Marion did not speak, but she was white as the white dress she wore. Mrs. Caird looked at her and was not quite pleased with her attitude. She had expected tears or anger, and Marion gave way to neither, but her silence and pallor and a certain proud erectness of her figure spoke for her. At this hour she was startlingly like her father. She had put herself completely in his place, and was moved just as he would have been by her aunt's scornful picture of the Church of the Disciples in a jocular insurrection. So she looked like him. Quick as thought and feeling, the soul had photographed on the plastic body the very presentment of Ian Macrae. Her erect figure, her haughty manner, her scornful and indignant expression, and her large dark eyes, full of reproach, but quite tearless, were exactly the symptoms which he would have manifested if subjected to a like recital. For it is the expression of the human face, rather than its features, which makes its identity. The face enshrined in our hearts, which comes to us in dreams, when it has long moldered in the grave, is not the mechanical countenance of the loved one--it is its abstract idealization, its essence and life--it is the spirit of the face. Mrs. Caird was astonished. It was a Marion she did not expect, but after a few moments' silence she said, "You can see your father's position, child?" "Yes, I can see it and feel it, too. He would be distracted with the gossip and the disgrace of it." "Well, then?" "I must prevent it." "Would you marry Allan Reid?" "No." "What will you do?" "Stand by my father whatever befall, if he will let me." "And Lord Cramer?" "We can wait." "But if you married at once, the onus of such a condition as I have pointed out would be on your father, and he would not face it for any living woman. That stands to reason." "It is nineteen years since my mother died. He has given all those years to Donald and myself. He gave us _you_ for a mother, but he never gave us a stepmother. He was good to us in that respect, and, though we may not have known it, he may have had many temptations to alter his life and he denied himself a wife for our sakes. I must stand by my father. If he wishes to marry Lady Cramer, I will only express satisfaction in his choice." "But if he insists on your marrying Allan Reid first?" "That I will not do. His hopes and desires are sacred to me. I shall expect him to give to mine the same regard. I am sure he will do so. Why do you not point out to him the results you have just made so plain to me?" "Not I! I shall wash my hands of the whole affair. I wonder what kind of mortals you Macraes are! I was trying to prepare some plain road for you and your lover, and the thought of your father steps in between you and you make him a curtsey, and say, 'Your will be it, Father.'"