'A gentleman?' she retorted. 'I might marry a gentleman? I tell you there is no such gentleman—in manner, in disposition, in education—I say there is no such gentleman as he is comes to this house!'

'Deary me!' said Agatha sarcastically, but she was rather frightened by this unwonted vehemence. 'To think that a gamekeeper——'

'He is not a gamekeeper! He will never be a gamekeeper again. But if he were, what should I care? It was as a gamekeeper that I learnt to know him. It was as a gamekeeper that I gave him my love. Do you think I care what occupation he follows when I know what he is himself?'

'Hoity-toity! Here's romance in the nineteenth century!—and from you, Meenie, that were always such a sensible girl! But I'll have nothing to do with it. Back you pack to the Highlands, and at once; that's what I have got to say.'

'I am quite willing to go back,' the girl said proudly.

'Ah, because you think you will be allowed to write to him; and that all the fine courting will go on that way; and I've no doubt you're thinking he's going to make money in Glasgow—for a girl as mad as you seem to be will believe anything. Well, don't believe that. Don't believe you will have any fine love-making in absence, and all that kind of stuff. Mother will take good care. I should not wonder if she sent you to a school in Germany, if the expense were not too great—how would you like that?'

'But she will not.'

'Why, then?'

'Because I will not go.'

'Here's bravery! I suppose you want something more heroic—drowning yourself because of your lost love—or locking yourself up in a convent to escape from your cruel parents—something that will make the papers write things about you? But I think you will find a difference after you have been two or three months at Inver-Mudal. Perhaps you will have come to your senses then. Perhaps you will have learnt what it was to have had a good prospect of settling yourself in life—with a respectable well-conducted young man—of good family—the Lauders of Craig themselves are not in the least ashamed that some of the family have been in business—yes, you will think of that, and that you threw the chance away because of an infatuation about a drunken ne'er-do-weel——'