Marjory did not depend upon it, but she kept silence, and the slow days crept on. Fanshawe lingered, he could scarcely have told why. No one asked him to stay. He was accepted by all as part of the family, with a quiet composure which is sometimes more grateful to a man than protestations of cordiality; but that was not his reason for remaining at Pitcomlie. He stayed--because he said to himself he wanted to see it out. It was a chapter of family history into which he had been thrust unwittingly, and he must see what would be the end of it--if the other brother would come back, and poor Tom’s place be filled up--or if-- It had the excitement of a drama to him; and Marjory’s face, day after day, varying as the weather varied, brightening into hope sometimes under the influence of the sunshine, falling blank and pale into despondency with every cloud, interested him as nothing had ever interested him before. This passion of suspense which possessed her whole soul, purified and elevated her beauty somehow. It made her features finer, the outline of her face more perfect, and gave a hundred pathetic meanings to her eyes. For she was not selfishly absorbed nor dead to other things. Through the veil of that preoccupation which wrapped her about like a mist, nature would struggle forth now and then, coming to the surface, as it were, with smiles and outbreaks of lighter feeling or of independent thought. Anxious as she was, she was too true and natural to be always thinking even of her brother. And Marjory could not be monotonous even in her gloom. She changed from one phase to another, so that the spectator seemed to grow in knowledge of humanity, and wondered to himself how one emotion could put on so many semblances. And she was relieved on her father’s account, though disturbed on Charlie’s. Mr. Heriot had never again asked for Tom’s papers. He had relaxed a little in his passionate misery. Sometimes, instead of snarling at his family, he would soften and throw himself upon their sympathy. He would take Milly with him when he went out to walk, holding her hand tenderly, supporting himself by her, as it seemed. “Papa never speaks to me, May,” Milly said, who was half-frightened, half-flattered by being thus chosen for her father’s companion. “He never says anything but ‘My bonnie bairn!’ And sometimes, ‘May will be kind to her--May will be kind to her.’ That is all he ever says.” “You must try and get him to talk, my dear,” said Uncle Charles. “Make remarks, if it was only upon the sea and the rocks, or the fishing-boats, and the way they hang about in-shore. If he but said, ‘Hoots! hold your tongue, Milly,’ it would be something gained.” “Oh, Uncle Charles, what remarks can I make,” said Milly, “and me so little? Only when he says May will be kind to me, I greet--I mean I cry; and then he pats me on the head. As if I ever expected any other thing of May!”