“Are you thinking about your own good looks, lassie? Ay, but remember that handsome is as handsome does,” she said, with grudging admiration--for the girl with her flushed cheeks and shining eyes was something that even dour Janet Gordon could not look upon unmoved. Kilmeny smiled softly. “I’ll try to remember,” she wrote, “but oh, Aunt Janet, I am so glad I am not ugly. It is not wrong to be glad of that, is it?” The older woman’s face softened. “No, I don’t suppose it is, lassie,” she conceded. “A comely face is something to be thankful for--as none know better than those who have never possessed it. I remember well when I was a girl--but that is neither here nor there. The Master thinks you are wonderful bonny, Kilmeny,” she added, looking keenly at the girl. Kilmeny started and a scarlet blush scorched her face. That, and the expression that flashed into her eyes, told Janet Gordon all she wished to know. With a stifled sigh she bade her niece good night and went away. Kilmeny ran fleetly up the stairs to her dim little room, that looked out into the spruces, and flung herself on her bed, burying her burning face in the pillow. Her aunt’s words had revealed to her the hidden secret of her heart. She knew that she loved Eric Marshall--and the knowledge brought with it a strange anguish. For was she not dumb? All night she lay staring wide-eyed through the darkness till the dawn. CHAPTER XIV. IN HER SELFLESS MOOD Eric noticed a change in Kilmeny at their next meeting--a change that troubled him. She seemed aloof, abstracted, almost ill at ease. When he proposed an excursion to the orchard he thought she was reluctant to go. The days that followed convinced him of the change. Something had come between them. Kilmeny seemed as far away from him as if she had in truth, like her namesake of the ballad, sojourned for seven years in the land “where the rain never fell and the wind never blew,” and had come back washed clean from all the affections of earth. Eric had a bad week of it; but he determined to put an end to it by plain speaking. One evening in the orchard he told her of his love. It was an evening in August, with wheat fields ripening to their harvestry--a soft violet night made for love, with the distant murmur of an unquiet sea on a rocky shore sounding through it. Kilmeny was sitting on the old bench where he had first seen her. She had been playing for him, but her music did not please her and she laid aside the violin with a little frown. It might be that she was afraid to play--afraid that her new emotions might escape her and reveal themselves in music. It was difficult to prevent this, so long had she been accustomed to pour out all her feelings in harmony. The necessity for restraint irked her and made of her bow a clumsy thing which no longer obeyed her wishes. More than ever at that instant did she long for speech--speech that would conceal and protect where dangerous silence might betray.