She had somewhat changed since that stormy night on which we first introduced her to the reader, and had altered, as people do with increasing years, so as to be at times--shall we say it?--almost selfish in much that related to her own immediate hearth and household, and more especially in all that concerned the still more selfish Cosmo, on whom she doted, and in whom she could see no imperfection. Yet she could not but reproach herself bitterly when thinking of Quentin Kennedy, and the harsh, cutting words he had overheard. Then as his smiling, loving, and handsome face came vividly in memory before her, she would ask of herself, "Is it thus, Winifred Rohallion, you have treated the strange orphan, the helpless child once, the mere lad now, who was cast by fate, misfortune, and the waves of that bleak November sea, years ago, at your door and at your mercy? Was it generous to cast forth upon the cold world the friendless, poor, and penniless youth, who loves you--ay, even as your own son never loved you? And what answer is to be given if, at some future day, his mother, who may be living yet, should come hither and demand him of you--you who stung and galled his proud spirit by taunts, upbraiding and unmerited reproach?" And so she would whisper and think what she dared not say aloud; though "perhaps the lowest of our whispers may reach eternity, for it is not very far from any of us, after all." By the past memories of her early life--by those of _one_ whose face came at times unbidden before her, and by the pleasant days of _their_ youth in pastoral Nithsdale--by those evenings when the sunset glowed so redly on the green summits of Monswald and Criffel, while the Nith brawled joyously over its pebbled bed, and the white hawthorn cast its fragrance and its blossoms on the soft west wind--by all these, it might be asked, had she no compassion for the young love she was seeking to mar and crush? She had alike compunction and compassion; but in this instance she deemed it the mere love of a boy for a girl, and not quite such as Rohallion's brother, Ranulph Crawford, had for her some seven-and-thirty years before. Seven-and-thirty! a long vista they were to look back through now; but the events of her youth seemed clearer at times than those of her middle age, and as we grow older they always are so in dreams. Quentin would soon forget the affair, she was assured, and self-interest and love for her own son blinded her to the rest--to all but a sorrow for the lost youth, and a craving to know his fate, where he was now, and with whom.