seen few finer heads than that drawing you have. Mr. Lavender did
that, did he not? Why has he never done one of you?"

"He is too busy, I think, just now," Sheila said, perhaps not knowing
that from Mrs. Lorraine's waist-belt at that moment depended a fan
which might have given evidence as to the extreme scarcity of time
under which Lavender was supposed to labor.

"He has a splendid head," said Ingram. "Did you know that he is called
the King of Borva up there?"

"I have heard of him being called the King of Thule," said Mrs.
Lorraine, turning with a smile to Sheila, "and of his daughter being
styled a princess. Do you know the ballad of the King of Thule in
_Faust_, Mrs. Lavender?'"

"In the opera?--yes," said Sheila.

"Will you sing it for us after dinner?"

"If you like."

The promise was fulfilled, in a fashion. The notion that Mr. Ingram
was about to go away up to Lewis, to the people who knew her and to
her father's house, with no possible answer to the questions which
would certainly be showered upon him as to why she had not come also,
troubled Sheila deeply. The ladies went into the drawing-room, and
Mrs. Lorraine got out the song. Sheila sat down to the piano, thinking
far more of that small stone house at Borva than of the King of
Thule's castle overlooking the sea; and yet somehow the first lines of