"I know," he replied, "I was waiting for the pill-doc's verdict downstairs. But it's perfectly easy, my dear. The sea is simply splendid at Ayr. I'm off there in quarter of an hour; but I'm going to leave Andrew Fraser here to bring you down later on. If I can't find you a suitable lodging before you come you can get one for yourself next day. And if you do run short of money, you can always come to me, can't you?" She shook her head, but the tears were in her eyes. CHAPTER XIII Andrew Fraser stood at attention watching a couple of figures, a man and a woman, who for the last hour had been dredging a sea-pool with a landing net as if they were boy and girl. He had watched them at it often in the last six weeks, and, honest, straight-forward fellow as he was, had wondered how they managed to treat each other with such perfect unconsciousness that they were man and woman. So far as his master was concerned, that might be, for Andrew was shrewd enough to see the difference between friendship and passion; but, if anyone was ever heart-wholly in love, Marrion Paul was that person. You could see it in her face; yet it never seemed to influence her actions. The perception of this made Andrew vaguely afraid of her; it put a sort of damper on his own passion for her, since such self-control was not natural; it was barely human. Hour after hour, the simple soul would tell himself, those two would play themselves like a couple of weans. Three or four times a week the major would, after the morning parades were over, drive out in his tilbury--Andrew perched in the tiny back seat--and spend his afternoon at the little inn which was also the ferry-house over the Doon river where Marrion lodged. Sometimes the two would go out sailing together, but more often they amused themselves on the shore, as they were doing now, dredging for sea things or catching miller's thumbs. It was childish, but--Andrew's lean, anxious face puckered with confused thought as he turned to a sound which he knew would bring with it a more commonsensical outlook on the situation than he, with his passionate love for the woman concerned, his passionate affection for the man, could bring to bear on it. It was the click of busy knitting needles, and they belonged to the landlady of the "Plough." She was a thoroughly good, kindly, healthy woman, whose views were strictly conventional on all subjects appertaining to the relations between the sexes; and as these in those days--and even now, for the most part--were that sex was the only possible tie between two spirits if they happened to be living for the time being, one in a male body, the other in a female--they were not likely to approve of the dredgers of sea-treasures. "When are yon two gaun to be marriet?" she asked firmly. She was a just woman, and having seen no signs of wrong-doing was willing to believe the best. Andrew hesitated.