These words kept wandering through her mind involuntarily while the tears fell down, and her mouth quivered with something like a smile. The futile contrast now, to her who could have no true love but one, and no second mother. She went on very softly in the dark, as in a dream, feeling in her face the freshness of the mountain air and the turn of the night towards morning—silently weeping as she walked. The greater of her losses was altogether secret, a thing to be known of none. Neither of her sorrows was for the public eye. Her life, which was so far from this and so different, awaited her with labours and cares unknown to this solitude, and she had much to do with which no loss or sorrow could interfere. She was to be the stand-by of the family, she who had fled from it to find a shelter among strangers. She must not even sit down to weep for her mother. Only thus could she allow herself the indulgence of tears. The darkness was sweet to her, wrapping her round, keeping all her secrets. The heavens did not open to show her any beatitude, the landscape which she loved was all hidden away as if it did not exist. Nor were there any ecstatic thoughts in her heart of reunion or heavenly rapture. There was a long, long weary road stretching before her, years that seemed endless going on and on, through which she must walk, weeping only in the dark, smiling and busy through the day. Kirsteen made up her mind to all that was before her in that solitary walk, going towards her desolate home. In a day or two she would have left it, probably for ever, and gone back to a manifold and many-coloured life. The stand-by of the family! She had always intended this, and now there was consecration on her head.

The lights in Drumcarro shone blurred through the dark, a window here and there with rays of reflection round it hanging suspended in the night, no walls visible, a faint illumination for the dead. Duncan’s wife had come in to help, and a silent, solemn bustle was going on, sad, yet not without an enjoyment in it. Merran went and came up and down stairs with an occasional sniff and sob, and the importance of a great event was in the hushed house. Save for a birth or marriage there had never been so much suppressed excitement in Drumcarro—even Marg’ret was swept by it, and moved about, observing many punctilios, with a tremor of emotion which was not altogether painful. She had put the best sheets upon the bed, and covered the looking-glass with white, and put away everything that belonged to the usages of life. Kirsteen paused for a moment to look at the white, serene face upon the pillows, with all the white, cold surroundings of the death chamber—and then went noiselessly into the room which had been her own, where Jeanie lay fast asleep, exhausted with sorrow and trouble, upon one of the beds. She undressed for the first time since she had left London, and lay down on the other. But she was too tired and overworn to sleep. She lay with wide-open eyes in the dark, thinking over and over all the circumstances through which she found herself again an inmate of her father’s house. It seemed an endless time before the first greyness of dawn crept into the room, carrying with it a whole world of the past, beginning, as it seemed to Kirsteen, a new life of which she but dimly realized the burdens and anxieties. There was her father to think of, how he would receive her now that the protection of her mother’s dying presence was withdrawn. Whether he would allow her to stay—and what she could answer to Jeanie’s cry of distress, “Oh, take me with you!” Anne was a fool and yet she had spoken wisely. The daughter who had herself escaped from home was the last who could take another away. Perhaps the bonds of nature seemed all the stronger now to Kirsteen because she had herself broken them, because even now she shuddered at the thought of being again bound by them. Even when it is but an interval of a few years which has made the change, a woman who has gone out into the world and encountered life is slow to believe that a girl’s troubles can be so heavy as to warrant such a step. They were in her own case she may allow—but how to believe that there is anything in a father’s power tragic enough to make life unbearable for another, or how in Jeanie’s childlike existence such a necessity should arise, made Kirsteen smile with half shame of herself who had set the example, half amazement at her little sister’s exaggerated feelings. It could be nothing surely but fear of her father’s jibes and frowns. Neither of these things alarmed Kirsteen now. And who could be harsh to Jeanie?—not even her father, though she was but a girl!

While the elder sister thought thus, the younger stirred a little and turned towards her. The daylight was still grey but clear enough to make the sweet little countenance visible. Jeanie’s yellow hair was all decently smoothed under her nightcap according to the decorous fashion of the time. And the little frilled cap surrounding her face made her look something between an infant and a nun, unspeakably childlike, innocent and pure to her sister’s admiring eyes. But Jeanie’s face grew agitated and unquiet as the faint light stole over it and the moment of waking approached. She put out her hands and seemed to clutch at something in the air—“I will not go—I will not go—I will go with none but Kirsteen,” she cried in her sleep. Then, her voice growing thick and hurried, “No—no—I’ll not do it—I’ll never go—no, no, no.” Jeanie struggled in her dream as if she were being dragged away struggling with something stronger than herself. Suddenly she woke, and sat up in her bed with a dazed look round her, and trouble in every line of her puckered eyelids. “What is it, Jeanie?” She turned round and saw Kirsteen, with a sudden lightening of her countenance, as if the sun had risen, “Oh, Kirsteen, if you’re there! nobody will meddle with me if you’re there!” “What is it—what is it, Jeanie?” Jeanie looked round again as if still unassured. “I was only dreaming,” she said.

And there was little time for further inquiries since Marg’ret just then came into the room. She was very tender to Jeanie but anxious to get her roused and dressed and sent down stairs, “to give the laddies, poor things, their breakfast.” Marg’ret had restrained herself with a great effort that neither might be disturbed before the time after such a broken night. She herself had not been in bed at all, and felt it quite natural that it should be so, her fatigue going off with the coming of the morning, and a still excitement filling all her veins. The loss of the mistress was perhaps more to Marg’ret than to any one in the house; but Kirsteen too was more to her than any other. She would have a long time to indulge her grief, but not long to hear the story and enter into all the feelings of her child. She had restrained with what was a true self-sacrifice her eagerness and loving curiosity. When she sat down now by Kirsteen’s bedside it was with a sigh of satisfaction and relief. “And now, my own bairn, the pride of my heart!” Marg’ret said.

The conversation lasted a long time. Their letters had been frequent for the habit of the time, once every quarter of a year at the least they had exchanged their good wishes and such information to each other about the other as could be conveyed by “hand o’ write”; but neither of them had any habit of letter-writing, and there was much to be added, to fill in the framework of fact which Kirsteen had communicated from time to time. Everything indeed had to be told from the time of her arrival in London until the present moment. Marg’ret sat crying softly, holding her hands, keeping up a low murmur of commentary. “Eh, but I’m glad my sister Jean had it in her power.” “Eh, but she’s a fortunate woman to have ye!” “Eh, if I had but been there!” she exclaimed at intervals, pride and satisfaction mingled with an envy of her sister which Marg’ret’s better feeling could scarcely overcome. “I am just an ill woman, full of envy and all uncharitableness. I would fain, fain have been the one. I would have held ye up in my arms, and let no harm come near ye! I couldna have seen your bonny fingers spoilt with sewing,” she cried with outbursts of tears. But when Kirsteen came to the story of the last year, Marg’ret listened upon her knees, her head bent down upon the hands which she held clasped in her own, a few sobs bursting from her breast, her lips pressed in a passion of sympathy which had no words upon Kirsteen’s hands. The story was told very briefly in a few words. And then that chapter was closed, and no more was said.

“What is it that ails Jeanie?” asked Kirsteen, after she had come to the end of her tale, and Marg’ret had resumed her seat by the bed. “Tell me what has happened to her; there is something on her mind.”

“Hoots,” said Marg’ret drying her eyes, “there is little on it, but what is on most lassies’ minds—most likely a braw marriage so far as I can see. There is a gentleman that is up in yon lodge on the hill above Glendyer. It’s said to be for the fishing—but first it was said to be for the shooting—and my opinion is it’s neither for the one nor the other, but for our bit bonny Jeanie. It is just what I always said, even to the Laird himself. She is the bonniest creature in all this country from Clyde to the sea.”

“But she would not start in her sleep like that, nor cry and pray to me to take her with me, if that was all. And who is the man?”

“Not like Glendochart, though he’s a clever gentleman and a real good man to her that has the wit to guide him. A young lad, long and straight and with a bonny black e’e—and a clever tongue, but leein’, for he says very ceevil things to me. He’s ceevil to every one about the place, and great friends with the Laird—and I canna tell what ails her at him, if there’s anything ails her at him. She was just real pleased to see him till twa three weeks ago; and then she took an ill turn—but wherefore I canna say. Wha can say what whimsies come into a lassie’s mind?—and I’ve been muckle taken up,” said Marg’ret. She paused a moment, and if she had been a Roman Catholic would have crossed herself; the impulse was the same, though nothing would have more horrified a Scotch Protestant than to be told so. She paused, and in a low voice said, “Muckle taken up—with her that needs nae mortal’s service mair—”

And there was silence between them for a moment, and thought, that travels so fast, stopped remorseful with a sense of compunction, feeling how recent was the event, and how swift was the current of life which had already began to flow.

“You have not told me who he is?” said Kirsteen presently in a subdued tone.

“Well,” said Marg’ret rousing herself with a smile of pride and pleasure, “his is a kind of what they ca’ incognity at the lodge; but I’m thinking, though I’m not quite sure, that it’s just one of the Duke’s sons.”

“One of the Duke’s sons,” cried Kirsteen aghast.

“Well, my bonny dear! And wherefore no?—the Douglases are as good blood as any in Scotland, if it were the Queen herself—”

“Oh, Marg’ret,” cried Kirsteen, “my poor little Jeanie! Do ye think she cares for this man?”

“I make nae doubt ye are used to grander persons than that; but it’s no just ceevil to call the young lord ‘this man.’”

“Ye don’t understand.—Oh! ye don’t understand,” cried Kirsteen, wringing her hands. “The blood of the Douglases may be a very fine thing, but it will not make her a match for the Duke’s son—Marg’ret, you that have so much sense! And what does my father say?”

“I mind the time,” said Marg’ret, “when ye wouldna have said I didna understand. Maybe my sister Jean—Oh, my bonny dear, forgive me, I’m just a jealous fool, and I didna mean it. But there’s naething in it that’s hard to understand; a bonny lad that’s young and ganging his ain gait—and he sees a bonny lass, that is just like a flower, the pride of the place. Is he to wait and reckon, will my father be pleased, and will my leddy mother be pleased? Set them up! Not to be owerproud of a Douglas in their house, and a beauty like Jeanie. The pride used to be on our side once,” said Marg’ret, tossing her head, “if a’ tales be true.”

“It must have been a long time ago,” said Kirsteen; “and my father, what does he say?”

“I never saw the laird so father-like—no since the day when I put your brother Alexander into his arms, that’s now the Cornel and a great man among the blacks in India. I mind the gleam in his face when he got his son, and thought upon all the grand things that would come with the lad-bairn. Ye ken yoursel’ he never heeded a lass he had. But when he sees my lord coming like a little colley doguie after our Jeanie, following her wherever she goes, there’s the same look upon his face. I was the first to tell him,” said Marg’ret with pride, “that it wasna just a bonny lass that bairn would be, but a beauty to be kent about the world. And now he sees it himsel’. What your father says?—He just says naething for pleasure and pride.”

“Oh, Marg’ret—I fear, I fear, that this will be the worst of all.”

“And what is there that’s ill among ye, that ye speak of the worst of a’. There’s Mrs. Doctor Dewar just a very comfortable-like person, that’s done weel enough for hersel’. She’s a poor creature with little heart, wrapt up in her common man and her little vulgar bairns. But that is just a’ she would have been fit for whether or no. And there’s Leddy Glendochart that is a real credit to the family, and has travelled, and can knap English with the best—far better than you. And there’s yourself, Kirsteen, that makes all the grand London leddies stand about. And where is the ill among ye, that our bonny little Jeanie should be the worst of a’?”

Marg’ret raised her voice unconsciously as she gave forth this flourish, with her head in the air and all her banners waving. But the sound of her own utterance brought her back with a shock to the reality of things. She gave a low cry. “Eh, to think I should forget myself and brag and boast—with her, just an angel of God lying ben the house.”

And once more Marg’ret paid a little hasty hot tribute of tears to the presence, now so solemn, but which till now had counted for so little amid the agitations of the family. During those days of mourning, at least the mistress could not be altogether forgotten.

Mary and her husband arrived from Glendochart in the afternoon of that day. She was very full of explanations as to how it was impossible to come sooner, and how the illness had gone on so long, she had no belief in its speedy ending. She went up dutifully to the death-chamber, and shed a natural tear or two and came down again with her handkerchief to her eyes. “I thought my mother would have seen us all out, I never mind of her anything but ill,” she remarked, her ideas still being Scottish though her voice, since her visit to London, had taken on what she considered an English accent. “We had got to think, Glendochart and me, that she would go on as long as any of us. It was a great shock. If I had thought there was danger, I would have been here.”

Then there was a little natural family conversation and a few more natural tears. And Kirsteen gave her sister an account of the last hours which she had witnessed, which Mary listened to with due gravity and a little feeling, saying at intervals, “My poor mother!” “She had always a very feeling heart!” “She was always so proud of her family!” as occasion required. “And what did my father say when he saw you, Kirsteen? I did not think you would dare to come, but Glendochart thought ye would dare anything, and it appears he knew better than me.”

Kirsteen repressed the spark of resentment which this speech called forth. “My father said little to me. He made no objection, but he was not kind to Anne.”

“To Anne!” Mary cried with horror, looking round lest any one should hear.

“I brought her, that she might see her mother before she died. But I am not unwilling to allow,” said Kirsteen, “that it was a mistake. My mother took no notice of her, and my father—I did it for the best, but she came against her will—and it was a mistake.”

“Little doubt of that,” said Mary; “but I’m very glad ye see it, Kirsteen, for it’s not often ye’ll yield to say ye have made a mistake. And it will be a lesson to you another time.”

“Let us hope so,” said Kirsteen. “There is one thing I would fain have ye do, and that will save me maybe from making another. Mary, our little Jeanie is not happy, I cannot tell why.”

“It would be very unnatural if she were happy, when her mother died this morning.”

“It is not that. Grief is one thing and trouble is another. She has something on her mind. Will ye take her back with ye to Glendochart, and take care of her, when I go away?”

“Take her back? And who would be left with my father, to keep him company? And the two callants, that have nobody to look after them?”

“Marg’ret would look after them. And my father wants no company. Jeanie will miss my mother more than any of us.”

“You will not miss her,” said Mary; “I well believe that. But me that came to see her every six months.”

“Still that is different from Jeanie that has been always here. The little thing will be very solitary. There may be people about that are not company for the like of her. I could not take her, it would not be allowed.”

“I hope, Kirsteen, you will put nothing like that into Jeanie’s head. You to take her! There are many things ye must have forgotten to propose that.”

“I do not propose it. On the contrary I ask you to take her. I am not easy about her. I would not like to have her left here.”

“Do you think because you could not put up with your home that nobody can put up with it?” said Mary. “Ye are just far mistaken, Kirsteen. Jeanie is a contented creature, of a quiet mind, and she’ll do very well and keep very happy doing her duty to her father. None of us want to be hard upon you, but perhaps if my mother had not had all the charge left upon her, poor body, she might have had a longer and a more peaceful life; when the daughters of the house just take their own way—”

“You did not stay long after me,” said Kirsteen, out of patience.

“I was very different,” said Mary, holding up her head. “I had my duty to my husband to think of; a married woman cannot please herself. You,—it was just your own fancy, but I had to think of Glendochart, for the Scripture says ye are to leave your parents and your father’s house.”

Kirsteen was silent and said no more.

CHAPTER XVI.

The funeral, according to the dreary custom of the time, did not take place for nearly a week, and in the meantime there was a great subdued bustle in the house of mourning. It was rather the house of what they all called mournings, or murninse, in the plural, than of grief. The mistress lay still and white in her coffin, locked up and shut away, more drearily separated from all living thoughts and ways than had she been in the grave; but the black gowns and bonnets that were intended to “show respect” to her were being manufactured everywhere, in almost every room but hers. Miss Macnab was throned in the parlour as at the time when she came to make the ball dresses, and not less absorbed in the perfection of her art and the fit of every garment, while Kirsteen looked on with something of the suppressed amusement with which a great scholar contemplates the village pedagogue who taught him his first Latin, or an artist the house-painter who first showed him the uses of the brush. How far already had all their thoughts drifted from the dead mother who was the cause of this subdued commotion, and of so much more stir and life than for a long time had been in the house! But yet there were many things that were intimately connected with that poor lady. All her little secrets were disclosed. Mary began almost immediately to clear out the drawers and wardrobes in which her mother’s old dresses and old stores of every kind had accumulated. She turned out the old pockets of which Mrs. Douglas had many, some made in silk to wear outside her gown, some of strong linen to wear below, and which were emptied out with all their countless stores, pathetically insignificant, not without many a critical remark. “There was never anybody like my mother for rubbish in her pockets. It’s just like a clatter of old iron to hear the keys jingling. And what did she ever do with keys?—with everything in Marg’ret’s hand. I cannot tell what to do with these old gowns, unless we give them to the old bodies in the clachan, for they’re past fashion and past wearing, and just rubbitch like all the rest.”

“Could you not let them be? Such as they are, they are part of my mother—at least to me,” said Kirsteen.

“Why would I let them be? Just to gather dust and cumber the earth, and fill presses that there may be need of for living folk. I am not a wasteful person, as maybe in London and among all your heaps of claes you may be tempted to be. They are little more than old rags, and what my mother could mean by keeping them, I cannot divine, but still they might be of use to the old bodies in the clachan. Just bring them all down into the parlour in your arms, Merran, and I’ll sort them there. And ye can clear out the big hanging press; it might be wanted for Miss Jeanie, or when I come over myself on a visit, for there’s very little room for hanging up a good gown in this house.”

Kirsteen left her sister to this congenial occupation, feeling the sight of the old, well-remembered gowns, upon which she had hung in her childhood, a sight too pitiful to be endured. But Mary divided them into bundles, and tied them up in napkins, apportioning to the “poor bodies” about, each her share. “If they will not do for themselves, they’ll make frocks out of them for their grandchildren,” Mary said. She was very thoughtful and considerate of the poor bodies; and she gave Jeanie many lectures upon her duties, now that she was the only one left at home. “I hope you’ll not allow yourself to be led away by anything Kirsteen can say to you. Of course we will be aye glad to see you at Glendochart, but in the meantime your duty is at home. What would my father do without a woman in the house? And what would come of the callants? It may be a little dull for you at first, but you must just never mind that. But don’t let yourself be led away by Kirsteen, who is just wilfulness itself,” said Mary. Jeanie sat very still, and listened, looking wistfully at her mother’s old gowns, but she had nothing to say in reply.

Miss Eelen came over to Drumcarro for the funeral, but not with the intention of following the mournful procession to the grave. This was a thing which was contrary to all Scotch customs—a thing unheard of. The men attired in their “blacks,” with deep white “weepers” on their cuffs, and great hat-bands with flowing ends of crape, formed a long line marching two and two, with pauses now and then to change the bearers along the mournful wintry road. The women sat within, keeping together in one room, and firing off little minute guns in the way of mournful remarks, as they sat solemnly doing nothing, not even looking out to see the object of this lugubrious ceremony carried away to her last rest. Miss Eelen bore the part of a kind of mistress of the ceremonies on this sad occasion. She sat in her weepers and her crape, which was not new like the others’ but kept for such occasions, in the high chair which had been Mrs. Douglas’s, with a white handkerchief in her hand, and said at intervals, “Poor Christina—she was a fine creature. Your mother, my dears, was a real, right-thinking woman. She was from the south, and ignorant of some of our ways, but her meaning was always good. She was very fond of her family, poor body. All those laddies—and not one of them to help to lay her head in the grave, except the two little ones, poor things.”

Kirsteen stood leaning against the window watching through the shutters the mournful black line as it moved away, while Jeanie at her feet, holding by her dress, followed vicariously through her sister’s eyes the progress of the procession. They heard the tramp, recognisable among the others, of the bearers, as they straightened themselves under their burden, and then the sound of the slow, irregular march. “Can ye see it, Kirsteen? Is it away? Is that it passing? Oh, my mother, my mother!” cried Jeanie. She held fast by Kirsteen’s dress, as if there was strength and support in it; and Kirsteen stooped and raised her up when the sound of the measured tramp had died away. “Now,” she said, “all is gone—the very last. And the time is come when we must begin our common lives again.”

“She was indeed a fine creature,” said Miss Eelen with a little flourish of her handkerchief. “I mind when she came first here, a delicate bit thing, that never looked as if she would live.”

“She was always delicate,” said Mary taking up the response.

“And think of all the bairns she had—a fine stirring family.”

“Fourteen of us,” said Mary.

“Eleven living, and all a credit—that is to say—but I name no names,” said Miss Eelen.

“It is perhaps better not,” said Mary.

Kirsteen whispered in her little sister’s ear that she could bear this no longer, and taking Jeanie’s hand rose to leave the room. She was stopped by Mary’s reproving voice—“Where are ye taking Jeanie, Kirsteen? Ye are not going out on the day of my mother’s funeral?”

“At least leave the innocent bairn,” said Miss Eelen in a voice of solemn command. “A day like this should be like a Lord’s day in a house.”

“Or worse,” Mary added with tremendous seriousness—“for the Sabbath comes once in a week, but your mother’s funeral but once in a lifetime.”

The words came surging back into Kirsteen’s mind again—

Her heart felt as if it must burst, and yet it was something like a laugh that broke from her, as she was thus reproached for levity. “I am not likely to forget that,” she said. Jeanie clung to her as she left the others to their antiphone. The sound of the familiar linn seemed to have come back to dominate all sounds as before, when she stole out at the back of the house, Jeanie always following. It was a grey mild wintry day, a day such as is consolatory to the overwrought spirit. The two sisters seated themselves on the fallen trunk of a tree on the bank near the head of the linn. The softened rush of the water with no storm and but little wind in the air filled the atmosphere with a soothing hush of sound. Jeanie laid her head upon her sister’s knee, hiding her face, and sobbing softly like a child in its mother’s lap when the storm of woe is overpast; Kirsteen who had no tears at her command save those that welled quietly into her eyes from time to time without observation, smoothed tenderly with one hand the girl’s soft and beautiful hair.

“Just sob out all your heart,” she said, “my little Jeanie—it will do you good.”

“Oh, Kirsteen, it is not all for her, but for me too that am so forlorn.”

“Jeanie, my dear, it’s a hard thing to say, but soon ye will not be so forlorn. We will all go back to our common work, and your heart will maybe not be light again for many a long day; but the sun will begin to shine again.”

“Kirsteen,” said Jeanie raising her head, “you are my sister next to me, and I am a woman grown. There is not such a long, long way between us; but you speak as if it was a hundred years.”

“It is more I think,” said Kirsteen; “for you will have all that life can give, and I will have nothing, except maybe you, and being a stand-by for the family as my mother said.”

“Why should you not too have all that life can give?”

Kirsteen smiled and shook her head. “It is too long a story; and I would rather speak about you, Jeanie. To-morrow I am going away.”

Jeanie seized Kirsteen’s hands and held them fast. “I will be no trouble,” she said. “I will do whatever you please, but take me with you, Kirsteen.”

“I cannot, Jeanie. It would be to steal you away; I dare not do it. If I have been right or wrong in what I did for myself I cannot always tell; but for you, I dare not take it upon me. You heard what Anne said—and it was true.”

“Kirsteen,” said Jeanie raising her face to her sister. “I have more cause than you. Oh, listen to me, Kirsteen; would you like to see shame at Drumcarro? Would you like to see the name you all think so much of rolled in the dust? Oh, hear what I’m saying, Kirsteen! I have more cause than you.”

“Jeanie, my dear! my dear!”

“Kirsteen, there is one that is here, and they all think much of him, and he follows me wherever I go. Kirsteen, are ye listening?” The girl grasped her hands fiercely as if her own had been made of steel. “Kirsteen! It’s not to marry me he is seeking me. Do ye hear what I am saying? It is not—for anything that’s good.”

And Jeanie who had been very pale, hid her face which was blazing with sudden red in Kirsteen’s lap, and sobbed as if her heart would burst.

Kirsteen caught her in her arms, held her to her breast, murmured over her every tender word, but profoundly as Jeanie was in earnest, gave no faith to what she said. “What has put that dreadful thought in your mind? Oh, my darling, if there was such a villain in the world it’s not here he would dare to come—with everybody round you to defend you—to our father’s house.”

“Who have I to defend me?” cried Jeanie raising her head. “Jock is away and Jamie is so young; how should he understand? And my father that notices nothing, that thinks it will be a grand marriage and a credit to the family. Even Marg’ret!”—cried the girl with sudden exasperation, “they will none of them understand!”

Kirsteen took her young sister’s face between her hands—“An ill man could have no power but what he got from you. Jeanie, Jeanie, has he got your heart?”

“Oh, how can you tell, you that have never been tried?” cried the girl drawing herself out of her sister’s hold. Little Jeanie had her experience too. “No, he has not got my heart; but he gives me no rest night nor day, he sends me letters—I might put them in the fire. But there’s little to keep you living at Drumcarro—and I read them, I canna help it. And then he’s waiting for me about the door whenever I stir. And his tongue would wile the bird off the tree. And he’s not like the rough men you see, young Glenbowie or the like of that, he’s a fine grand gentleman. And oh, Kirsteen, take me with you! take me away! For my father’s one that will not understand, and Jamie is but a laddie, and even Marg’ret!—And how am I to fight and stand all alone by myself?”

The girl’s eyes were full of tears and her face of trouble. She held fast by Kirsteen’s hand as if by an anchor of salvation. “He has not got my heart,” she said, “but oh, I canna trust my head. He wiles me away. And there’s nobody in the world, nobody else, that is heeding what becomes of me, or where I go, unless it’s maybe you, Kirsteen. Oh, take me with you, Kirsteen! for I cannot trust myself and live here.”

“Jeanie, Jeanie, ye love this man.”

“No,” cried the girl rising to her feet. “No! no! If it was my last word, No! but I’m lone, lone in the house, and nobody to speak a word, and him with his flattering tongue. And oh, Kirsteen, if you will do anything for Jeanie, take her away.”

“There is nothing I would not do for Jeanie,” said the elder sister, drawing her again to her arms. “My dear, there was one I saw in London before I came away.”

“One you saw in London?”

“That had his heart set upon my little sister, one I could serve with my life.”

Jeanie’s agitated face was again covered with a burning blush. She withdrew herself from Kirsteen’s arm. “How can I tell who ye might see in London. It’s far, far from here.”

“And maybe you never thought upon him, though his heart is set on you.”

Jeanie turned from red to pale. She trembled, drawing herself from within her sister’s arm. “How can I tell who it is!” she said with an indignation which made her breathless, “when you never tell me? And there has never been any person—oh, never any person!” Her eyes were unquiet, seeking Kirsteen’s face, then withdrawn hurriedly not to meet her look; her hands were nervously clasping and unclasping in her lap. “Men,” she cried, “never care! I’ve read it in books and I know it’s true. They look at you and they speak and speak, and follow you about, and then when their time is come they go away, and you hear of them no more.”

“Where have you learned all this, my poor little Jeanie,” said Kirsteen tenderly, “for ye seem to have knowledge of things that are beyond me?”

“We learn the things that come our way,” said the girl. Her lips quivered, she was too much agitated to keep still. “Who would that be that you saw in London?” she asked with a forced, almost mocking smile.

“He has been in India since then, and wherever there was fighting. His name is Major Gordon.”

Kirsteen was conscious once more of the grudge in her heart at Gordon’s life and promotion, and the title she had given him; but she had no time for thought. For Jeanie rose up from her side in a passion of mingled feeling, anger and indignation and wistfulness and pain.

“How dared he speak?” she cried. “How dared he name my name? Him! that came when I was but a bairn, and then rode away!”

“Jeanie!”

“Oh! I thought you understood,” cried Jeanie in a kind of frenzy. “I thought you would know, but you’ve aye had peace in your heart though ye think you’re so wise. There has nobody ever come and gone and made ye feel ye were a fool and unwomanly, and all that Marg’ret says. You have never known what it was to have your heart burnt like hot irons on it, and to scorn yourself, and feel that ye were the poorest thing on earth! To let a man think that, and then to see him ride away!”

Scorching tears poured from Jeanie’s eyes. Tears like a fiery torrent, very different from those which had been wept for her mother. She sat down again on the log but turned her back to Kirsteen, covering her face with her hands. “It is just for that,” she said to herself, “just for that that I’m tempted most—just for that!”

“I would have thought,” said Kirsteen, with intense and sorrowful indignation to think that where there was life and love there should be this perversity. “I would have thought that a touch of true love in the heart would save ye for ever and ever from all temptations of the kind.”

“You would have thought!” cried Jeanie scornful in her passion, turning her soft angelic countenance, in which there were so many things unintelligible to her elder sister, all flushed and wild to Kirsteen. “And me that thought you would understand!” she cried.

There was a pause, and Kirsteen’s heart ached with feelings inexpressible. She had never been accused of not understanding before, and it is a reproach which is hard to bear. She sat silent, painfully wondering into what strange places these young feet had wandered where she could not follow. She had expressed the only conviction that was possible to her one-ideaed soul. The touch of true love had been to herself the one and only touch, never to be obliterated by baser contact. She sat gazing wistfully into the dim air, perplexed and troubled, her eyes filling with tears, her heart with heaviness. To be tempted was the one thing which in her austere and spotless womanhood, a widowed maiden, Kirsteen could not understand.

Jeanie had been sobbing passionately by her side for a minute or more, when suddenly she turned and flung herself again upon her sister, once more hiding her face in Kirsteen’s lap. “Oh!” she cried, “take me with you, Kirsteen! Do you not see now that I cannot be left? You’re holy like a saint, but me, I want more, I want something more. Is it not natural to be happy when you’re young—to get what you like, and see what’s bonny and bright, and get out into the world? I’m not one that can be patient and bide at home. Oh, Kirsteen! I cannot just sew my seam, and read my book like good girls—even with my mother here—and now that she’s gone—Kirsteen, Kirsteen! he will wile me away to my shame if you will not save me, you that are the only one.”

She said all this half intelligibly, clasping her arms round her sister, now raising her head with an imploring look, now burying it again on Kirsteen’s shoulder or in her lap. Such an impassioned creature was unlike anything that Kirsteen had ever known before. She soothed her with soft words, saying, “My dear, my darlin’, my bonny Jeanie!” the tears falling from her eyes as she caressed and stilled the excitement of the other. What could she do? How could she take her? How leave her? She who was herself on sufferance allowed to be here by reason of her mother’s death, but bound to go away to-morrow, and with so little likelihood that any one would pay attention to what she said. She dared not steal her little sister away. She dared scarcely plead for her, for more care, for closer guardianship! Alas, was this all that was to come of the post she had undertaken, she who was to be the stand-by of the family? She who from the beginning had thought of Jeanie as the one for whom everything was to be made bright?

CHAPTER XVII.

Kirsteen, up to this time, had kept as much as possible out of her father’s way, and he had taken no notice of her presence in the house. When she came within his range of vision he turned his back upon her but said nothing. It appeared to her now, however, that it was necessary to change her procedure. If she were to do anything for Jeanie she must take a more decided part. Accordingly, on the evening of her mother’s funeral, Kirsteen appeared at the family table among the others. Her father perceived her as he took his place, and gave her a somewhat fixed look from under his eyebrows, along with a muttered exclamation; but he said nothing, and suffered her presence without any demonstration of displeasure. The evening was like and yet unlike one of the former ceremonials of the house on the eve of the departure of sons. It was a celebration like that, but the hero of the occasion was not there, and the party at table after a week of composed, quiet, subdued voices, and melancholy subjects, showed a certain relief in the fact that all was over, and nothing further required to show their respect. The black ribbons in Miss Eelen’s cap nodded as she moved her head, and Mary was very careful of the crisp new crape which ornamented her dress, while Mr. Pyper, the minister, would make an occasional remark in conformity with what were supposed to be the feelings of the bereaved family. But these were almost the only signs of mourning. Jeanie, after all the agitation of the morning, presented a changeful aspect, and her eyes were heavy and a little red with tears; and Jamie, the last of the boys, had an open-eyed, wistful, almost startled look, feeling very solitary, poor boy, and wishing to be away like the rest. There was no one who had felt the mother’s death, or perhaps it would be almost more just to say the presence of death in the house, as this boy, more imaginative than the rest, to whom the week’s interval had been a terrible one. He was pale under his freckles, with a dismal look in his wide eyes, the impression of the funeral still too strong upon him for any other feeling. But the others were relieved; it is impossible to use another word.

“The country will be very quiet this year with nobody at the castle,” said Mary in subdued tones.

“It will make little difference to ainy of you,” replied Miss Eelen, her black bows nodding in her cap, “for if there had been fifty balls, ye could not in decency have gone to ainy one o’ them.”

“There are more folk in the country than us,” said Mary, with a little sharpness. “But I hear Lady Chatty’s far from happy, poor thing. For my part I never had any confidence in the man.”

“The man was well enough; there’s nothing to be said against the man; they’re just both spenders, and no siller to spend.”

“That is what I am saying,” said Mary. “The Duke’s daughter, and her beauty, and her fashion, and all that—and at the last to take up with a poor man.”

“What do you think, Drumcarro, of this Catholic Emancipation that is making such a noise?” said Glendochart, as the ladies continued to argue over the subject of Lady Chatty.

“I just think that we’ll have all the wild Irish and the wild North on our hands before we know where we are—and Jesuits going to and fro over the face of the earth like Sawtan in the Scriptures—if the Government doesn’t stand firm.”

“I cannot but think, however,” said Glendochart, “that there’s something to be said on the other side. A large number of our country folk just put out of the question altogether.”

“There’s nothing to be said on the other side of the question,” cried Drumcarro, with his fierce look. “Fellow subjects! just thae deevils of Irish and a whean idle Crofters that will neither fish the seas nor delve the land—and a horde of priests at the head of them. Them that think the Pope of Rome should have a hand in governing this country will get little backing from me.”

“I allow,” said Mr. Pyper, “that it’s a difficult question with modern notions of toleration, and all that—but violent evils must have violent remedies—and when ye think, Glendochart, what this country has suffered from Papal rule—”

“I would just have no dealings with the pooers of darkness,” said Mr. Douglas, bringing down his hand upon the table with a force which made everything tremble.

“Bless me,” cried Miss Eelen, “what’s wrong with ye, Drumcarro? Ye’ll break all the glasses. Eh, but the pooers o’ darkness are no so easy to make or meddle with. The minister will tell ye that they are just in our hearts and at our doors.”

“Ye may say that, Miss Eelen,” said Mr. Pyper, shaking his head professionally; “but it was in the sphere of politics our friend was meaning. It would be a fine thing if, with all our progress, we were to find ourselves back again in the hands of the Inquiseetion and yon wild Irishman O’Connell.”

“I would learn them a lesson,” cried Drumcarro, “there’s none o’ them to be trusted. I would let them know there would be no trafficking with treason. We’ve had enough in Scotland of the thumbscrew and the boot—no but what judeeciously employed,” he added a moment after, “with the ignorant, when ye cannot get at them in any other way—”

“I hope ye don’t advocate torture, Drumcarro; that would be a curious way of opposing Catholic Emancipation,” said Glendochart.

“I’m not saying, sir, that I advocate torture; but I’ve seen cases—when deevilish obstinacy had to be dealt with,” said the old slave-driver, with a gleam of fire from under his shaggy eyebrows.

“Well, well,” said the minister softly, raising a large hand in deprecation of the argument, “that’s perhaps departing from the immediate question. I hear there’s like to be trouble in your parish, Glendochart, about the new presentee. The Duke has been maybe a little hasty—an old tutor, that had to be provided for.”

“If he manages the parish as ill as he managed some of the young lords,” said Glendochart, with a shrug of his shoulders.

“I will not have a word said against the young lords,” cried Mary. “They’re just very pleasant—and as ceevil young men as ye could meet anywhere—there’s Lord John that we know best.”

Miss Eelen shook her head till the black bows fluttered as if in a strong wind. “You’re all just infatuate about Lord John. I would not trust him, not a step out o’ my sight. I have no faith in your Lord Johns. Begging your pardon, Glendochart, they’re not a true race, and Lord John he is the worst of a’.”

“I think you might know better, Aunt Eelen, than to bring up accusations against the head of my husband’s name.”

“Your husband quotha!” cried Miss Eelen. “It was said of them for hundreds of years before your husband was born or thought of.”

The minister again intervened to smooth matters down with instances of the power and value of the race thus called in question. Jeanie was seated at the other end of the table out of reach of the principal personages who kept up the conversation, but she started at the name of Lord John, and her pale face with the faint redness round the eyes, which appealed so powerfully to Kirsteen’s sympathies, grew suddenly crimson. She cast a terrified look at her sister who sat silently by her, and caught Kirsteen’s hand under the table with a clutch as of despair. Lord John! Kirsteen had made no attempt to identify Jeanie’s wooer whom the girl held in such strange terror. Her own heart gave a bound of alarm yet disdain. She asked with her eyes, “Is that the man?” and received from Jeanie an answering look of confusion and trouble. There were no words exchanged between them. Kirsteen shook her head with a gesture which to Jeanie’s eyes expressed not only disapproval but surprise and scorn, and Jeanie let go her hold of her sister’s hand with an impulse of impatience much like that with which she had cried, “I thought you would understand!” This little conversation by pantomime made the heart of the elder sister ache. “Lord John,” she said to herself, “Lord John!” with mingled fear and astonishment. That Jeanie should be in danger from him—that he should dare! that her little sister with that angelic face, who had once been touched as Kirsteen said by true love should feel a temptation in the flattering words of the man from whom she yet desired to escape, conscious that he was not a true man! Kirsteen’s experiences had been of a simple kind hitherto. She was acquainted with no such problems. It cost her a painful effort to bring herself even to the threshold of Jeanie’s confused mind. She could not comprehend the conflict that was going on there. And yet she could not forsake her little sister even though the circumstances were such as she did not understand.

“Glendochart,” said Mary when the ladies had retired to the parlour leaving the gentlemen to consume their toddy, “has had a letter from Major Gordon that we first met in London, Kirsteen. I cannot call to mind where my husband met him, if it was at the Duke’s or where. But we had him down for the shooting, and two or three times he just went and came—and admired Jeanie—but that’s no wonder, for there’s nobody but what admires Jeanie. He’s wanting to come again if we’ll ask him. But I doubt if I’ll do it—for Jeanie—where is she? I hope she cannot hear me—is on the way to something far grander or I’m much mistaken—and I’m not one that makes mistakes in that way.”

“If ye paid any attention to me,” said Miss Eelen, “I would say ye were making the greatest mistake ye ever made in your life.”

“That’s because it’s not one of your Douglas allies—and you’re full of auld world freats and proverbs about names, but I would like to hear in our family who had anything to say against my husband’s name.”

“If you mean Lord John—do you know he has not a good reputation? Very ill things are said of him.”

“In London,” said the Lady of Glendochart with a superior smile. “My experience is that there’s just nothing but scandal in London. But in his own country he’s the Duke’s son and one of the first of his name.”

“There are some things that one learns in London,” said Kirsteen with a little of that quick growing identification of one’s self with one’s habitation which changes the point of view; “and Mary, if you will let me say it, this is one. The Duke’s son does not match with a country laird’s daughter however bonny she may be, unless he may be one of the romanticks that will make a sacrifice—but Lord John, he is not one.”

“I would hope not,” cried Mary. “The romanticks you are meaning are just fools and fantastic persons like—“ she was about to have said like yourself, but forebore.

“He would need to be fantastic that went to the Duke his father, and said I am going to be married to Jeanie Douglas of Drumcarro.”

“Ye go a little too far, Kirsteen,” said Miss Eelen. “The Douglases might match with princes so far as blood goes. But I’m not saying (for I know their ways) that there is not reason in it. He will just get up a talk about the lassie and then he will go away.”

“Ye are two ravens,” said Mary; “he will do nothing of the kind.”

“I wish you would take her to Glendochart, Mary. She is not happy. If it is Lord John or something else I cannot tell. She says she would like to come with me—but what would my father say?”

“Say! just what we all would say—that we would not permit it. A mantua-maker’s house in London for Jeanie Douglas. Oh, you need not blaze up, Kirsteen; ye have made your bed and ye must lie on it—but Jeanie!”

Kirsteen did not blaze up. Her eyes flashed, her colour rose; but she restrained herself with a great effort—for what would be the use? “The more reason,” she said, “that you should step in—you that are no mantua-maker but a lady in your own house. Take Jeanie with you, and keep her safe—and if you will take my advice ask Major Gordon. He is not rich but he has a very good name.”

“I mind now,” said Mary, “that these Gordons were friends of yours—and you want to keep Jeanie down, just in a mean position when she might take her place among the highest. I would not have thought ye were so little, Kirsteen. But I have nothing of that. I’ve always been proud of Jeanie and I’m not minding if she’s put over my head. I’ll bring no man here to distract her mind—and I’ll put no spoke in her wheel, my bonny little sister. She shall be the first and grandest of us all, if I can do it. And then her ladyship,” cried Mary, “will know who was her best friend.”

“Perhaps I think less of ladyships being more used to them,” cried Kirsteen, irritated beyond her self-control. “If ye bring her to shame instead of grandeur who will she thank then?”

“To shame!” cried Mary. “Let them say that word that dare.”

“But I dare! And I know them all, and what they think of him in his own family. And that he’s not safe for a girl like Jeanie to know. Aunt Eelen, you know them as well, and you know if what I say is true.”

“Young weemen,” said Miss Eelen, “if ye think that words of strife are seemly in a house where the mother’s buried that day, it’s not my opinion. Kirsteen goes too far, though I would not say but there was reason in it,” she added after a moment “Whisht, both of you—here is the poor bairn herself.”

The next morning Kirsteen, in her despair, took a still bolder step. She went to the door of the room in which Drumcarro was, and knocked for admittance. He stared at her as she came in with a lowering brow, and humph! of ungracious surprise, and stopped in his reading of the paper, but said nothing.

“Father,” said Kirsteen, “I am going away to-day.”

He gave her another lowering and stormy glance. “It is the best thing you can do,” he said. “You were never wanted here.”

Kirsteen, wounded, could not refrain from saying, “My mother wanted me,” which was met solely by that impatient indifference which we render badly by the word humph!

“But I did not come to speak of myself. I know,” she said, “father, that you like where you can to add on a little of the old Douglas lands to what you have already.”

He gave her a more direct look, astonished, not knowing what she meant; then, “What o’ that?” he said.

“No more than this—that money’s sometimes wanting, and I thought if the opportunity arose—I have done very well—I have some siller—at your command.”

Drumcarro was very much startled; he dropped the newspaper which he had been holding before him, as an intimation that her visit was an interruption, and turning round stared at her for a moment with genuine surprise. Then he said, “Your mantua-making must have thriven. I would like to know one thing about ye, have you put my name intill your miserable trade?”

“No,” she said; “so far as any name is in it, it is Miss Kirsteen.”

He gave a sigh of relief. “I’m glad at least that ye have not brought disgrace upon the name of Douglas.”

“The name of Douglas will never get disgrace from me,” cried Kirsteen proudly, with an answering glance of fire. “There is no one that bears it that has more care of it than me. If you kept it in as great honour at home——”

He laughed grimly. “My lass, you may trust me for that.”

“I hope so, father; I hope there will be no speaking got up about the bonniest of us all—the youngest and the sweetest.”

His fiery eyes gave forth a gleam of mingled exultation and anger. “I see,” he said, “you’re jealous, like all your kind. A woman can never stand another being mounted o’er her head. Trust you me, my woman, to take care of Jeanie; it’s my place.”

“Yes,” she said, “it’s your place.” Then hesitating, Kirsteen continued: “She would have liked—to go to London with me.”

“To London with you!”

“It is excusable,” said Kirsteen; “it is natural that a young thing should desire to see a little of the world.”

Mr. Douglas expressed his feelings in a harsh and angry laugh. “Out of a mantua-maker’s windows,” he cried; then added with solemnity, “and her mother dead just a week to-day.”

“It’s not for want of heart,” said Kirsteen. She paused again, and then speaking quickly with all the courage she could summon up: “Oh, father, yon Lord John—there’s no truth in him; there’s no trust to be put in him! She’s frightened for him, father.”

“Hold your peace!” he cried. “I’ll have none of your slandering here.”

“Father, mind—you’ll have to be both father and mother to Jeanie. If it should come to pass that every old wife in the clachan had a hold of her bonny name!”

Perhaps it was not unnatural that Drumcarro should resent this speech. “If ye will mind your own concerns,” he said grimly, “I will take care of mine. The sooner you go your own gait the better; there will be more peace left behind.”

“I have delivered my soul,” said Kirsteen; “the wyte will be upon your own head if you close your eyes. Farewell, father, if we should never meet again.”

She stood for a moment waiting his reply; then made him a curtsey as she had done when she was a little girl. Something perhaps in this salutation touched Drumcarro. He broke out into a laugh, not so harsh as before. “Fare ye well,” he said, “you were always upsetting, and wiser than other folk. But I’ll mind what you said about the siller, which was not without reason. And I’ve little doubt but I’ll see ye again. You’re too fond o’ meddling not to come back now ye’ve got your hand in.”

This was all the leave-taking between father and daughter, but Kirsteen’s heart was touched as she went away. It was at once a sign of amity and a permission—a condoning of her past sins and almost an invitation to return.

CHAPTER XVIII.

“Where is your one?” said Jeanie. “I know nothing about your one.” She shook her head with a sudden flush of burning and indignant colour, too painful to be called a blush, as if to shake all recollection away. “I have none to take my part,” she said, “but him that says ‘Come.’ And I know that it’s the ill way, and not the good, he’s leading to. But if you leave me here, and leave me alone, that’s the way I’ll go.”

“Oh, Jeanie, my darling, what can I do? I cannot bide—and I cannot steal you away.”

“I will ask no more,” said Jeanie. “You will maybe be sorry after—but then it will be too late.”

Kirsteen put her arms round her young sister, who turned her shoulder towards her, holding off as far away as was possible, with a reluctance and resistance that were almost sullen. “Jeanie,” she said, “if I send you Lewis Gordon instead?”

Jeanie wrenched herself indignantly out of her sister’s arms. “I will never speak nor look at ye again! A man that never said a word to me. What would Lewis Gordon do here? The shooting’s near over, and the fishing’s bad this year. Men that come to the Highlands for sport had better stay at home.”

“Jeanie! if he never spoke it was for poverty and not for want of love; and you were so young.”

“Oh, yes, I was very young—too young to be shamed and made a fool of by him or any man. And if you send him here, Kirsteen, out of pity to save Jeanie—Oh!” the girl cried dashing her clenched hands in the air, “I will—I will—just go headlong and be lost in the darkness, and never be seen more!”

It was true that Kirsteen did not understand. She could only look wistfully at her little sister, in whose young bosom there were tumults unknown to herself. What could she do but soothe and try to subdue her, endeavouring all the time to represent to herself that it was but the impatience of Jeanie’s nature, the hasty temper of a spoilt child, sharpened by offence and misunderstanding of the man whom she really loved. After a time Jeanie yielded to Kirsteen’s caresses and consolations with a sudden recovery of her self-control which was almost more wonderful and alarming than the previous abandon. “It’s no matter,” she said, and recovered her calm with almost an indignant effort. What did it mean? Both the despair and the recovery were mysteries to the more steadfast spirit which knew no such impulses and was ignorant both of the strength and weakness of a passionate superficial nature eager to live and to enjoy, unable to support the tedium and languor of life.

Kirsteen had little more success with Marg’ret to whom she appealed next. “You will look after my poor little Jeanie. Oh, Marg’ret, don’t let her out of your sight, keep her like the apple of your eye.”

“And do you think, Kirsteen, you that are full of sense, that I could keep any grip of her if I did that? Never let her out of my sight! I canna keep her in my sight for an hour.”

“Marg’ret, my heart’s just sick with fear and trouble.”

“Hoot,” said Marg’ret, “there is nae occasion. What should possess the bairn to terrify ye as she seems to do, I canna tell. There’s nae reason for it. A man is none the worse that I can see for bein’ a young lord—maybe he’s none the better; I’m putting forward nae opinion—but to come to Drumcarro with an ill-meaning if he were the greatest of his name—no, no, I’ll never believe that.”

“It is hard to believe, but it’s harder still to think of the Duke’s son coming here for his wife.”

“If it was a king’s son, and the bride was our Jeanie,” Marg’ret cast her head high, “they’re no blate that think themselves above the Douglases, whatever their titles or their honours may be!”

Kirsteen shook her head, but in her heart too that superstition was strong. Insult the Douglases in their own house! She thought again that perhaps all her sophisticated thoughts might be wrong. In London there was a difference unspeakable between the great Duke and the little Highland laird whom nobody had ever heard of—but at home Drumcarro was as good blood as the Duke, and of an older race—and to intend insult to the house of as good a gentleman as himself was surely more than the wildest profligate would dare. She tried to persuade herself of this as she made her preparations for going away, which were very small. While she was doing this Jamie, the only boy now left at home, the one of the family who was studious, and for whom not the usual commission but a writership in India had been obtained, came to her shyly; for to him his sister Kirsteen was little more than a name.

“There was a book,” he said, and then hung his head, unable to get out any more.

“There was a book? Is it something you want, Jamie?”

Jamie explained with many contortions that it was—a book which he wanted much, and which there was no chance of getting nearer than Glasgow, but which Mr. Pyper thought might be found in London if any one would take the trouble. Kirsteen promised eagerly to take that trouble. She laid her hand upon the big boy’s shoulder. He was only eighteen, but already much taller than herself, a large, loosely made, immature man.

“And will ye do something for me?” she said. Jamie, very awkward and shame-faced, pledged himself at once—whatever she wanted.

“I want you to take care of Jeanie,” said Kirsteen; “will ye go with her when she takes a walk, and stand by her whatever happens, and not let her out of your sight?”

“Not let her out of my sight!” cried Jamie, astonished as Marg’ret had been. “But she would soon send me out of the way. She would never be bothered with me.”

“I meant not long out of your sight, Jamie. Oh! just keep a watch. She will be lonely and want kind company. Ye must keep your eye upon her for kindness, and not let her be alone.”

“If you mean I’m to spy upon her, I couldn’t do that, Kirsteen, not for all the books in the world.”

“That is not what I mean,” Kirsteen cried. “Can you not understand, Jamie? I want you to stand by her, to be with her when you can, not to leave her by herself. She’s very lonely—She’s—not happy—She’s—”

Jamie gave an abashed laugh. “She’s sometimes happy enough,” he said, then recollected himself and became grave all at once. “I was meaning, before—“ Presently he recovered again from this momentary cloud, and added, “She’s no wanting me; there are other folk she likes better.”

“Jamie—it is just the other folk that frighten me.”

Jamie made a great effort to consider the matter with the seriousness which he saw to be expected from him. But the effort was vain. He burst into a great laugh, and with heaving shoulders and a face crimson with the struggle swung himself away.

In the meantime, Mary, not without a great deal of satisfaction in the removal of the restraint which Kirsteen’s presence enforced, was preparing officiously for her sister’s journey. The gig which Kirsteen could herself drive, and in which Miss Macnab could be conveyed back to her home, was ordered in time for the further journey to Glasgow which Kirsteen was to make by postchaise. The ease with which she made these arrangements, her indifference to the cost of her journey, her practical contempt of the difficulties which to the country people who had to scheme and plan for a long time before they decided upon any extra expense, had a half sinful appearance, and was very trying to Mary’s sense of innate superiority. “She does not heed what money she spends. It’s come light, gang light,” said the Lady of Glendochart. “I have heard that was the way with persons in business, but I never thought to see it in a sister of mine. I do not doubt,” she added, “that Kirsteen would just order an expensive dinner at an inn if it took her fancy; but I’m saving her the need of that at least, for I’m putting her a chicken in her basket, and some of Marg’ret’s scones and cakes (oat-cakes were meant) to keep her going.” “I am sure, mem, you are very considerate,” said Miss Macnab, to whom this explanation was given. “But I get very little credit for it from Kirsteen,” Mary answered with a sigh.

These preparations to get rid of her, and the disappearance of Jeanie, who had shut herself up in her room and would see nobody, had a great effect upon Kirsteen. She had taken up, with a heroic sense of having something henceforward to live for, her mother’s half-charge, half-statement that she would be the stand-by of the family. All brighter hopes being gone that was enough to keep her heart from sinking, and it was not always she knew that the stand-by of a family received much acknowledgment, thanks or praise. But to find herself forsaken and avoided by her young sister, hurried away by the elder, with a scarcely veiled pleasure in her departure, were painful things to meet with in the beginning of that mission. She went out of the house in the weary hours of waiting before the gig was ready, to lighten if possible the aching of her heart by the soothing influence of the fresh air and natural sounds. The linn was making less than its usual tumult in the benumbing of the frost, the wind was hushed in the trees, the clouds hung low and grey with that look of oppressed and lowering heaviness which precedes snow. The house too—the home which now indeed she felt herself to be leaving for ever, seemed bound in bands of frost and silence. The poor mother so complaining in her life-time, so peaceful in her death, who had wanted for so little while she was there, seemed to have left a blank behind her, quite out of correspondence with the insignificance of her life. There was no one now to call Kirsteen, to have the right of weakness to her service and succour. With a sharp pang Kirsteen recollected that Jeanie had called and she had refused. What could she do but refuse? Yet to have done so troubled her beyond anything else that could have happened. It came upon her now with a sense of failure which was very bitter. Not her mother, but her mother’s child, the little beautiful sister who from her birth had been Kirsteen’s joy,—she had called, and Kirsteen had refused. She went up the hill behind the house and sat down upon a rock, and gazed at the familiar scene. And then this remorse came upon her and seized her. She had failed to Jeanie’s call. She had allowed other notions to come in, thoughts of other people, hesitations, pride, reluctance to be thought to interfere. Was she right to have done so? Was she wrong? Should she have yielded to Jeanie’s instinct instead of what seemed like duty? It was rare to Kirsteen to be in this dilemma. It added to the pang with which she felt herself entirely deserted, with nobody to regret her or to say a kind word. If misfortune should come to Jeanie, if anything should happen, as people say, how deeply, how bitterly would she blame herself who might have helped but refused. And yet again what but this could she do?