Mrs Buchanan still said nothing. It was very true she would not like to be alone, and very true it was also that she shrank from the unknown evils of change, and was better pleased to remain with the quiet cares she knew, than encounter those she did not know; but, unlike Hope, she said nothing. She did not choose to throw down, by any sudden decision, the dreams with which her daughter was already filling the air. “Do you think I would not do for Miss Swinton, Hope?” asked Helen. “Helen!” exclaimed Hope, indignantly. “Well then, why do you say that?” “Because,” and Hope tried to put wise meanings into her own girlish open face, and to make it as eloquent as Helen’s; “because, Helen, I should not like you to go away from Fendie. Oh! no, no, you must stay always at home.” And as Helen lifted her flushed face, the elaborate look of Hope and her mother’s anxious glance fell upon her together. They only made the blood rush more warmly about her heart. She started with a rapid nervous impulse: “Mother, if you do not disapprove, let me write to Miss Swinton to-morrow.” Poor Hope Oswald! she had been _too_ sensible--she had defeated her own well-digested, painfully-constructed plan. Miss Swinton instead of a powerful auxiliary threatened to become the most hopeless barrier in her way, and Hope was almost in despair. She began immediately to belie Edinburgh; to manufacture grievances; and to represent how very hard, especially for the teachers, was the laborious life at school; but Helen’s fixed dreamy, unconscious face warned her it was all lost, and very disconsolately she said good-night. “My father would be pleased enough if it was Miss Maxwell,” thought Hope with some disdain, as she went home, “all because Mr Graeme will leave her Mossgray. I wish somebody would give Helen a place like Mossgray--but I don’t either--because Helen is better than we are, though she is poor. Who’s that?” Hope’s reverie concluded very abruptly--who was it? Alas, it was the interesting, sentimental, young minister newly placed in the church of Fendie, whom all the town delighted to honour. He did not see her as he went steadily down the dim road, and the dismayed Hope stood still to watch him, with prophetic terror. Yes, indeed, it is Mrs Buchanan’s gate he stops at; and now the door is opened, and a flash of warm light shines for a moment into the garden, and the Reverend Robert Insches is admitted. Burning with suppressed anger, the jealous Hope hurried home, eager to defy and defeat her father, and utterly to destroy any presumptuous hopes which the Reverend Robert Insches might entertain in regard to Helen Buchanan. CHAPTER X.