She bit her lip, and could hardly speak to answer him. Often in London she had been morally sickened by the false rubbish talked to her sister, and had boasted to herself that the chief had never paid her a compliment. Now he had done it! She took her hand from his arm. "I think I will go home!" she said. Alister stopped and turned to her. The last gleam of the west was reflected from her eyes, and all the sadness of the fading light seemed gathered into them. "My child!" he said, all that was fatherly in the chief rising at the sight, "who has been making you unhappy?" "You," she answered, looking him in the face. "How? I do not understand!" he returned, gazing at her bewildered. "You have just paid me a compliment--a thing you never did before--a thing I never heard before from any but a fool! How could you say I was beautiful! You know I am not beautiful! It breaks my heart to think you could say what you didn't believe!" "Mercy!" answered the chief, "if I said you were beautiful, and to my eyes you were not, it would yet be true; for to my heart, which sees deeper than my eyes, you are more beautiful than any other ever was or ever will be. I know you are not beautiful in the world's meaning, but you are very lovely--and it was lovely I said you were!" "Lovely because you love me? Is that what you meant?" "Yes, that and more. Your eyes are beautiful, and your hair is beautiful, and your expression is lovely. But I am not flattering you--I am not even paying you compliments, for those things are not yours; God made them, and has given them to me!" She put her hand in his arm again, and there was no more love-making. "But Mercy," said the chief, when they had walked some distance without speaking, "do you think you could live here always, and never see London again?" "I would not care if London were scratched out." "Could you be content to be a farmer's wife?" "If he was a very good farmer," she answered, looking up archly. "Am I a good enough farmer, then, to serve your turn?" "Good enough if I were ten times better. Do you really mean it, Macruadh?" "With all my heart. Only there is one thing I am very anxious about." "What is that?" "How your father will take my condition." "He will allow, I think, that it is good enough for me--and more than I deserve." "That is not what I mean; it is that I have a certain condition to make." "Else you won't marry me? That seems strange! Of course I will do anything you would wish me to do! A condition!" she repeated, ponderingly, with just a little dissatisfaction in the tone. Alister wondered she was not angry. But she trusted him too well to take offence readily. "Yes," he rejoined, "a real condition! Terms belong naturally to the giver, not the petitioner; I hope with all my heart it will not offend him. It will not offend you, I think." "Let me hear your condition," said Mercy, looking at him curiously, her honest eyes shining in the faint light.