All this was very true; but very true it was also that Helen was supremely indifferent to the good looks of the youthful minister, and that the Reverend Robert himself had by no means decided whether he had or had not any “intentions” respecting the young schoolmistress of Fendie. She _was_ the schoolmistress; to call her by the more ornamental name of teacher or governess would not do; and the Reverend Robert was himself of somewhat plebeian origin, and knew how apt congregations are to scrutinize the pedigree and breeding of a new minister’s wife. So he was wise though he was fascinated, and Mrs Buchanan was a little premature. But Hope Oswald, on the journey to Edinburgh, contrived to let the banker know how assiduously the minister visited her friend, and had the consolation to perceive that her arrow did not miss its mark. It by no means weakened the resolution which the obstinate man had formed in respect to the daughter of his former friend; but acting upon the suggestive praise of Lilias Maxwell, it gave him a little misgiving about the wisdom of his unalterable decision. It was humiliating to make a mistake, but the very possibility made him cling more closely to his obstinate resolve. He would never receive Walter Buchanan’s daughter--never! He had fulminated his sentence on the matter once, and it was decided as the Medes and Persians decide--beyond the power of change. CHAPTER XII. I would not have a speck rest on his fame Not if it gave me kingdoms-- ’Tis very true that I am poor and friendless, But think you for that reason I would steal Kinsman and lands from yet another orphan? No, no--ah, no! Lilias Maxwell sat in the old-fashioned window-seat of the Mossgray drawing-room busy with some household sewing. It was an appropriate work then, with its licence of unlimited thought, though it had often been unwholesome enough for the solitary orphan. She was looking forward now, in that freshness of feeling with which those look who, after a long interregnum of pain, may again dare to turn their eyes to the future. Her heart was convalescent, and the haze of subdued sadness which remained about her present self made the prospect only the fairer. She was thinking of her guardian’s delicate care of her, and of the one living voice which should yet thank him for his tenderness.