“Yes, Charlie,” said I, “you _are_ answerable--to one higher than we--to Hew had he been here--even to me. What is this, Charlie? You do not mean it--it is some passing quarrel which a few words will set right.” “So!” said Charlie, with a sneer, “Miss Lucy has been complaining to you!” My mood changed in a moment; from the utmost sorrow it became the most passionate anger. I had been labouring to prevent this inevitable rupture--now I was only eager that it should be completed. “No,” I exclaimed, “you have never known Lucy Murray. I, who have been with you so long, only begin to know you now. You--you will never know Lucy--it is well you feel yourself unworthy of her--it is fit indeed that her true heart should not be wasted upon you.” My own heart ached as I turned away from him. I had lost my friend. I began to grope in a world of shadows where truth was not; and not even the smile of Lilias could have woven again those fair ideal garments about Charlie Graeme. We were mutually silent and sullen after that. Charlie was the first to speak. “Adam,” he said, “I don’t want to quarrel with you, but I will answer to no man for my conduct; my motives and purposes are my own--and there has been quite enough of this. Walter Johnstone came out with me from Edinburgh to-day. Will you go over with me to Greenshaw to see him?” I shrank from him--that he, unveiled and disenchanted as he was, should breathe the air which Lilias made holy--that her smile should fall upon _him_! I could hardly restrain myself, but for my old affection’s sake, and for Lucy’s sake, I did. “I will follow you,” I answered, “at present I cannot go.” He left the room, and, in a few minutes, the house, and I saw him go down the water whistling a merry tune, and pausing now and then to look round upon those peaceful home scenes, which his presence now desecrated to me. Murrayshaugh was in the opposite direction. I hurried along towards it under the trees, with an instinctive desire to see Lucy, and, unseen myself, to carry at least one sympathetic heart to her vicinity. It was a superstition of its kind. I had no thought of that--it was an instinct with me. And there she certainly was upon the terrace, with her soft light plaid about her head, and her figure gliding strangely through shadows of the trees, and of the quaint, fantastic gables of the house, which the light of a young moon threw faintly on the ground at her feet. I saw her threading the maze of these, as she moved like a spirit upon the mossy garden path, and I began to fancy in the bitterness of my heart that it was thus with us all; that those shadowy unreal forms of ours were but wandering blindly through a shadowy world of pains and sorrows, which if it were not all false, was yet involved in a miserable twilight, where one knew not what was false and what was true.