"I am very glad to hear it," said her friend; "but I have a great mind to scold you all the same." The girl looked up. Her friend went over to her, and sate down beside her, and took her hand in hers. "Don’t be offended, Mary," she said, good-naturedly. "I have no right to interfere; but Angus is an old friend of mine. Why do you treat him like that?" The girl looked at her with a sort of quick, frightened, inquiring glance; and then said—as if she were almost afraid to hear herself speak— "Has he spoken to you?" "Yes. Now don’t make a mole-hill into a mountain, Mary. If he has offended you, tell him. Be frank with him. He would not vex you for the world: do you think he would?" The girl’s hand was beginning to tremble a good deal; and her face was white, and piteous. "If you only knew him as well as I do, you would know he is as gentle as a child: he would not offend any one. Now, you will be friends with him again, Mary?" The answer was a strange one. The girl broke into a fit of wild crying, and hid her face in her friend’s bosom, and sobbed there so that her whole frame was shaken with the violence of her misery. "Mary, what is it?" said the other, in great alarm. Then, by and by, the girl rose, and went away over to her sketching materials for a minute or two. Then she returned: her face still rather white, but with a certain cold and determined look on it. "It is all a mistake," said she, speaking very distinctly. "Dr. Sutherland has not offended me in the least: please tell him so if he speaks again. I hope we shall always be good friends." She opened out her colour-box. "And then," said she, with an odd laugh, "before you think I have gone crazed, please remember it isn’t every day one loses such an enormous fortune as mine." She began to get her other sketching things ready. And she was very cheerful about it, and very busy; and she was heard to be singing to herself— _Then fill up a bumper: what can I do less_ _Than drink to the health of my bonny Black Bess?_ But her friend, when by chance she turned her head a little bit, perceived that the pale and piteous face was still wet with tears; and the praises of Black Bess did not wholly deceive her. END OF VOL. II. LONDON: R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, BREAD STREET HILL. * * * * * * * * *NOVELS BY WILLIAM BLACK.* MACLEOD OF DARE. THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PHAETON. A PRINCESS OF THULE. MADCAP VIOLET. GREEN PASTURES AND PICCADILLY. THE MAID OF KILLEENA, and other Tales. MACMILLAN AND CO., LONDON.