Ronald remained for three or four days, during which time Dougal, who had carried out the judicious previsions of the women, and had required no explanations of any kind on the market night, maintained a very sullen countenance and did not welcome the visitor, of whom he was suspicious without well knowing why. During this time there was scarcely any pretence kept up of sending Ronald off to the cottage of Tam Robison or in any way making a stranger of him. He was “the young leddy’s freend.” “Young leddies had nae sic freends in my time,” said Dougal. “They have aye had them in my time,” said Katrin, “and that cannot be far different.” He did not know what to say; but he was very glum, and open to no blandishments on the part of the stranger. And those were days of anxious happiness for Lily. Ronald said nothing upon that one sole subject which she longed to know of. He sounded no note of freedom amid all the litanies he sang to her about her own sweetness, her beauty, her kindness. Lily grew sick of hearing her own praises. “Oh, if he would but say I was an ugly, troublesome thing! and then say: ‘You must be ready, Lily, for we’re going home to-morrow!’” But Lily was very sweet to her husband; this short visit was full of delight to him; he loved to look at her, to take her in his arms, to know she was his. Going away from her was hard to bear. He would have bemoaned his very hard case if he had not feared that she would beseech him to put an end to it, to take her away with him, and that it need be hard no longer. That was not what he wanted. He preferred the moments of rapture and the separations between. At least he preferred them to the loss of many other things which would be otherwise involved. One day they went down to the Manse, Lily riding upon Rory, and her husband walking by her side. “You can say I have just come over for the day,” he said. “The minister of course knows very well, but your friend Miss Helen----” “Why should we tell lies about it, Ronald? Isn’t it very easy, very easy to understand?” “Oh, yes,” he said, “in any case it’s easy to understand; but we might as well avoid gossip if we could.” “There would be no gossip,” cried Lily, “about a man coming to see his wife! The only thing would be that folk would wonder why he did not take her home.” “Folk would wonder about something, you may be sure; but I’ve noticed that ladies think less of that than men. You think it is natural that people’s minds should be occupied with you, my bonnie Lily. And so it is; but not with a common man. Maybe it is the jealousy that’s in human nature. I hate the chance of it, you see!” He spoke with a little vehemence, and Lily’s eyes filled with tears. It was almost approaching the border of a first quarrel. “You and me,” she said plaintively, “though I would not have believed it, Ronald, do not always think the same.”