The Highland monthly - National Library of Scotland

334 I^^^ Highland Monthly.
'• Are you my Richard's brother ? " was all she slowly,
wonderingly asked ; but the rebuke was eloquent enough,
in all conscience.
When the merciful darkness came on, he manoeuvred
to his apartment like a haunted shadow. Since then David
Stuart's cheeks had faded under the grinding thought of
tainted honour, ignoble weakness, and a sense of the hopelessness
of his passion. And the poor, innocent muchhandled
but ill-digested books got the blame of it ; wisdom
was saddled with the bleaching folly of love.
Why stayed he there to encourage further catastrophe?
For the hundredth time he asked the question, as he
wearily gazed out of the small four-lozened window which
pierced through the thick, weather beaten walls of the old
castle. The reply was there, in the form of Flora. He
would leave next week and the next ; and still that
calamitous magnetism operated.
At this moment he saw her walking arm-in-arm with
the laird, laughing and chatting as every young lady in the
country side could not resist doing in the company of such
a merry and tricky old man.
Flora Macgruther was not what an impartial observer
would have called an exquisitely beautiful girl, cither in
form or feature. Her face was somewhat too pronounced ;
and she might with advantage have been taller and fuller
developed at 22 ;
but taking all there was of her collectively,
and adding grace and charm of manner, with a decidedly
clever, vivacious and well informed mind, she was a woman
no man, however endowed by nature or estate, would have
disgraced himself by wedding. Flora's eyes were decidedly
her strong point — large hazel, vivacious orbs, intensely
womanly in their expression, flashing with every mood of
the soul ; fascinating by their brilliancy, their revelations,
their honest daring. Canopying a broad, white, and
strongly formed brow, was a great wealth of auburn hair,
which she daily wove into the most unconventional but
becoming constructions. Thoughtful, warm-hearted Flora,