Jean felt it with a curious force. She had the strongest conception that Bob Meffin, who had jilted her in the past and was insulting her in the present--as she had thought only a moment before, who defended his dead wife and loved his children so fondly, was having the best of it in their contest. He had been foolish and false in word and deed, he might be what she had called him--the most conceited and audacious of men. He might share in the low views current as to ‘wanters’ and old maids, yet could it be that Bob Meffin had grown a better man than Jean was a woman, while he had been the sinner and she the sinned against? Had the simple, manly patience with which he had paid the penalty reversed the result in character, in the subtle workings by which good may triumph over evil? Had Bob become less and she more worldly-minded since they parted? Had his nature been softened, mellowed, purified in his ceaseless toil for his sick wife and helpless children, while she in her comparative ease, her leisure for her bible and her kirk, had lost sight of magnanimity and mercy and learnt only vindictiveness and malice? And if so, had she not been doubly defrauded? Was Bob to cheat her not only of earthly, but of heavenly happiness? Jean’s sense of justice rebelled against the merest bewildered suspicion of such a sentence. But she was sorry for the words she had spoken; she had been mean enough to cherish the recollection of Bob’s offence after all these years, and, with a full knowledge of the apples of Sodom it had borne, to cast it up to the offender. And he had been perfectly right in his accusation--she had ‘cast laith’ at the dead wife whose soul had gone before the great tribunal--at Leezbeth Red’s and Bob Meffin’s innocent bairns, thus outraging the most sacred feelings of humanity. As Jean was a good woman she must take back her words in part, she must say she was sorry for having uttered them. ‘Forgi’e me, Bob,’ she said in a low tone, her handsome face working with suppressed emotion. ‘It was sma’ of me and unworthy of a Christian woman to let on about byganes--no to say it was cruel to say an unbecoming word o’ your dead wife and your living bairns.’ Alas! the original mercurial temperament of the man which no suffering had altogether subdued, leapt up on the slightest encouragement from the depth of alienation and despondency to the height of fresh love and hope. He was not merely propitiated, he was elevated by a single word of regret so as to be ready to repeat the affront he had given. ‘Will you no think better of it, Jean, lass, and make me a prood and happy man at last?’ he called out loudly and recklessly. Jean’s recent remorse for her harshness was nipped in the bud, and she was furious at the renewed outrage. ‘No me, niver, niver,’ she proclaimed to him and to all who might choose to listen. CHAPTER III. JEAN’S REPRISALS.