It was for about six weeks altogether that the Mistress of Ramore remained Sir Thomas Frankland’s guest. For half of that time Lauderdale, too, tall, and gaunt, and grim, strode daily over the threshold of Wodensbourne. He never broke bread, as he himself expressed it, nor made the slightest claim upon the hospitality of the stranger’s house. On the contrary, he declined steadily every advance of friendship that was made to him with a curious Scotch pride, extremely natural to him, but odd to contemplate from the point of view at which the Franklands stood. They asked him to dinner or to lunch as they would have asked any other stranger who happened to come in their way; but Lauderdale was far too self-conscious to accept such overtures. He had come uninvited, an undesired, perhaps unwelcome, visitor; but not for the world would the philosopher have taken advantage of his position, as Colin’s friend, to procure himself even the comfort of a meal. Not if he had been starving would he have shared Colin’s dinner or accepted the seat offered him at the luxurious table below. “Na, na! I came without asking,” said Lauderdale; “when they bid me to their feasts it’s no for your sake, callant, or for my sake, but for their own sakes--for good breeding, and good manners, and not to be uncivil. To force a man to give you your dinner out of civility is every bit as shabby an action as to steal it. I’m no the man to sorn on Sir Thomas for short time or long.” And, in pursuance of this whimsical idea of independence, Lauderdale went back every evening along the dark country lanes to the little room he had rented in the village, and subdued his reluctant Scotch appetite to the messes of bacon and beans he found there--which was as severe a test of friendship as could have been imposed upon him. He was not accustomed to fare very sumptuously at home; but the fare of an English cottager is, if more costly, at least as distasteful to an untravelled Scotch appetite as the native porridge and broth of a Scotch peasant could be to his neighbour over the Tweed. The greasy meal filled Lauderdale with disgust, but it did not change his resolution. He lived like a Spartan on the bread which he could eat, and came back daily to his faithful tendance of the young companion who now represented to him almost all that he loved in the world. Colin grew better during these weeks. The air of home which his mother brought with her, the familiar discussions and philosophies with which Lauderdale filled the weary time, gave him a connecting link once more with the old life. And the new life again rose before Colin, fresh, and solemn, and glorious. Painfully and sharply he had been delivered from his delusions--those innocent delusions which were virtues. He began to see that, if indeed there ever was a woman in the world for whom it was worth a man’s while to sacrifice his existence and individuality, Miss Matty, of all women, was not she. And after this