“What’s that to him wha judges richteous judgment? What’s a’ oor puir meeserable excuzes i’ the een ’at can see throu’ the wa’s o’ the hert! Ignorance is no innocence.” Thus he lied for God, pleading his cause on the principles of hell. But the eye of his wife was single, and her body full of light; therefore to her it was plain that neither the theatre nor his conscience concerning it was the cause of the change: it had to do with his feelings towards Malcolm. He wronged his friend in his heart, half knew it, but would not own it. Fearing to search himself, he took refuge in resentment, and to support his hard judgment, put false and cruel interpretations on whatever befell. So that, with love and anger and wrong acknowledged, his heart was full of bitterness. “It’s a’ the drumblet (_muddied, troubled_) luve o’ ’im!” said Annie to herself. “Puir fallow! gien only Ma’colm wad come hame, an’ lat him ken he’s no the villain he taks him for. I’ll no believe mysel’ ’at the laad I kissed like my ain mither’s son afore he gaed awa’ wad turn like that upo’ ’s ’maist the meenute he was oot o’ sicht, an’ a’ for a feow words aboot a fulish play-actin’. Lord bliss us a’! markises is men!” “We’ll see, Peter, my man,” she said, when the neighbour took her leave, “whether the wife, though she hasna been to the ill place, an’ that’s surely Lon’on, canna tell the true frae the fause full better nor her man, ’at kens sae muckle mair nor she wants to ken? Lat sit an’ lat see.” Blue Peter made no reply; but perhaps the deepest depth in his fall was that he _feared_ his wife might be right, and he have one day to stand ashamed before both her and his friend. But there are marvellous differences in the _quality_ of the sins of different men, and a noble nature like Peter’s would have to sink far indeed to be beyond redemption. Still there was one element mingling with his wrongness whose very triviality increased the difficulty of long-delaying repentance: he had been not a little proud at finding himself the friend of a marquis. From the first they had been friends, when the one was a youth and the other a child, and had been out together in many a stormy and dangerous sea. More than once or twice, driven from the churlish ocean to the scarce less inhospitable shore, they had lain all night in each other’s arms to keep the life awake within their frozen garments. And now this marquis spoke English to him! It rankled!