“It has done me a great deal of harm,” said Marjory, paling out of her flush of excitement, and looking ready to cry; and then after a while, she said softly, “Poor Johnnie!” These were not the words of a woman who had entertained any very elevated feeling for the man whom she thus pitied; but they were enough to make Fanshawe quite unhappy. “Idiot!” he said to himself without any pity; and spent that evening mournfully by himself to the wonder of the Heriot household, and the consternation of Marjory, who felt that he had been her best support; and who had not an idea what he could mean by absenting himself on that particular evening when she was so grateful to him. They were brought together also by another duty, not of an agreeable kind. Mrs. Charles gave her sister a summary dismissal when she herself left Pitcomlie. It was Spring when this occurred, and Matilda was to go to Edinburgh, her year of mourning being nearly out, to prepare for her second marriage. But Verna, whose courage and temper had both given way under the failure of all her hopes, protested so warmly and so injudiciously against this precipitate marriage, that there was a violent quarrel, and the weaker sister was turned out to find her way back to India, or where she pleased. She went to St. Andrews, not knowing why, and threw herself upon Marjory’s compassion. She had nowhere to go to but India, where her father did not want her. Nobody in the world wanted poor Verna. While they were trying to arrange for her return voyage, she fell ill of a brain-fever, and lay between life and death for weeks. When she got better, somehow she had acquired a niche in the household of which she had intended to be the most active enemy. She stayed in her loneliness as Milly’s governess, or in any other capacity that could be invented for her; and finally married Dr. Murray’s successor, and made an admirable parish Minister’s wife, interfering too much with the poor people, but gradually learning their character. She and Mrs. John Hepburn were sometimes friends--when the latter was in want of help; and sometimes enemies, when Matilda felt well enough to be insolent; but Verna’s vicinity made poor Johnnie’s life less miserable, and his home less hopeless, than in her absence they could have been.