“I cannot advise,” said Mrs Laurie somewhat coldly. “Menie has made no explanation to me. Mr Home has not addressed me at all on the subject. I am sorry I cannot suggest anything—especially when I have to take into consideration the lofty ideas of your friend.” It was a little bitter this. Lithgow felt himself chilled by it, and she saw it herself immediately; but Mrs Laurie said no word of atonement, till a sudden recollection of Menie’s strangely altered and sobered fate broke upon her. Her countenance changed—her voice softened. “I would be glad to do anything,” she said, with a slight faltering. “To make Menie happy, I could accept any sacrifice. I will see—I will try. No,” she continued, after a considerable pause, “I was right after all—your friend is what you call him. My Menie has a very high spirit, and in this matter is not to be controlled by me. They must be left to themselves—it is the wisest way.” Lithgow made no answer. Mrs Laurie sank into silence and thought. As they sat opposite to each other by the little fireplace, the young man’s eye wandered over the room. His own birthplace and home was such another cottage as this; and Lithgow’s mother, with her homely gown and check apron—her constant occupation about the house—her peasant tastes and looks and habits, was suitable and homogeneous to the earthen floor and rude hearth of the cottars’ only room. But very strangely out of place was Menie’s easel—Menie’s desk—Mrs Laurie’s delicate basket of work—her easy-chair and covered table; strangely out of place, but not ungracefully—bearing, wherever they might be, a natural seemliness and fitness of their own. And if a rapid cloud of offence—a vapour of pride and resentment, might glide over Mrs Laurie’s brow, it was never shaded by so much as a momentary shame. As undisturbed in her household dignity as at her most prosperous time, she received her visitor in the cot-house, nor ever dreamt she had cause to be ashamed of such an evidence of her diminished fortunes. But Lithgow’s thoughts were full of Randall; he was not willing to give up his attempt to reconcile them. “Randall is working very hard,” said his generous fellow-craftsman. “I think his second success will lift him above all thought of hazard. He does his genius wrong by such unnecessary caution; he could not produce a commonplace thing if he would.” “And you, Mr Lithgow”—Mrs Laurie’s heart warmed to him, plebeian though he was. “I do my day’s work,” said the young man, happily, “thanking God that it is very sufficient for the needs of the day; but between Randall and myself there is no comparison. I deal with common topics, common manners, common events, like any other labouring man. But Randall is an artist of the loftiest class. What he does is for generations to come, no less than for to-day.”