The girl at the cottage-door was younger than Marjory--very young, with fair hair folded back from a pale little face, and knotted loosely behind, as used to be the custom years ago. A rusty black gown, with long close sleeves down to her slight wrists, made in the plainest fashion, threw out, into still further relief, the colourless face and locks, out of which illness seemed to have driven the tone of colour which had enlivened their paleness. There were little rings of pale gold upon her white temples, but the mass of her hair had lost its brightness. Her face was one of those pathetic faces which it is difficult to realize in the glow of happiness. Her eyes were grey, large, and lucid, with that liquid softened light which is like moonlight in a face. Her features were delicate and worn, the nostrils somewhat pinched with suffering, the very lips pale. Intense capacity for pain was in the face, and at the same time a quiet patience and power of suffering. She met the eye of the stranger who looked at her sympathetically, with a faint but friendly smile, and gave her the usual country salutation, “It’s a fine day,” with a softness of tone which touched Marjory, she could scarcely tell how. It was Marjory who made the first advance; but the response was to her look, rather than to anything she said. The girl did not rise and curtsey, as an English girl of similar condition would most likely have done to greet the lady. But in her gentle attempt at acquaintance, and the soft little evanescent smile, with which it was accompanied, there was an appeal which only a hard heart could have resisted; and Marjory had a rural lady’s habit of constant intercourse with her social inferiors. “Yes,” she said, “the weather is very fine for this time of the year. (It was June, but in Scotland it is difficult to calculate upon the weather so early in the summer). But I am afraid you are ill. Do you live always here?” “Ay, mem, I’m not well,” said the girl. “They have brought me here for change. It pleases them; and I like to hear the sound of the sea--not that it will do me any good. I am too far gone for that.” “You must not think so,” said Marjory, with that instinctive denial of the plainest fact, which is human nature’s first idea in the presence of approaching death. “You are very young, and the sea always does good. Will you tell me what is the matter?” The girl smiled again. “It’s nothing,” she said, “and everything--it’s a failing; some doctors say it’s decline--but it’s no decline, it’s just a failing. I’m thinking the chief thing is that I’m weary, weary of this life, and I would like to go--” “But that is wrong,” said Marjory, shocked. “At your age it is unnatural. You ought to resist such a feeling.”