At this Lilias paused in the midst of her excitement to consider so curious a question. It opened up speculations, indeed, for them all. To have had a male heir had always been supposed to be the thing upon earth which would have been most blessed for the Murrays, and the elder sisters in past years had often sighed to think how much better it would have been had Lilias been a boy. But the idea that Philip Stormont might have been that heir-male was confusing and not agreeable. They felt a sort of half resentment at the suggestion. A young man like that, who was just nobody, a mere "long-leggit lad." Had the long-leggit lad been their own, no doubt the sisters would have represented him to themselves as the most delightful of young heroes: for even our own detrimentals are better than the best possessions of other people. But as a supposition it did not please them. To have had no Lilias, but Philip Stormont instead! Certainly Mrs. Stormont had been unfortunate in her modes of recommending her son. The presumption of supposing it possible that Philip could ever have been a Murray was scarcely less than that of believing that carefully constructed system could be broken through in order that Lilias might go to Philip's ball. What was Philip, that they should thus meet him upon every side? Mrs. Stormont did not quite fathom the cause of the sudden cloud which fell upon her friends. It could not, she said to herself, be her joke about Philip--that was just nonsense, she had no meaning in it. It was just one of the things that people say to keep up the conversation. But she had to retire without receiving any final answer to her proposition. She had indeed to congratulate herself that there was no final answer, for this left ground for a little hope; but, whether or not Lilias was eventually permitted to accept the invitation, Mrs. Stormont left Murkley with an uncomfortable feeling that her present visit had been a failure. She had gone wrong somehow, she could not exactly tell how. Something about Philip had jarred upon them, and she had been so anxious to present Philip under the best possible light! It was not often that she failed in making herself welcome, and the sensation was disagreeable. It was this failure, perhaps, which prompted her to tell Sandy to drive to the manse, perhaps with a slight inclination to indemnify herself, to make the people there suffer a little for the mistake she had made. She was so sure that Mrs. Seton had been injudicious about Katie, that she felt confident in her own power of being disagreeable at a moment's notice. It was not, however, with any intention of this kind that she stopped Sandy at the garden door, and went round by that way, instead of driving formally round the little "sweep," and reaching in state the grand entrance. Most of the visitors of the manse entered by the garden. Had she been walking, neither she nor any one else would have thought of any other way.