United States or Netherlands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
By and by from out of the brilliancy of the tent stepped Macleod and Fionaghal herself, she leaning on his arm, a light scarf thrown round her neck. She uttered a slight cry of surprise when she saw the picture this garden presented the colored cups on the trees, the swinging lanterns, the broader sheen of the moonlight spreading over the foliage, and the lawn, and the walks.
Or is Fionaghal the Fair Stranger this poorly dressed lass who boils the potatoes over the rude peat fire, and croons her songs of suffering and of the cruel drowning in the seas, so that from hut to hut they carry her songs, and the old wives' tears start afresh to think of their brave sons lost years and years ago?
Was this Fionaghal the Fair Stranger this maiden who had come over the seas to the dark shores of the isles this king's daughter clad in white, with her yellow hair down to her waist and bands of gold on her wrists? And what does she sing to the lashing waves but songs of high courage, and triumph, and welcome to her brave lover coming home with plunder through the battling seas?
Neither Fionaghal is she this beautiful, pale woman, with her sweet, modern English speech, and her delicate, sensitive ways, and her hand that might be crushed like a rose leaf. There is a shimmer of summer around her; flowers lie in her lap; tender observances encompass and shelter her.
But then, you know, Fionaghal came and stayed among us before she began to write her songs about the Western Isles; and the next time you come that must be for a longer time, and you will get to know us all better, and we will not frighten you any more by taking you on the sea at night or into the cathedral ruins.
After all, then, there was still the wild, glad hope that Fionaghal might come and live in her Northern home: the summer days had not gone forever; they might still find a red rose for her bosom at Castle Dare. And then he tried to deceive himself. Was not this a mere lover's stratagem. Was not all fair in love as in war?
Many a time he had dreamed of his thus sailing over the clear seas with the fair Fionaghal from the South, until at times his heart, grown sick with yearning, was ready to despair of the impossible. And yet here she was sitting on a deck-stool near him the wide-apart, long-lashed eyes occasionally regarding him a neglected book open on her lap the small gloved hands toying with the cover.
Fionaghal, the Fair Stranger, had not, then, been wandering in the enchanted land of dreams, but toiling home in a humble four-wheeler from the scene of her anxious labors? He would have slunk away rapidly but for an untoward accident.
And when she lifted her head to speak to him and when her large and lambent eyes met his surely Fionaghal, the fair poetess from strange lands, never spoke in softer tones than this other beautiful stranger, who was now his wife and his heart's companion.
When Fionaghal the Fair Stranger came from over the blue seas to her new home, was this the picture of Highland life that was presented to her? "Lady Beauregard, for example?" said Macleod. "Oh, I am not talking about women," observed the sagacious boy; "I never could make out a woman's notions about any thing.
Word Of The Day