“Like me!” Rob laughed. “You don’t know what you are saying. I am a poor creature, a beginner, a fellow that knows nothing. But he!--and he is very fond of sunsets, and paints them; but he dared no more have done that--” Margaret looked up curiously into the western heavens. It was “all aflame,” and the glow of it threw a warm reflection upon her as she looked up wistfully, with a look of almost infantile, suddenly awakened wonder. Her face was very grave, startled, and full of awe, like one of Raphael’s child-angels. The idea was new to her. She, who thought these sketches so much more interesting than the sunset, it gave her a new sensation to hear of the great artist who had never dared to represent that which the careless heavens accomplish every day. Some floating conception of the greatness of that great globe of sky and air which kept herself suspended a very atom in its vastness, and of the littleness of any man’s attempt at representing it, came suddenly upon her, then floated away again, leaving her as eager as ever over Rob Glen’s poor little sketches. She turned them over with hurried hands. Some were of scenes she did not know, the lochs and hills of the West Highlands, which filled her with delight, and now and then an old tumble-down house, which interested her less. “Would you like to draw Earl’s-hall?” she said. “I know you have it done in the distance. But it is grand in the distance, and close at hand it is not so grand, it is only funny. Perhaps you could make a picture, Mr.--Glen, of Earl’s-hall?” “I should very much like to try. Might I try? Perhaps Sir Ludovic might not like it.” “Papa likes what I like,” said Margaret. But then she paused. “There is Bell. You know Bell, Mr.--Glen.” She made a little pause before his name, and he smiled. Perhaps it was better that she should not be so easily familiar and call him Rob. The touch of embarrassment was more attractive. “Bell,” she added, with a little furtive smile, avoiding his look, “is more troublesome than papa; and she will go and speak to papa when she takes it into her head.” “Then you do not like Bell? I am wrong, I am very wrong; I see it. You did not mean that!” “Not like--Bell? What would happen if you did not care for those that belong to you?” “But Bell is only your servant--only your house-keeper.” Margaret closed the sketch-book, and looked at him with indignant eyes. “I cannot tell you what Bell is,” she said. “She is just Bell. She took care of my mother, and she takes care of me. Who would be like Bell to me, if it were the Queen? But sometimes she scolds,” she added, suddenly, coming down in a moment from her height of seriousness; “and if you come to Earl’s-hall, you must make friends with Bell. I will tell her you want to draw the house. She would like to see a picture of the house, I am sure she would; and, Mr. Glen,” said Margaret, timidly, looking up in his face, “you promised--but perhaps you have forgotten--you promised to learn me--”