“I’m no angry,” she said--“God forbid; though I might have something to say to _you_ if my heart could speak. The like of you whiles do mair harm in this world, Miss Frankland, than greater sinners. I’m no saying you kent what you were doing; but, if it had not been for you, my Colin would never have come near this place. You beguiled my son with your pleasant words and your bonnie face. He had nae mair need to come here to be tutor to yon bit crooked callant,” said the Mistress, with involuntary bitterness, “than Maister Frankland himself. But he thought to be near you, that had beguiled him and made him give mair heed to your fables than to anything that was true in life. I’m no blaming my Colin,” said the Mistress, with an unconscious elevation of her head; “he never had kent onything but truth a’ his days, and, if he wasna to believe in a woman that smiled on him and enticed him to her, what was he to believe in at his years? Nor I’m no to call angry at you,” said Colin’s mother, looking from the elevation of age and nature upon Miss Matty, who drooped instinctively, and became conscious what a trifling little soul she was. “We a’ act according to our ain nature, and you wasna capable of perceiving what harm you could do; but, if you should ever encounter again one that was true himself and believed in you----” Here Matty, who had never been destitute of feeling, and who, in her heart, was fond of Colin in her way, and had a kind of understanding of him, so far as she could go, fell into such an outburst of natural tears as disarmed the Mistress, who faltered and stopped short, and had hard ado to retain some appearance of severity in sight of this weeping, for which she was not prepared. Colin’s mother understood truth, and in an abhorring, indignant, resentful way, believed that there was falsehood in the world. But how truth and falsehood were mingled--how the impulses of nature might have a little room to work even under the fictions of art or the falseness of society--was a knowledge unimagined by the simple woman. She began to think she had done Matty injustice when she saw her tears. “Oh, Mrs. Campbell, I know how good he is! I--I never knew any one like him. How could I help----? But, indeed--indeed, I never meant any harm!” cried Matty, ingeniously taking advantage of the truth of her own feelings, so far as they went, to disarm her unconscious and singleminded judge. The Mistress looked at her with puzzled, but pitiful eyes.