected, would have said at once that to suspect Sheila of such duplicity was to insult her; but then Ingram was perhaps himself a trifle too easily imposed on, and he had notions about women, despite all his philosophical reading and such like, that a little more mingling in society might have caused him to alter. Frank Lavender confessed to himself that Sheila was either a miracle of ingenuousness or a thorough mistress of the art of assuming it. On the one hand, he considered it almost impossible for a woman to be so disingenuous; on the other hand, how could this girl have taught herself, in the solitude of a savage island, a species of histrionicism which women in London circles strove for years to acquire, and rarely acquired in any perfection? At all events, he said to himself, while he reserved his opinion on this point, he was not going to call Sheila, Sheila before folks who would know what that meant. Mr. Mackenzie was evidently a most irascible old gentleman. Goodness only knew what sort of law prevailed in these wild parts; and to be seized at midnight by a couple of brawny fishermen, to be carried down to a projecting ledge of rock! Had not Ingram already hinted that Mackenzie would straightway throw into Loch Roag the man who should offer to carry away Sheila from him?