Janet betook herself to the kitchen and Eric went to look for Kilmeny. She was not in the orchard and it was not until he had searched for some time that he found her. She was standing under a beech tree in a field beyond the orchard, leaning on the longer fence, with her hands clasped against her cheek. In them she held a white Mary-lily from the orchard. She did not run to meet him while he was crossing the pasture, as she would once have done. She waited motionless until he was close to her. Eric began, half laughingly, half tenderly, to quote some lines from her namesake ballad: “‘Kilmeny, Kilmeny, where have you been? Long hae we sought baith holt and den,-- By linn, by ford, and greenwood tree! Yet you are halesome and fair to see. Where got you that joup o’ the lily sheen? That bonny snood o’ the birk sae green, And those roses, the fairest that ever was seen? Kilmeny, Kilmeny, where have you been?’ “Only it’s a lily and not a rose you are carrying. I might go on and quote the next couplet too-- “‘Kilmeny looked up with a lovely grace, But there was nae smile on Kilmeny’s face.’ “Why are you looking so sober?” Kilmeny did not have her slate with her and could not answer; but Eric guessed from something in her eyes that she was bitterly contrasting the beauty of the ballad’s heroine with her own supposed ugliness. “Come down to the house, Kilmeny. I have something there to show you--something lovelier than you have ever seen before,” he said, with boyish pleasure shining in his eyes. “I want you to go and put on that muslin dress you wore last Sunday evening, and pin up your hair the same way you did then. Run along--don’t wait for me. But you are not to go into the parlour until I come. I want to pick some of those Mary-lilies up in the orchard.” When Eric returned to the house with an armful of the long stemmed, white Madonna lilies that bloomed in the orchard Kilmeny was just coming down the steep, narrow staircase with its striped carpeting of homespun drugget. Her marvelous loveliness was brought out into brilliant relief by the dark wood work and shadows of the dim old hall. She wore a trailing, clinging dress of some creamy tinted fabric that had been her mother’s. It had not been altered in any respect, for fashion held no sway at the Gordon homestead, and Kilmeny thought that the dress left nothing to be desired. Its quaint style suited her admirably; the neck was slightly cut away to show the round white throat, and the sleeves were long, full “bishops,” out of which her beautiful, slender hands slipped like flowers from their sheaths. She had crossed her long braids at the back and pinned them about her head like a coronet; a late white rose was fastened low down on the left side. “‘A man had given all other bliss And all his worldly wealth for this-- To waste his whole heart in one kiss Upon her perfect lips,’”