He walked back to his poor and empty room with his head among the stars. She had talked with him, smiled upon him, treated him as an equal. He would find out where she lived, and contrive to meet her again. How lovely she was, how sweet, how pure, how good! The wide earth, Alec Lindsay was firmly convinced, contained no mortal fit for one moment to be compared with the girl whose soft brown eyes and gentle, almost appealing, looks still made his heart beat as he remembered them. FOOTNOTES: [1] Disgusted. CHAPTER VII. A SUNDAY IN GLASGOW. ‘Well, Alec, how did you get on last night?’ asked Duncan Cameron of his friend, when they met as usual the day after the dinner at Blythswood Square. ‘Oh, all right. It was rather a stupid affair.’ ‘Rather stupid--not quite worth the trouble of attending? And yet you were half afraid of going! Don’t deny it.’ ‘I said it was stupid; and so it was,’ said Alec, reddening. ‘Nobody said anything worth listening to, so far as I heard.’ ‘That means nobody took much notice of _you_, eh?’ ‘What an ill-conditioned, sneering fellow you are, Cameron,’ replied Alec tranquilly. ‘You’ll never get on in the world unless you learn to be civil.’ ‘It isn’t worth my while to be civil to you,’ said Cameron. ‘Wait till I’m in practice and have to flatter and humour rich old women. What did your uncle say to you?’ ‘Hardly anything--just a word or two, as I was coming away.’ ‘You ought to cultivate him, Alec.’ ‘I wish you wouldn’t speak like that, Duncan,’ said Alec roughly. ‘Do you think I’m the sort of fellow to flatter and fawn upon an old man I don’t like, simply because he is rich?’ ‘There’s no need for flattering and fawning,’ replied Cameron; ‘but you’ve no right to throw away such a chance at the very outset of your life.’ ‘Do you think, then, that it’s manly or honourable to visit a man as it were out of pure friendship, when your only object is to make him useful to you?’ ‘There’s no question of friendship, ye gowk; he’s your relation, and the head of your house. It’s your duty to pay him your respects occasionally.’ ‘Paying my respects wouldn’t be of much use,’ retorted Alec. ‘You’re shirking the question. Is it honourable to--I don’t know the right word--to try to ingratiate yourself with anyone in the hope of getting something out of him?’ ‘Why not?’ ‘It’s not honourable; and I would not respect myself if I were to do such a thing,’ said Alec, with much dignity. Cameron laughed inwardly, but he made no response, and there was silence for a few minutes between the two friends. The older man was thinking how absurd the boy was, and how a little experience of life would rub off his ‘high-fantastical’ notions. Then he wished that he had a grand-uncle who was a millionnaire. And then he fell to wondering whether, on the whole, it was best to despise wealth, as Alec Lindsay did, or to acquire it.