“As for that, it’s a metaphysical question,” said Miss Bethune. “I will not attempt to enter into it. But try or no’, it is clear we did not succeed. And what it is that succeeds is just more than I can tell. It’s not beauty, it’s a kind of natural attraction.” She paused a moment in this deep philosophical inquiry, and then said quickly: “All this does not help us to find out what is this story about the Mannerings. Who is the woman? Is it somebody that loves the man, or somebody that loves the girl?” “If you would take my opinion, mem, I would say that the man--if ye call Mr. Mannering, honest gentleman, the man, that has just every air of being a well-born person, and well-bred, and not a common person at all----” “You haveral! The king himself, if there was a king, could be no more than a man.” “I would say, mem, that it was not for him--oh, no’ for him, except maybe in opposition, if you could fancy that. Supposing,” said Gilchrist, raising her arm in natural eloquence, “supposin’ such a thing as that there should be a bonnie bairn like Miss Dora between two folk that had broken with one another--and it was the man, not the woman, that had her. I could just fancy,” said the maid, her brown eyes lighting, her milky yet freckled complexion flushing over,--“I could just fancy that woman pouring out everything at the bairn’s feet--gold and silver and grand presents, and a’ the pomps of this world, partly out of an adoration for her hersel’, partly just to make the man set his teeth at her that was away--maybe, in the desert--unknown!” Gilchrist stood like a sibyl making this picture flash and gleam before her own inward vision with a heat and passion that seemed quite uncalled for in the circumstances. What was Hecuba to her, or she to Hecuba, that she should be so inspired by the possibilities of a mystery with which she had nothing to do? Her eloquence brought a corresponding glow, yet cloud, over the countenance of her mistress, who sat and listened with her head leaning on her hand, and for some time said nothing. She broke the silence at last with a laugh in which there was very little sound of mirth. “You are a limited woman,” she said--“a very limited woman. You can think of no state of affairs but one, and that so uncommon that perhaps there never was a case in the world like it. You will never be done, I know that, taking up your lesson out of it--all to learn one that has neither need to learn nor wish to learn--a thing that is impossible. Mind you what I say, and be done with this vain endeavour. Whatever may be the meaning of this Mannering business, it has no likeness to the other. And I am not a person to be schooled by the like of you, or to be taught in parables by my own woman, as if I was a person of no understanding, and her a mistress of every knowledge.”