_Lui ya longtemps que je t’aime, jamais je ne t’oublierai_. And sometimes the murmur rose into a larger monotone; the big grey building, and the black firs, and the highway, and the beeches, disappeared; and behold in their stead was a great breadth of sea, desolate, and rain-swept, and void of all sign of life. And was this the barrier now between him and her? Not merely that she was the heiress of Balloray, under the guardianship of her implacably proud old grandfather, but that she was away in some far land, beyond those never-ending myriad voices of the deep? ... _Pour un bouquet de roses, que je lui refusai_ ... What wrong had he done her? What had he denied her, in the time when they were as boy and girl together—when there was no thought of her being the heiress of Balloray—when she used to walk down through Hyde Park, in her simple dress, and sit on the bench, while her grandfather read his newspaper? Then the grey dawn would come; and he would awake to the knowledge that he had been tortured by mere phantasies; and yet these left something in his mind, even during the actual and practical daylight hours. He begun to wish that there was some bond—of what nature he had not determined—for it was all a vague longing and wistful desire—a bond that could so bind Maisrie and him together that that great width of sea should not intervene. For it was a sorrowful kind of thing—even when the white hours of the daylight told him he had only seen it in a dream. But apart from all these dim anxieties and this haunting unrest, came the strictly matter-of-fact consideration that within an appreciable time old George Bethune and his granddaughter would be returning to the United States. That was no spectral ocean that would then lie between Maisrie and him, but three thousand miles of the Atlantic; and who could tell when the two wanderers might ever see England again? Nay, had not he himself been implored to help in bringing about this separation? Maisrie had begged of him to urge upon her grandfather the necessity of getting the American book done first, before setting out on the poetic pilgrimage through Scotland which was to yield fruit of another kind; and, of course, if the old man consented, the first step to be taken was a voyage to New York. Vincent had drawn many a fancy picture of a little group of three, wandering away through the rich-hued autumn days, by "lone St. Mary’s silent lake," or by the banks of the silver Tweed; but now all that was to be sacrificed; and he himself was to do what he could towards sending the old man back to America, and Maisrie with him. Then there would be no more of the long, quiet days of study, made happy by anticipations of the evening; no more of the pleasant little dinners in this or that restaurant; no more of those wonderful twilights in the little parlour, with their enchantments of music and happy converse. London, with Maisrie Bethune three thousand miles away: that would be a