’Why, what can bind you to my cousin, child?’ asked Herries; ’—I mean as to a particular period of time?’ ’I—I am bound, sir,’ said Alison, a little unhappily. ’As long as Nancy wants me, I must stay.’ The shadow of a hidden thing seemed to fall across her joy. She moved away from her lover. ’Well, I can see no "must" about it,’ said Herries. ’You are a strange pair of friends, I often think, you and Nancy! Two creatures more unlike never lived, I believe.’ ’I would—I would you could think differently of Nancy,’ said Alison, impulsively. ’I do what I can for her in the best way that I am able,’ Herries answered, a little curtly, perhaps. ’You do everything in the world for her, sir,’ cried Alison, eagerly, ’except—except understand her, I think.’ ’What should there be to understand about the little jade?’ said Herries, lightly. ’But, nay, I daresay there is too much, and I don’t like women who need such a vast deal of understanding. She that I love must be clear as the day to my eyes—no obscurities, no subterfuges, no explanations—and she _is_!’ ’But, sir,’ said Alison, very much in earnest on this point, ’I would have you understand all that Nancy is to me now—all that she must ever be, whatever happens. I—we both—owe her our happiness, do we not, Archie? But for Nancy, I’d never have come to Edinburgh, nor have seen you.’ ’But for Nancy,’ cried Herries, gaily, ’you’d be Mrs. Cheape of Kincarley, in the cosy county of Fife! Here’s to Nancy, who stole a wife from the laird, and brought one to Archibald Herries, the poor writer of George Street!’ And he lifted high a little cup from the mantel, and pretended to drink to the absent mistress of the house. So light-hearted on these happy evenings was Alison’s lover. Then there came the evening—but memorable, alas! for more than this—when Herries brought her his mother’s ring. He had found time, and it had taken him many hours after his busy days, to hunt for it in the recesses of his house among the piles of boxes, desks and cases crammed with the relics of the parents he had never known. At last he had got it—a beautiful, clear-set emerald, slipped thirty years ago from a dead woman’s hand by the despairing man who had loved her. The lovers bent over it at the little window, and it gleamed at them in the fading evening light. ’How beautiful,’ whispered awestruck Alison, who had never owned a ring in her life. ’’Tis much too grand for me, sir, and I—I can give you nothing back.’ ’Give me a curl,’ said Herries, half in jest. ’The true lover’s gift.’ ’Would you really like one?’ cried Alison, and with characteristic absence of vanity she seized upon one of her finest, and caught up a pair of scissors for the sacrifice.