“He’ll have ranged the country, I’m thinking,” went on his brother. “I could not but be sorry for the man.” Miss Mary cast upon him a look he seldom got from her, of warmth more than kinship, but she had nothing to say; her voice was long dumb in that parlour where she loved and feared, a woman subjugate to a sex far less worthy than her own and less courageous. “Humph!” said the Cornal. He felt with nervous inquiry at his ragged chin, inspired for a second by old dreads of untidy morning parades. “I had one consolation for my bachelordom in him,” went on the younger brother, and then he paused confused. “And what might that be?” asked the Cornal. “It’s that I’m never like to be in the same scrape with a child of mine,” he answered, pretending a jocosity that sat ill on him. Then he looked at Miss Mary a little shamefaced for a speech so uncommonly confidential. The Cornal opened his mouth as if he would laugh, but no sound came. “I’m minding,” said he, speaking slowly and in a muffled accent he was beginning to have always; “I’m minding when that same, cast in your face by the gentleman himself, greatly put you about Jock, Jock, I mind you were angry with Turner on that score! And no child to have the same sorrows over! Well--well----” He broke short and for the first time let his eyes rest with any meaning on Gilian sitting at the indulgence of a good morning’s appetite. Miss Mary put about the breakfast dishes with a great hurry to be finished and out of this explosive atmosphere. “There was an odd rumour--” said the Paymaster. He paused a moment, looking at the inattentive youth opposite him. He saw no reason to stay his confidences, and the Cornal was waiting expectingly on him. “An odd rumour up the way; I heard it first from that gabbling man Spencer at the Inns. It was that a young gentleman of our acquaintance might have had a hand in the affair. I could not say at the first whether the notion vexed or pleased me, but I assured him of the stupidity of it.” He looked his brother in the eyes, and fixing his attention cunningly dropped a lid to indicate that the young gentleman was beside them. The Cornal laughed, this time with a sound. “Lord,” he cried. “As if it was possible! You might go far in that quarter for anything of dare-deviltry so likeable. What’s more, is the girl daft? Her mother had caprice enough, but to give her her due she took up with men of spirit There was my brother Dugald---- But this one, what did Dugald call him--aye! on his very death-bed? The dreamer, the dreamer! It will hold true! Him, indeed!” And he had no more words for his contempt.