Lady Florimel lay on the sand, and sought again to read the “Faerie Queene.” But for the last day or two she had been getting tired of it, and now the forms that entered by her eyes dropped half their substance and all their sense in the porch, and thronged her brain with the mere phantoms of things, with words that came and went and were nothing. Abandoning the harvest of chaff, her eyes rose and looked out upon the sea. Never, even from tropical shore, was richer-hued ocean beheld. Gorgeous in purple and green, in shadowy blue and flashing gold, it seemed to Malcolm, as if at any moment the ever new-born Anadyomene might lift her shining head from the wandering floor, and float away in her pearly lustre to gladden the regions where the glaciers glide seawards in irresistible silence, there to give birth to the icebergs in tumult and thunderous uproar. But Lady Florimel felt merely the loneliness. One deserted boat lay on the long sand, like the bereft and useless half of a double shell. Without show of life the moveless cliffs lengthened far into a sea where neither white sail deepened the purple and gold, nor red one enriched it with a colour it could not itself produce. Neither hope nor aspiration awoke in her heart at the sight. Was she beginning to be tired of her companionless liberty? Had the long stanzas, bound by so many interwoven links of rhyme, ending in long Alexandrines, the long cantos, the lingering sweetness long drawn out through so many unended books, begun to weary her at last? Had even a quarrel with a fisher-lad been a little pastime to her? and did she now wish she had detained him a little longer? Could she take any interest in him beyond such as she took in Demon, her father’s dog, or Brazenose, his favourite horse? Whatever might be her thoughts or feelings at this moment, it remained a fact, that Florimel Colonsay, the daughter of a marquis, and Malcolm, the grandson of a blind piper, were woman and man-- and the man the finer of the two this time. As Malcolm passed on his way one of the three or four solitary rocks which rose from the sand, the skeleton remnants of larger masses worn down by wind, wave, and weather, he heard his own name uttered by an unpleasant voice, and followed by a more unpleasant laugh. He knew both the voice and the laugh, and, turning, saw Mrs Catanach, seated, apparently busy with her knitting, in the shade of the rock. “Weel?” he said curtly. “_Weel!_--Set ye up!--Wha’s yon ye was play actin’ wi’ oot yonner?” “Wha telled ye to speir, Mistress Catanach?” “Ay, ay, laad! Ye’ll be abune speykin’ till an auld wife efter colloguin’ wi’ a yoong ane, an’ sic a ane! Isna she bonny, Malkie? Isna hers a winsome shape an’ a lauchin’ ee? Didna she draw ye on, an’ luik i’ the hawk’s een o’ ye, an’ lay herself oot afore ye, an’----?” “She did naething o’ the sort, ye ill-tongued wuman!” said Malcolm in anger. “Ho! ho!” trumpeted Mrs Catanach. “Ill-tongued, am I? An’ what neist?”