"And perhaps they are not so kind, so hospitable as you," said Lewis. "I have already, I fear, offended them, or if not them then their admirers. It is they who are called the Misses? Then I thought that must mean young ladies, very young. It was foolish, but I did so. And when in the road with Adam we encountered these old ladies----" "Oh, stop, stop, not old. I cannot have them called old," cried Mrs. Seton. "Bless me, Miss Jean is not much more than my age." "And it does not matter whether they are old or young," said Katie; "we are all very fond of them." "And I," said Lewis, putting his hand on his heart, "respect them infinitely. I am much interested in those ladies. The oldness is nothing--it does not affect me. I wish to know them above everything. I have known their grandfather--abroad." "Bless me," said Mrs. Seton; "old Sir Patrick? This is most interesting. I never saw him; he was away before we came here. And what did you think of him? He was a tyrant, I've always heard, and a terrible egotist; thinking of nothing but his own pleasure. You know the story, I suppose, of how he left all his money away from the family; and nothing to any of them but the old house and that big folly of a new one. I wonder they don't pull that place down." "Oh, mamma, if money was to come into the family! that is what Lilias says. If some uncle they never heard of was to come from India, or somebody they had been kind to die all at once, and leave them a fortune." "I will not have you see so much of Lilias, if she fills your head full of nonsense," said Mrs. Seton. "Such folly! for they have no uncle in India, that ever I heard tell of; and people now-a-days don't make those daft-like wills--though, to be sure, Sir Patrick's an example. Did you ever see, Mr. Murray, the young man we've heard so much about?" "The fellow that got the money," young Stormont said. "What kind of a being was it?" said the minister. "Some supple foreign lad that flattered the silly old man. It has always been strange to me that there was nobody near to speak a word for justice and truth." "You are hard upon foreigners," said Lewis. "It is not their fault that they are foreign. Indeed they would not be foreign _there_, you know, but the people of the country, and we the foreigners. I knew this fellow, as you say. He was not even foreign, he was English. The old gentleman was very fond of him, and good to him. He did not know anything about the money." "Ah, Mr. Murray, you'll never persuade me that. Would a young man give up years of his life to an old one without any expectations? No, no, I cannot believe that." "Did he give up years of his life? Oh, yes, I suppose so. No one thought of it--in that light. He loved him like his father. There was no one else to take care of him, to make him happy. I see now from the other point of view. But I do not think he meant any harm."