India, who was hoping soon to have a furlough home--and that he hoped he saw Miss Douglas well and Miss Brown too, who had always been so kind to his mother. Kirsteen in her black gown was a somewhat imposing figure, and the thought that this visitor had come straight from India took the colour, which had begun to come back, from her cheek. A black dress was not then, as in our days, the commonest of feminine garments--and his eyes seemed to take an expression of anxiety as they returned again and again to her, which Kirsteen did not understand. He told her that he had come home with his regiment sooner than he had expected, for that India was now the only place in which a soldier could push his fortune. “Or lose his life,” she said. “One may lose one’s life anywhere--but to vegetate without the means of doing anything, without being able to take a step of any kind--to settle--to marry,” said the young soldier with a slight blush and laugh--“to take a place of one’s own.” “Oh,” said Kirsteen, “to live and do well will be enough to make your mother happy--and others that belong to you--if you think of them that have been left lying on many a field--” “I acknowledge that,” he said, “many and many a better man than I--but to die a soldier’s death is always what one looks forward to--better than living an idle life and cumbering the ground.” “You will not do that,” said Kirsteen with a smile. She might have been his mother’s contemporary instead of his own, so far remote did she feel from all such agitation as was expressed in the young man’s awkwardness and earnestness. It did not occur to Kirsteen as it might have done to an ordinary young woman of her age that these agitations could have any reference to herself. She smiled upon him as over a long blank of years--“You are not one that will ever stay still long enough to cumber the ground.” “Miss Douglas,” he said, “I have seen several of your family--I feel a great interest. Will you forgive me if I take a liberty? You are in mourning?” The light faded altogether out of Kirsteen’s face. She made a little pause for a moment clasping her hands. “Not for any of my family,” she said. He begged her a thousand pardons, brightening up in a moment. She fell back into the pale shadows; he roused up to pleasant brightness of life. These two different moods do not understand each other. They are almost antagonistic without some special bond of sympathy. He went on after a moment-- “I saw much of your family--in Argyllshire--before I went to India. You will perhaps remember that Glendochart invited me for the shooting--which was very kind.” Kirsteen’s attention flagged. She assented merely with a bow. “I have been three years in India,” said the young man. “She was nearly seventeen when I saw her last.” “Who was nearly seventeen?” “Oh, Miss Douglas, forgive me!--your lovely little sister--a flower that seemed born to blush unseen.”