“Oh, Glendochart, do not be angry--I am just sure that he would not let her say a word. She has not been like herself this week past. It has just been on her mind night and day. And at last she has taken, a despair, seeing no way of getting out of it--and she has gone away.” “I am not in the habit,” said Glendochart, “of finding myself a bugbear. I would seem to cut a pretty figure in all this--a sort of old Robin Gray,” he said with a furious laugh. “I am sure I am obliged to you all! ‘With tears in his e’e, said Jenny, for their sake will ye marry me?’ I beg to say, Miss Mary, that this was not my attitude at all.” “Do you need to say that to me, Glendochart?” said Mary reproachfully. “Oh, no! nor even to poor Kirsteen either, who would have been fain to hear every word ye had to say--for she was very fond of ye, Glendochart.” “It is a strange way of showing it,” he said, but he was mollified in spite of himself. “As we all were. It will be a great heart-break and a great downfall if ye come no more to the house because of Kirsteen. But she would have been fain, fain to hear whatever ye had to say, if it had not been----” “What hindered her, then?” he said. “It’s no for me to betray her secrets,” said Mary, “and indeed she never told them to me, for she was not one that opened her heart. But there is little that can be hidden from a sister’s eye. And it was just this--there was one before ye, Glendochart. If she had seen you first I am very sure she would never have thought of him--for to my mind there’s no more comparison--but, poor thing, she had given her word. Take what you offered her and be mansworn to the other lad was all that was before her; and no true to you either, for she would never have dared to tell you.” Glendochart was still much offended and disturbed. He had fastened his horse to a tree, and was now pacing about the road within the corner of the rock with mingled rage and pain. But he was moved by the soft voice and pleading accents of the very mild and pleasing intercessor, whose suggestion of her own superior taste was put in with so much gentle insistence. Mary’s eyes, which were cast down when he looked at her, but raised with much meaning to his face when he did not seem to be observing, softened his mood in spite of himself. “If that was the case,” he said, “there was perhaps an excuse for her, though when she knew it was so she should not have encouraged and drawn on--another man.” It was Mary’s policy to give a very charitable representation of Kirsteen’s action, and it was also quite congenial to her feelings, for she was not spiteful nor malicious, notwithstanding that it seemed to be a very sensible thing to turn her sister’s failure to her own advantage if that could be done.