Gladys sat late by the fire that night, pondering her new scheme, and developing its details with great rapidity. She found the greatest comfort and pleasure in such planning; for, though she was the envied of many, there were times, though unconfessed, when she was weighed down by her own loneliness, when a sense of desolation, as keen as any she had ever experienced in Colquhoun Street, made all the lovelier things of life seem of no account. Next morning Gladys drove her guest into Troon, and at sight of the great sea, its breast troubled with wintry storms, tossing and rolling in wildest unrest, Teen appeared for the first time really moved. 'It's fearsome,' she said in an awe-stricken whisper,--'fearsome! Michty me, look at the waves! It's fearsome to look at.' 'How odd that it should strike you so!' exclaimed Gladys. 'It always rests and soothes me; the wilder it is, the deeper the quiet it infuses into my soul. See the tall shadow yonder through the mists, the mountains of Arran; and that is Ayr, across Prestwick Bay; and these rocks jutting out into the sea, the Heads of Ayr. Do you see that house with the flagstaff, at the top of the Links? It is Mr. Fordyce's house, The Anchorage, where I lived all summer. It is splendid here to-day. Stand still, Firefly, you impatient animal; we are not ready to go yet.' 'I wad be feared to live in that hoose,' said Teen. 'The waves micht come up in the nicht an' wash it away. Jist look at that yin the noo.' A great green wave, with its angry crest of foam, came rolling in with apparently resistless force, and spent itself on the pebbly shore with a sullen roar. '"Thus far shalt thou come, and no farther,"' said Gladys, with a faint smile, and a momentary uplifting of her eyes to the grey wintry sky. '"He holdeth the sea in the hollow of His hand."' 'Some day, when it is very fine, I shall take you to Ayr,' said Gladys, as she turned the pony's head. 'I have often thought how I should like to bring Liz here. I cannot tell you how I feel about her; I think about her almost continually.' 'So dae I, though I think, mind, she's been very shabby to me; but she was my chum,' said Teen, with an unusually soft look on her face. 'She didna care a button what she said to a body, but at the same she wad dae onything for ye.' 'And you still think she is in London?' 'Yes,' answered Teen, without a moment's hesitation 'Learnin' to be an actress, as sure as I sit here.' 'Somehow I don't think it. I have an odd feeling at times about her, as if she were not so far away from us as we imagine.' 'She's no' in Glesca, onyway. She couldna be in Glesca withoot me kennin',' replied Teen confidently. 'There's some that think she gaed aff wi' a beau, but they never said it twice to me. I kent Liz better than that. She could watch hersel'.' 'Did you know him, the man you call her beau?' inquired Gladys, with a slight blush.