Fanshawe hastened to the drawing-room, more anxious to regain his lost ground than even to conciliate the uncle, though that, too, seemed to him very necessary. He found Marjory seated in her usual place in the deep, narrow window, with a background made up of pale sky, a gleam of deeper-coloured blue, which was the sea, and a pale shaft of the ruin between, as graceful and light as Gothic art could make it. Her profile was marked out against these deepening tones of blue, and the grey time-bleached canopy work of the old Cathedral enclosed it like the picture of a saint. This was how he felt it, being, as the reader perceives, in an excited and exalted condition of mind; for in reality, Marjory was neither like a Saint nor a Madonna, being too human, too modern a woman for any abstractions. But if men in love did not fancy such things, what would become of poetry? He drew a chair to her side, approaching as near as he dared venture, or rather as near as he could; for little Milly, her sister’s shadow, sat on her foot-stool with her golden locks in a glory round her, leaning upon Marjory’s lap, and dividing her from all new-comers. “I am not so stupid as I seem,” said Fanshawe. “I have my wits about me now. Will you tell me all about it again?” “Not all,” said Marjory, laying her hand upon little Milly’s head. Poor little Milly! She had been in the highest spirits about Fanshawe’s arrival; and the wretch felt her so dreadfully in his way! He restrained his impatience, however, as he best could, with a sigh which roused a certain sense of the humour of the situation in Marjory’s mind. “I hope you have quite recovered from your fatigue,” she said. “Do not be too hard upon me,” said poor Fanshawe. “It was not fatigue. My head was turned with being here, and seeing you again. But tell me, now? I have shaken myself up, and come back to ordinary life. We are still mortal; we have to tie white ties, and dine on fish and mutton, as if we were on common unenchanted soil, and not in Fife at all; therefore, I am capable now of listening and understanding. Tell me as much as you can.” This speech roused Marjory to a certain girlish levity, notwithstanding the seriousness of the situation. “It is a new thing to hear Fife spoken of as if it could be enchanted soil,” she said, with a smile, which felt to Fanshawe like a stray ray of sunshine. And then her face grew graver, like that of the Virgin Mother in his picture. “All I have to say is--about _her_,” she added, her voice sinking almost into a whisper; so low as to tantalize Milly, who was listening with all her ears. “About whom?” “You did not understand me? I feared so, Mr. Fanshawe, I know now what poor Tom meant when he was dying, when he thought he had told me. I have found Isabell!” CHAPTER XII. “Agnes, this gentleman was one of my brother’s friends; you may say everything to him that you have said to me.”