"I wish I was five-and-twenty, and could make a mistake like that," said the major, with a sigh. Meanwhile Miss Carry had confronted her sister. "So you have been inspected, Gerty. Do you think you passed muster?" "Go away, and don't be impertinent, you silly girl!" said the other, good-naturedly. Carry pulled a folded piece of paper from her pocket, and, advancing, placed it on the table. "There," said she, "put that in your purse, and don't tell me you have not been warned, Gertrude White." The elder sister did as she was bid; but indeed she was not thinking at that moment of the cruel and revengeful character of the Western Highlanders, which Miss Carry's quotation set forth in such plain terms. She was thinking that she had never before seen Glenogie look so soldier-like and handsome. CHAPTER XXVII. AT A RAILWAY STATION. The few days of grace obtained by the accident that happened to Major Stuart fled too quickly away, and the time came for saying farewell. With a dismal apprehension Macleod looked forward to this moment. He had seen her on the stage bid a pathetic good-by to her lover, and there it was beautiful enough--with her shy coquetries, and her winning ways, and the timid, reluctant confession of her love. But there was nothing at all beautiful about this ordeal through which he must pass. It was harsh and horrible. He trembled even as he thought of it. The last day of his stay in London arrived; he rose with a sense of some awful doom hanging over him that he could in nowise shake off. It was a strange day, too--the world of London vaguely shining through a pale fog, the sun a globe of red fire. There was hoar-frost on the window-ledges; at last the winter seemed about to begin. And then, as ill luck would have it, Miss White had some important business at the theatre to attend to, so that she could not see him till the afternoon; and he had to pass the empty morning somehow. "You look like a man going to be hanged," said the major, about noon. "Come, shall we stroll down to the river now? We can have a chat with your friend before lunch, and a look over his boat." Colonel Ross, being by chance at Erith, had heard of Macleod's being in town, and had immediately come up in his little steam-yacht, the _Iris_, which now lay at anchor close to Westminster Bridge, on the Lambeth side. He had proposed, merely for the oddity of the thing, that Macleod and his friend the major should lunch on board, and young Ogilvie had promised to run up from Aldershot. "Macleod," said the gallant soldier, as the two friends walked leisurely down towards the Thames, "if you let this monomania get such a hold of you, do you know how it will end? You will begin to show signs of having a conscience." "What do you mean?" said he, absently.