Jeanie crept up-stairs like a mouse, noiseless in the dark staircase. She needed no light, and to hide herself seemed so much the most natural thing to do. White! Jeanie felt as if her face must be scorched as her heart seemed to be. Why should he have volunteered this profession of indifference? It seemed so much the worse because it was uncalled for. Did anyone say he cared for her? Had any one accused him of being “fond” of Jeanie? Shame seemed to take possession of the little soft creature. Had she herself done anything to put such a degrading idea into his mind? Why should he care for her? “I never asked him--I never wanted him,” poor Jeanie cried to herself. Edgar never knew the second great effect he had produced on this eventful day. When Jeanie appeared at the early breakfast before he set out next morning, he was honestly concerned to see how pale she looked. “My poor dear child, you are ill,” he cried, drawing her towards him, and his look of anxious kindness struck poor Jeanie like a blow. “I’m not ill. It’s my head. It’s nothing,” she said, starting away from him. Edgar looked at her with mild astonished eyes. “You are not vexed with me this last morning? Take care of the dear old mother, Jeanie--but I know you will do that--and write to me sometimes to say she is well; and talk of me sometimes, as you promised--you remember?” His kind friendly words broke Jeanie’s heart. “Oh, how can you look so pleased and easy in your mind!” she said, turning, as was natural, the irritation of her personal pain into the first possible channel, “when you know you are going away without a penny, for our sake--for her sake----” “And yours,” Edgar added cheerily. “That is what makes me easy in my mind.” And he smiled, and took both her hands, and kissed her on the forehead, a salutation which made little Scotch Jeanie--little used to such caresses--flame crimson with shame. Charles Murray looked on with sullen fury. He dared not do as much. This way of saying farewell was not cousinly or brotherly to him. CHAPTER VIII. A Railway Journey: The Scotch Express.