Kate Glendinning observed that this young man changed colour. It was an odd thing—and interesting to the onlooker. For usually he was so calm, and self-possessed, and reserved: submissive, too, so that it was only at times that he raised his keen black eyes to the young lady who was addressing him: he seemed to wish to keep a certain distance between them. But these last words of hers appeared to have touched him. The pale, dark face showed a sense of shame—or deprecation. "You must not imagine, Miss Stanley," said he, "that I came to ask for anything. You have already been most generous—too generous, most people would say. It would be imposing on you to ask for more; it would be unfair; if I were in your position, I would refuse. But I thought my scheme might afford you some relief——" "And if you went away with them, what would you do with Heimra Island?" she said, abruptly—and regarding him with her clear, honest eyes. "That I don’t know," said he, "except that I should be sorry to sell it. And it would not be easy to let it, even as a summer holiday place. There is no fishing or shooting to speak of; and it is a long way to come. For a yachtsman it might make convenient headquarters——" "But you would not sell the island?" she asked again. "Not unless I was compelled," he made answer. "I might go away and leave it for a time—the letting of the pasture would just about cover the housekeeper’s wages and the keeping up of the place; and then, years hence, when my little community in Australia or Canada was all safely established—when the heat of the day was over, as they say in the Gaelic—I might come back there, and spend the end of my life in peace and quiet. For old people do not need many friends around them: their recollections are in the past." And then he rose. "I beg your pardon for troubling you about my poor affairs." "But they concern me," she said, as she rose also, "and very immediately. Besides that, we are neighbours. And so I am to understand that you won’t do anything further with your emigration scheme—not at present?" "Nothing until you consent—nor until you are quite satisfied that it is a wise thing to embark on. And indeed there is no great hurry: I can’t keep my last term until November next. But by then I hope to have learnt everything there is to be learned about the various emigration-fields." She rang the bell; but she herself accompanied him to the door, and out into the hall. "By the way," said she, "what has become of Anna Chlannach?—I thought you were to tell her to come to me, so that I could assure her she shouldn’t be locked up in any asylum?" "I’m afraid Anna has not got over her fear of you," said he, with a smile. "She seems to think you tried to entrap her into the garden, where Mr. Purdie was. And it isn’t easy to reason with Anna Chlannach." "Oh, then, you see her sometimes?" she asked.