“You think that’s something to be pleased at, you lightheaded taupie? When Miss May’s married, there will not be one person of the name of Hay-Heriot worth their salt upon this earth--except me,” said the old lady with moisture in her eyes, “and, oh! the old rag o’ flesh and blood that I am! Go quick, and make up my bundle, you gaping thing! Miss May’s no the fool to marry till she sees what’s she’s doing. I can see to that at the same time,” Miss Jean added briskly as the maid left her. And with these double intentions she set out, meaning to dine comfortably at the end of her journey, and to carry confusion to the unrightful claimants of the old lands. But Miss Jean arrived to find the house empty, the dinner-table spread but vacant, the servants full of consternation. Miss Heriot must have fallen over the cliff--she must have been blown off the Spindle Rock--and Mr. Charles, in the effort to save her, must have perished too. What so likely, it was known that they had gone in the same direction, and when no one came back for dinner, notwithstanding the well-known punctuality of the affrighted house? CHAPTER XVIII. Young Hepburn went out of Miss Jean’s door with a face full of offence and a heart full of trouble. He was not thinking much of himself, however, so that the offence was evanescent; he was thinking of _her_; yes, of that Her, who, however hastily, unreasonably, and without adequate cause, had come to be the representative of womankind to the young man, superseding Marjory and all ideals. Matilda was not an ideal woman; he could not worship her in that guise, nor put her into any shrine. It is needless for me to pause and remark upon the curious unsuitability of perhaps the majority of mortal unions, the way in which young men or young women prefer the individual least calculated to make them happy--and hold to that choice with an obstinacy worthy of the original folly. Poor Hepburn had been seized with this too common form of love-sickness; he was not blind; he saw well enough that Mrs. Charles was unlike anything that he had set before himself, in his days of imagination, as worthy of love; and already he had begun to say to himself that an ideal standard was folly; that a real human creature was above ideals; that to be genuine was best whatever the character of that reality might be. This was the first stage--afterwards he went further, and said to himself that women were different from men; that justice was not to be expected from them, or an appreciation of anything above the ordinary level of facts; that they were not capable of understanding abstractions; that they were invincible to reason; and that after all, it was because she was so undauntedly foolish, so delightfully under the sway of her feelings, and had so different a way of judging--a method quite her own, and independent of law and rule--that men worshipped a woman; Yes, she was not as they are, she was a fool, and yet a