This was the testimony of one very clear-sighted witness; and even Mrs. Murray concluded, with a relief which it would have been impossible to put into words, that the change had passed lightly over her grandson’s head without affecting him. “He has one of those blessed natures that are aye content, and take everything easy from the hand of God,” she said to herself, with a mixture of joy and disappointment; for this blessed nature, blessed as it is, is secretly looked down upon by persons conscious of more acute feeling. I believe my good Edgar had thus something in his character of what is commonly called humbug. He deceived people as to his own feelings by very consideration for their feelings. It was so absolutely indispensable to his being to set his companions at their ease, and make them comfortable so far as he could, that he took them in habitually, to use another vulgar expression, and was believed by everybody to be as happy as the day was long at Loch Arroch, while all the while he was secretly longing to get away. I believe that in some respects this kind of nature (not a very common one) is less good, being less honest, than that more general disposition which, when uncomfortable or dissatisfied itself, loses no opportunity of making others so, and states its sentiments frankly, whether they are likely to please its companions or not. I allow that Edgar’s special peculiarities had their disadvantages. I do not attempt to excuse him, I only state what they were.