“Cold, oh, no cold,” said Mrs. Murray, “but no so dry as here among your fine parks and all your pleasant fields. Jeanie, do you see the young lady? She likes to come out, and does nothing, the idle thing, but look up at the sky. I canna tell what she finds there for my part. She tells me stories for an hour at a time about all the bits of fleecy clouds. Ye may think it idle, Miss Arden, and a bad way to bring up a young thing; but the doctors a’ tell me it’s the best for the puir bairn.” “I don’t think it idle,” said Clare, who nevertheless in her mind highly disapproved. “When one is ill, of course one must seek health first of all.” “Jeanie, do ye no see the young lady?” whispered the grandmother; but neither of them rose, neither attempted to make that curtsey of which Clare felt herself defrauded. When the girl was thus called, she raised her head and looked up in Clare’s face with a soft child-like smile. “I am better, thank you,” she said, with a dreamy sense that only a question about her health could have been addressed to her. “I am quite better, quite better. I canna feel now that it’s me at all.” “What does she mean?” said Clare, wondering. “That was the worst of all,” said Jeanie, answering for herself. “I never could forget that it was me. Whatever I did, or wherever I was, it was aye me, me--but now the world is coming back, and that sky. Granny! do ye mind what you promised to say?” “It was to tell you how thankful we are,” said Mrs. Murray, looking up from her knitting, yet going on with it without intermission, “that ye let us come here, Miss Arden. It is like balm to my poor bairn. When it’s no the body that’s ailing, but the mind, it’s hard to ken what to do. I’ve tried many a thing they told me to try--physic and strengthening meat, and all; but there’s nothing like the sweet air and the quiet--and many, many thanks for it. Jeanie, Jeanie, my darlin’, what has come to you?” The girl had gradually raised herself upright, and had been seated with her eyes fixed in admiration upon Clare, who was as a goddess to the young creature, thus dreaming her way back into life; but there had been a rustle by Clare’s side which had attracted her attention. It was when she saw Arthur Arden that she gave that cry. It rang out shrill and wild through the stillness, startling all the echoes, startling the very birds among the trees. Then she started up wildly to her feet, and clutched at her grandmother, who rose also in sudden fright and dismay. “Look at him, look at him!” said Jeanie--“that man! it’s that man!”--and with every limb trembling, and wild cries bursting from her lips, which grew fainter and fainter as her strength failed, she fell back into the arms which were opened to support her. Arthur Arden started forward to offer his assistance, but Mrs. Murray waved him away with an impatient exclamation.