’Now, Ronald,’ she said, ’I want you to tell me how it was you came to lose heart so, and to give up what you undertook to do when you left Inver-Mudal. Why, when you left you were full of such high hopes; and every one was sure of your success; and you were all anxiety to begin.’ ’That’s true, Miss Douglas,’ he answered, rather absently. ’I think my head must have been in a kind of a whirl at that time. It seemed so fine and easy a thing to strive for; and I did not stop to ask what use it would be to me, supposing I got it.’ ’The use?’ she said. ’A better position for yourself—isn’t it natural to strive for that? And perhaps, if you did not care much to have more money for yourself—for you have very strange notions, Ronald, about some things—you must see how much kindness can be done to others by people who are well off. I don’t understand you at all——’ ’Well, then,’ said he, shifting his ground, ’I grew sick and tired of the town life. I was never meant for that. Every day——’ ’But, Ronald,’ she said, interrupting him in a very definite tone of remonstrance, ’you knew that your town life was only a matter of months! And the harder you worked the sooner it would be over! What reason was that?’ ’There may have been other reasons,’ he said, but rather unwillingly. ’What were they?’ ’I cannot tell you.’ ’Ronald,’ she said, and the touch of wounded pride in her voice thrilled him strangely, ’I have come all the way from the Highlands—and—and done what few girls would have done—for your sake; and yet you will not be frank with me—when all that I want is to see you going straight towards a happier future.’ ’I dare not tell you, you would be angry.’ ’I am not given to anger,’ she answered, calmly, and yet with a little surprised resentment. For she could but imagine that this was some entanglement of debt, or something of the kind, of which he was ashamed to speak; and yet, unless she knew clearly the reasons that had induced him to abandon the project that he had undertaken so eagerly, how was she to argue with him and urge him to resume it? ’Well, then, we’ll put it this way,’ said he, after a second or two of hesitation—and his face was a little pale, and his eyes were fixed on her with an anxious nervousness, so that, at the first sign of displeasure, he could instantly stop. ’There was a young lass that I knew there—in the Highlands—and she was, oh yes, she was out of my station altogether, and away from me—and yet the seeing her from time to time, and a word now and again, was a pleasure to me, greater maybe than I confessed to myself—the greatest that I had in life, indeed.’ She made no sign, and he continued, slowly and watchfully, and still with that pale earnestness in his face.