“That’s true too,” said the dressmaker; “but my experience has aye been, that where we canna have what we want, and eh, how few of us have that advantage! it’s just a great thing to please your e’e, and fill your mind with what e’e can see, and the best ye can see. There’s even pleasure in a new fashion book when ye have little else. And with all the bonny leddies and their court dresses, and just to dress them like a picture.” Kirsteen looked at this humble artist with a sigh. “Perhaps you were not always so resigned,” she said. “I’m not saying that I’m resigned. I would just like to see the Queen’s court, and the princesses in their plumes and trains, before everything in the world, but it’s a comfort,” said the mild philosopher, “when ye can make it up to yourself with a bonny person like Miss Jeanie, just to make the line of her gown perfitt, if ainything can ever be called perfitt,” she added piously, “in this imperfitt world.” CHAPTER XIX. There came a great sense of desolation and misery into the heart of Jeanie after she had witnessed, with eyes averted and without a sign of affection, wrapped up in offence and estrangement, the departure of her sister. She was angry with Kirsteen and deeply disappointed, and incapable of comprehending that it must be so, and that she, Jeanie, was to be crossed at last and after all, her plaint disregarded, her prayer refused. It had been her lot hitherto to get all her little requirements in the end, however her mother or Marg’ret might at first stand out. And the boys had been much ruled by Jeanie’s will, and had yielded to her as big brothers often fail to do. She had never been crossed, in the end. Opposition had been made to her, difficulties insisted upon, but in the end they had always given way. Only once before had Jeanie come face to face with a disappointment, which could not by anything she could do be changed into happiness and content. It was the central incident in her life, but it had been up to this moment the exception, the one adverse event she had ever known. And it had been so great, so startling and astonishing that the girl’s pride and all her strength had been roused to conceal and surmount it, so that no one should ever suspect that to her, Jeanie, any slight had ever come. To nobody but to Kirsteen, and to her only when taken utterly by surprise, had this secret ever been betrayed. Young Gordon had visited Glendochart from time to time during the last years. He had come in the intervals of his service while Jeanie grew and blossomed into womanhood. While she was still half child, half woman, he had awakened in her heart that first delicious and strange sense of power which is so great a revelation to a girl. His eyes had said a thousand indistinct sweetnesses to her, which his lips had not ventured to confess. He had been reverent of her extreme youth. He had been kept back by his own uncertain prospects, by his want of money and