The minister again intervened to smooth matters down with instances of the power and value of the race thus called in question. Jeanie was seated at the other end of the table out of reach of the principal personages who kept up the conversation, but she started at the name of Lord John, and her pale face with the faint redness round the eyes, which appealed so powerfully to Kirsteen’s sympathies, grew suddenly crimson. She cast a terrified look at her sister who sat silently by her, and caught Kirsteen’s hand under the table with a clutch as of despair. Lord John! Kirsteen had made no attempt to identify Jeanie’s wooer whom the girl held in such strange terror. Her own heart gave a bound of alarm yet disdain. She asked with her eyes, “Is that the man?” and received from Jeanie an answering look of confusion and trouble. There were no words exchanged between them. Kirsteen shook her head with a gesture which to Jeanie’s eyes expressed not only disapproval but surprise and scorn, and Jeanie let go her hold of her sister’s hand with an impulse of impatience much like that with which she had cried, “I thought you would understand!” This little conversation by pantomime made the heart of the elder sister ache. “Lord John,” she said to herself, “Lord John!” with mingled fear and astonishment. That Jeanie should be in danger from him--that he should dare! that her little sister with that angelic face, who had once been touched as Kirsteen said by true love should feel a temptation in the flattering words of the man from whom she yet desired to escape, conscious that he was not a true man! Kirsteen’s experiences had been of a simple kind hitherto. She was acquainted with no such problems. It cost her a painful effort to bring herself even to the threshold of Jeanie’s confused mind. She could not comprehend the conflict that was going on there. And yet she could not forsake her little sister even though the circumstances were such as she did not understand. “Glendochart,” said Mary when the ladies had retired to the parlour leaving the gentlemen to consume their toddy, “has had a letter from Major Gordon that we first met in London, Kirsteen. I cannot call to mind where my husband met him, if it was at the Duke’s or where. But we had him down for the shooting, and two or three times he just went and came--and admired Jeanie--but that’s no wonder, for there’s nobody but what admires Jeanie. He’s wanting to come again if we’ll ask him. But I doubt if I’ll do it--for Jeanie--where is she? I hope she cannot hear me--is on the way to something far grander or I’m much mistaken--and I’m not one that makes mistakes in that way.” “If ye paid any attention to me,” said Miss Eelen, “I would say ye were making the greatest mistake ye ever made in your life.”