Page:Penelope's Progress.djvu/148

134 line! That picture of a fair American, clad in a kilt and mutch, decked in heather and scones, and brandishing a claymore, will live forever in my memory. Don't clip the wings of her imagination! You will be telling her soon that one doesn't tie one's hair with thistles, nor couple collops with cairngorms."

Somebody sent Francesca a great bunch of yellow broom, late that afternoon. There was no name in the box, she said, but at night she wore the odorous tips in the bosom of her black dinner-gown, and standing erect in her dark hair like golden aigrettes.

When she came into my room to say goodnight, she laid the pretty frock in one of my trunks, which was to be filled with the garments of fashionable society and left behind in Edinburgh. The next moment I chanced to look on the floor, and discovered a little card, a bent card, with two lines written on it:— Better lo'ed ye canna be, Will ye no come back again?"

We have received many invitations in that handwriting. I know it well, and so does Francesca, though it is blurred; and the reason for this, according to my way of thinking, is that it has been lying next the moist stems of flowers, and, unless I do her wrong, very near to somebody's warm heart as well.

I will not betray her to Salemina, even to gain