In the pre-occupation of his mind, Adam's fishing had ceased to amuse him, and he did not want to meet Philip, whose conduct in compromising Katie, our young man highly disapproved of, even when he felt envious of his happiness. When he went out, he turned his steps in the opposite direction, going up the river, past the spot at which he had seen the lovers, and reaching, by that _détour_ through the wood, the park of Murkley, and the neighbourhood of the great unfinished palace which had made him first acquainted with the family history. He had not returned to visit that memorial of ambition again. Perhaps there was nobody in the world who could regard it with the same feelings as those which moved Lewis. Sir Patrick had not left a good name behind him in the countryside. His tastes had never been those of a Scotch country-gentleman. The building of this prodigious and pretentious house had offended all his neighbours, to whom it was almost a personal offence that he should attempt in this way to excel all their houses and put himself on so much higher a level. When it turned out that he was not able to complete what he had begun so ambitiously, a great deal of bitterness and unfriendly humour exhaled in the pitiless laughter with which his failure had been received, and there was nobody about who did not more or less remember it against him--with a scorn of failure which is very strong in Scotland--that he had thus attempted a superiority which he was not able to maintain. His own family contemplated the stately folly with modified feelings. Such a standing proof of greatness had a certain effect upon their pride; but the failure was bitter to them, and there was the sense besides that their money had been wasted in the erection of a monstrosity which was of use to no one, and of which they could make nothing. To Lewis alone this great shell spoke eloquently of something which touched the heart. The dreams of old Sir Patrick's life, its aspirations, its pride, and hopes, all seemed to him embodied in these walls. The old man had scarcely spoken of it. It was only after seeing it that Lewis was able to recall words, incomprehensible at the moment, which he had now no doubt referred to this proud intention, this ambitious vanity. As he walked round it, he framed to himself an image of the young man, impulsive, proud, and full of a hundred hasty projects, who had turned into the old man he knew so well. If he had not been hasty, full of sudden impulses, would he ever, Lewis asked himself, have taken up the charge of a friendless orphan, and made himself responsible for the life of a stranger in whom, save for tender charity and pity, he was in no way involved?