They were sitting together with very serious faces after the triumphant departure of Mrs. Stormont, who had declared with a countenance full of smiles that to wait for Philip would be nonsense, since "when these young creatures get together there is no telling when we may see them again." The ladies had listened with grave looks, presenting a sort of blank wall of disapproval to their visitor's effusiveness, and when she had been seen to the door with stern politeness and cleared, as it were, out of their neighbourhood, they had returned and sat down for a few minutes without speaking, with many thoughts in their hearts. "No," said Miss Jean, deprecating yet decided. "It is very natural, no doubt, on her side; but to expect you to be pleased with it----" "Pleased with it! What is there to be pleased with?" cried Miss Margaret. "It is just a plot and a conspiracy--that is what it is, and Lilias has no more to do with it than you or me." "If I thought that, Margaret----" "If you just apply your mind to it, you will soon see that. She could not put up with that woman's petting and phrasing. If we had not brought her up to politeness, she would have said something. She just flew off when she could bear it no longer. And then that long-leggit Philip--if it had not been a look from his mother, he would not even have had the spirit to go after her. That woman is just a----" "Oh! whisht, Margaret. I would not call her _that woman_; long-leggit or not, he is just her son, and she thinks much of him. Very likely," said Jean, "she thinks it would be a grand thing for Lilias if----" "The impertinence of her is just boundless!" Margaret said; "but we cannot let ourselves be beaten and put out of all our plans, and our bonnie Lilias turned into just a common country laird's wife--not for all the Mistress Stormonts and all the long-leggit loons in Scotland!" When Miss Margaret was excited, it was her habit to take advantage of a few strenuous words of what she would have called "broad Scots." She was no more Scotch perhaps at these moments than in her most dignified phraseology, to a southern ear; but to herself the difference was intense, and marked a crisis. It was as if she had sworn an oath. "No, no, Margaret," said Miss Jean, soothingly--"no, no; we will never do that." "And how are we to help it if we sit with our hands in our laps?" Miss Margaret cried. She got up in her excitement and began to pace through the room, which was such a home of quiet, with its brown wainscot and the glimmer of its many windows, that this agitation seemed to disturb it as if it had been a living thing. Jean followed her sister's movements with anxious eyes. "Oh! Margaret," she said, "I am not afraid but you will think of something. If it was only me, it would be different; but, so long as there is you to watch over her----"