She read it again and again, kissed it, of course, and slipped it into her bosom. To avoid everyone and to be alone with her own thoughts, she ran upstairs to the top of the house--to the summit of the old Scottish square tower, which was the nucleus whereon much had been engrafted even before the Melforts came to hold it, and going through a turret door which opened on the stone bartizan--a pleasant promenade--she sat down breathlessly, not to enjoy the lovely landscape which stretched around her, where Bervie Brow and Gourdon Hill were already casting their shadows eastward, but to wait and re-read her tiny note. She put her hand into her bosom to draw it forth; but it was gone--she had lost it--and her first thought was, into whose hands might it fall! She had a kind of stunned feeling at first, and then a glow of indignation that she should be treated like a child, in awe of Lady Fettercairn, and in a state of tutelage. Vincent Hammersley went to the trysting-place betimes--the shady Howe of Craigengowan. The evening air was heavy with the fresh pungent fragrance of the Scottish pines, the flat boughs of which nearly met overhead thickly enough to exclude the sunshine, which here and there found its way through breaks in the bronze-green canopy, and fell like rays of gold on the thick grass and pine cones below; but there was no appearance of Finella. Shafto had resolved to achieve a separation between these two, we have said, and evil fortune put the power to do so completely in his hands. Before Finella could reach the meeting-place among the shrubberies in the lawn, she came face to face with Shafto. 'Shafto!' she exclaimed, with intense annoyance, as she recoiled, 'you here--I did not know that you had returned.' 'And didn't care, no doubt? Yes--you are on the way to meet someone else?' 'How do you know that?' 'I found his little note to you.' 'Where?' 'At the foot of the turret stair.' 'And you dared to read it.' 'It was open. Dared!--well, I like that. Let us be friends at least.' 'I have much to pardon in you, Shafto,' said she, remembering the unpleasant trick he had played Hammersley about the cards. 'Let us understand each other, Finella.' 'I thought we did so already,' said she defiantly, and impatiently at his untimely presence; 'surely we have spoken plainly enough before this.' His face was pale, and there was an expression of mischief in his eyes that startled her. It was mere jealous rage that acted love. He caught her hand, and, fearing him at that moment, she did not withdraw it, but did so eventually and sharply. 'What folly is this?' exclaimed Shafto; 'do not shrink from me thus, Finella, but allow me to make a last appeal to you. I cannot think that you are so utterly changed towards me, but that you are wilfully blinding yourself.'