Here she was interrupted by his having to open an iron gate for her. When they passed through, they came in sight of a solitary little bay of cream-white sand, touched here and there with russet weed, and ending in a series of projecting rocky knolls covered with golden bracken; while before them lay the wide plain of the sea, ruffled into the intensest blue by a brisk breeze from the north. Still further away rose the great mountains of Mull, and the long stretch of the Morven hills, all of a faint, ethereal crimson-brown in the sunlight, with every glen and water-course traced in lines of purest ultramarine. They had all this shining world to themselves; and there was an absolute silence save for the continuous whisper of the ripples that broke along the rocks; whilst the indescribable murmur—the strange inarticulate voices—of the greater deep beyond seemed to fill all the listening air. "And I might have known I was mistaken in Vin’s case," she went on, absently. "He was never the one to be caught by a pretty face, and be charmed with it for a time, and pass on and forget. He always kept aloof from that kind of thing—perhaps with a touch of impatient scorn. No; I might have known it was something more serious: so serious, indeed, is it, that he has at last condescended to appeal to me—fancy that!—fancy Vin coming down from his high horse, and appealing to me to be reasonable, to be considerate, and to stand his friend. And the pages he writes to persuade me! Really, if you were to believe him, you would think this old man one of the most striking and interesting figures the world has ever seen—so fearless in his pride, so patient in his poverty, so stout-hearted in his old age. Then his splendid enthusiasm about fine things in literature; his magnanimity over the wrongs he has suffered; his pathetic affection for his granddaughter and his tender care of her—why, you would take him to be one of the grandest human creatures that ever breathed the breath of life! Then about the girl: don’t I remember _La Claire Fontaine_? Oh, yes, I remember _La Claire Fontaine_—and little else! You see, that is just where the trouble comes in as regards my nephew. Hard-headed as he is, and brusque of speech—sometimes, not always—he is just stuffed full of Quixotism; and I daresay it is precisely because this girl is shy and reserved, and has rather appealing eyes, that he imagines all kinds of wonderful things about her, and has made a saint of her, to be worshipped. A merry lass, with a saucy look and a clever tongue, would have no chance with Vin; he would stare at her—perhaps only half-disguising his contempt; and then, if you asked him what he thought of her he would probably say, with a curl of the lip, ’Impertinent tomboy!’ But when he comes to speak of this one, why, you would think that all womanhood had undergone some process of deification in her solitary self. Come here, and by this