And the baby who had been born amid the peat-smoke in a Highland cottage, who had been frantically concealed at first, a shame to everybody belonging to him, entered upon another kind of existence without knowing it, in equal ignorance of his cloudy entry into life, and of this sudden revolution. He lay on the soft sofa, softly sleeping, placid as if he had not been laid in a hard bed, and pillowed on dying arms. He never knew any existence but that which he thus began, as it were, for the second time under Marjory’s shadow. He had no surroundings but those that belonged to the natural level on which he was to spend his life. Fanshawe remained in St. Andrews while all these steps were being taken. His conduct was quite in accordance with his character. He intended to go away daily, but every day found some pretext to detain him. He lingered, and was ready to aid in everything required, and bade himself begone at night, only to feel that to go was impossible every morning. People made a hundred comments on him. He was gibed at, gravely questioned, made the object of many a conjecture, but nothing moved him. He stayed through the Autumn, with now and then a divergence into the Highlands for a day’s shooting; he saw the Autumn steal into Winter, and never budged. Mr. Charles became so used to him that he received the suggestion of his departure with indignation at last. “Go away! why should he go away? Where could he be better?” Mr. Charles said; and did his best to teach him golf, and initiate him into all the delights of the place. It was Fanshawe who stood by Marjory in the disagreeable assault she sustained from Mrs. Charles, who drove into St. Andrews in the Pitcomlie carriage, and stormed so loudly against her husband’s family, that the wanderers in the ruined Cathedral heard the sound through the open windows, and came gaping and wondering to listen. Matilda denounced every kind of vengeance upon the heads of those who had got up this conspiracy against her, and were about to hunt her and her orphan boy from their home. “But do not think you will get rid of me,” she said. “I am not the outcast you think. Providence has given me another home, where I shall be able to watch and find you out when you are not thinking. Oh, don’t imagine you are rid of me!” Poor Johnnie Hepburn stood by during this objurgation, shrinking from Marjory’s eye, looking on, now red with shame, now pale with distress, while his future wife made this exhibition of herself. He stood between the ideal he had worshipped all his life, and the real upon which he had fallen, poor fellow, breaking not his bones, but his heart, by the fall. He was too much cowed to say a word. And neither of the others said much; they allowed the young widow to drive off triumphant with the sense that she had humbled them all, and vindicated her superiority. “That must have done her a deal of good,” Fanshawe said when it was over, “and it has not done you much harm.”