"Your hand is cauld as snaw, Annie, Your cheek is wan and white; What gars ye tremble sae, Annie, What maks your e’e sae bright? The snaw is on the ground, Willie, The frost is cauld and keen, But there’s a burnin’ fire, Willie, That sears my heart within. * * * * * Oh, will ye tryst wi’ me, Annie, Oh, will ye tryst me then? I’ll meet ye by the burn, Annie, That wimples down the glen. I daurna tryst wi’ you, Willie, I daurna tryst ye here, But we’ll hold our tryst in heaven, Willie, In the springtime o’ the year." "That is too sad, Maisrie," her grandfather said, fretfully. "Why don’t you sing something?" She turned to Vincent: there was a mute question in her eyes. "Will you sing the _Claire Fontaine_, Maisrie?" said he. She seemed a little surprised: it was a strange song to ask for on a night of farewell; but she did as she was bidden. She went and got the book and placed it open before her on the table: then she drew her bow across the strings. But hardly had she began to sing the little ballad than it became evident that there was something added to the pure, clear tones of her voice—some quality of an indefinable nature—some alien influence that might at any moment prove too strong for her self-control. _Sur la plus haute tranche—_ this was the point at which she began— _Le rossignol chantait;_ _Chante, rossignol, chante,_ _Toi qui as le coeur gai—_ And so far all was well; but at the refrain _Lui ya longtemps que je t’aime,_ _Jamais je ne t’oublierai_ her voice shook a little, and her lips were tremulous. Vincent cursed his folly a hundred times over: why had he asked her to sing the _Claire Fontaine_? But still she held bravely on: _Chante, rossignol, chante,_ _Toi qui as le coeur gai;_ _Tu as le coeur à rire,_ _Moi je l’ ai-t-à pleurer—_ And here she could go no further for those choking tears in her voice; she stood for a moment all uncertain, trying to master herself; then she laid the violin on the table, and with a broken "Good-night, Vincent—and good-bye!" she turned and left the room, her hands hiding her face, her frame shaken by the violence of her sobbing. There was an instant of silence. "Yes, it is time she was taken away," old George Bethune said, with a deep frown on his shaggy eyebrows. "Her nerves are all wrong. Why should she make such a to-do about leaving London for a fortnight?" But Vincent Harris knew better than that. It was not this unexpected departure that was in Maisrie’s mind: it was the words that he had spoken to her, and she to him, earlier in the evening. It was of no fortnight’s absence she was thinking, but of a far wider and longer farewell. CHAPTER V. THE GNAWING FOX.