"
"Yes," I agreed.
"I make only one condition."
"What is that?" I asked.
"It must be in the Highlands of Scotland."
"Bless you," was my reply. "That suits me. You know I have to keep out
of the sun's rays, and where can we do that so surely as among the
heather? I'll be a committee of one to inquire and report."
Skibo Castle was the result.
It is now twenty years since Mrs. Carnegie entered and changed my
life, a few months after the passing of my mother and only brother
left me alone in the world. My life has been made so happy by her that
I cannot imagine myself living without her guardianship. I thought I
knew her when she stood Ferdinand's test,[41] but it was only the
surface of her qualities I had seen and felt. Of their purity,
holiness, wisdom, I had not sounded the depth. In every emergency of
our active, changing, and in later years somewhat public life, in all
her relations with others, including my family and her own, she has
proved the diplomat and peace-maker. Peace and good-will attend her
footsteps wherever her blessed influence extends. In the rare
instances demanding heroic action it is she who first realizes this
and plays the part.
[Footnote 41: The reference is to the quotation from _The Tempest_ on
page 214.
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