Old Mr. Blake found it convenient to have one of his ‘attacks,’ as he rather vaguely called them, and thus avoided his guests entirely, Hubert was anxious to make some return for the kindness he had received at Castle Farm; but in spite of his efforts there was a constraint on the little party which nothing could dissipate. Mr. Lindsay looked and spoke very much as usual, except that he was very pale, and there was a stern formality in his manner which forbade any nearer approach. His rough northern accents sounded harsh and forbidding to the southern ears of his new acquaintances. As for Sophy, her colour heightened a little when she was told that Margaret would accompany her father, and would, for one night at least, be a guest under Mr. Blake’s roof. She was anxious to see what the girl was like who had captivated Hubert’s affections--for she felt sure that something of the kind had occurred. Margaret’s cold pale face, her severe beauty, her low measured tones, took the English girl by surprise. ‘She is dressed like a housekeeper,’ was Sophy’s first thought. ‘But how self-possessed she is, how--how unlike anyone I have ever seen,’ was her second. Margaret, in spite of her country-made dress and her utter want of ‘style,’ was in no way ridiculous. Her calm proud eyes surveyed her hostess, till Sophy felt, somehow, that she was the smaller and weaker creature of the two, and instinctively turned to Hubert for sympathy and protection. Before Mr. Lindsay went upstairs for the night Blake tried to say a word about Alec, whose name had never crossed his father’s lips. ‘I think it will be better, Mr. Blake, if we leave that subject entirely alone for the present,’ said the old man sternly. Blake flushed and bit his lip, but made no reply. ‘Is it possible that he believes Alec to be guilty?’ he said to himself afterwards, with a curious look at his guest’s face. It was true. The laird was not a man to take an imaginative view of things. He looked simply at the facts, and in them he read his son’s condemnation. As for the faith that can go beyond ‘facts,’ the faith that considers a man’s character to be the most important of all facts, that can accept a gesture of denial as more potent evidence than the words of many witnesses, he would have looked upon such a thing as childish folly. His son had been tempted, probably by Semple. He had been without true religious principle; and he had fallen. The disgrace was indelible; it was overwhelming. For him no more would the sun shine, or the trees put forth their leaves. His gray hairs would indeed go down with sorrow to the grave.