“I was not thinking of that at all,” she rejoined “I was just thinking you had forgotten that I was their sister, and that I must be caring much for them. If my brothers have said anything to vex you, and that has been a too common thing--my sorrow!--in this house, you should be minding their years, my dear. It is the only excuse I can offer, and I am willing to make up for their shortcomings by every kindness.” And she smiled upon the lad with the most wonderful light of affection in her eyes. “Oh,” he cried, “am I not sure of that, Auntie? You are too good to me. What am I to be complaining--the beggarly orphan?” “Not that, my dear,” she cried courageously, “not that! In this house, when my brothers’ looks were at their blackest for you, there has always been goodwill and motherliness. But you must not be miscalling them that share our roof, the brothers of Dugald and of Jamie.” Her voice broke in a gasp of melancholy; she stretched an arm and dusted from a corner of the kitchen a cobweb that had no existence, her eyesight dim with unbrimming tears. At any other time than now Gilian would have been smitten by her grief, for was he not ever ready to make the sorrows of others his own? But he was frowning in a black-browed abstraction on the clay scroll of the kitchen floor, heartsick of his dilemma and the bitterness of the speeches he had just heard. Miss Mary could not be long without observing, even in her own troubles, that he was unusually vexed. She was wise enough to know that a fresh start was the best thing to put them at an understanding. “What did you come to tell me to-day?” she asked, composing herself upon a chair beside him and taking up some knitting, for hers were the fingers that were never idle. “Come down to tell you? Come down to tell you?” he repeated, in surprise at her penetration, and in some confusion that he should so sharply be brought to his own business. “Just so,” she said. “Do you think Miss Mary has no eyes, my dear, or that they are too old for common use? There was something troubling you as you came in at the door; I saw it in your face--ay, I heard it in your step on the stair.” He fidgeted and evaded her eyes. “I heard outside that--that Turner’s daughter had not been got, and it vexed me a little.” “Turner’s daughter!” she said. “It used to be Miss Nan; it was Miss Nan no further gone than Thursday, and for what need we be so formal to-day? You are not heeding John’s havers about your name being mixed up with the affair in a poor Sassanach inn-keeper’s story? Eh, Gilian?” And she eyed him shrewdly, more shrewdly than he was aware of. Still he put her off. He could not take her into his confidence so soon after that cold plunge into truth in the parlour. He wanted to get out of doors and think it all over calmly. He pretended anger.