It was a strange education for a girl, and no doubt made me
more than ever unlike others. But my life was the life I loved.
When my guardian decided that I must live with him in London and be
educated as modern girls were, I tried to be obedient and went to him;
but before two months had passed my wretchedness had made me so ill that
the doctor said I should go into a decline and die if I were not sent
back to Muircarrie.
"It's not only the London air that seems to poison her," he said when
Jean talked to him about me; "it is something else. She will not live,
that's all. Sir Ian must send her home."
As I have said before, I had been an unattractive child and I was a
plain, uninteresting sort of girl. I was shy and could not talk to
people, so of course I bored them. I knew I did not look well when I
wore beautiful clothes. I was little and unimportant and like a reed for
thinness. Because I was rich and a sort of chieftainess I ought to have
been tall and rather stately, or at least I ought to have had a bearing
which would have made it impossible for people to quite overlook me.
But; any one could overlook me--an insignificant, thin girl who slipped
in and out of places and sat and stared and listened to other people
instead of saying things herself; I liked to look on and be forgotten.
It interested me to watch people if they did not notice me.
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