The two young men set out together from Loch Arroch. The old lady whose children they both were, waved her handkerchief to them from her window as the steamer rustled down the loch, and round the windy corner of the stubble field into Loch Long. They stood on the deck, and gazed at the quiet scene they were leaving till the farmhouse and the ruin died out of sight. How peaceful it all looked in the bright but watery sunshine! The ivy waving softly from the walls of the ruin, the smoke rising blue from the roof of the farmhouse, which nestled under the shadow of the old castle, the stooks standing in the pale field glistening with morning dew. Bell stood at the door in her short petticoats, shading her eyes with one hand as she watched them, and old Mrs. Murray showed a smiling, mournful face at her window, and the long branches of the fuchsias waved and made salutations with all their crimson bells. Even Bell’s shadow had a distinct importance in the scene, which was so still--still as the rural country is between mountain and water, with mysterious shadows flitting in the silence, and strange ripples upon the beach. The scene was still more sweet from the shore, though not so entirely enveloped in this peaceable habitual calm; for great Benvohrlan was kept in constant life with moving clouds which crossed the sunshine; and the eyes of the spectators on the land did not disdain the bright, many-coloured boat, floating, as it seemed, between three elements--the water, the mountain, and the sky. The shadow-ship floated over the side of the shadow-hill among all the reflected shades; it floated double like the swan on St. Mary’s Lake, and it was hard to tell which was the reality and which the symbol. Such were the variations of the scene from the loch and from the shore. But though Bell was visible and Bell’s mistress, Jeanie was not to be seen. She had disappeared within the ruins of the Castle, and watched the boat from behind an old block of masonry, with eyes full of longing and sadness. Why had she been so harsh, so hard? Why had she not parted with him “friends?” What did it matter what he said, so long as he said that he looked upon her as an elder brother? Was it not better to be Edgar’s sister than any other man’s beloved? She cried, reflecting sadly that she had not been so kind, so gentle as she ought to this man who was so unlike all others. Like an elder brother--what more could she wish for? Thus poor little Jeanie began to dree her fate.