She received him very coldly, and declined to listen to anything about the fishers. She insisted that, being one of their party, he was prejudiced in their favour; and that of course a man of Mr Crathie’s experience must know better than he what ought to be done with such people, in view of protecting her rights, and keeping them in order. She declared that she was not going to disturb the old way of things to please him; and said that he had now done her all the mischief he could, except, indeed, he were to head the fishers and sack Lossie House. Malcolm found that, by making himself known to her as her brother, he had but given her confidence in speaking her mind to him, and set her free from considerations of personal dignity when she desired to humiliate him. But he was a good deal surprised at the ability with which she set forth and defended her own view of her affairs, for she did not tell him that the Rev. Mr Cairns had been with her all the morning, flattering her vanity, worshipping her power, and generally instructing her in her own greatness--also putting in a word or two anent his friend Mr Crathie and his troubles with her ladyship’s fisher-tenants. She was still, however, so far afraid of her brother--which state of feeling was, perhaps, the main cause of her insulting behaviour to him--that she sat in some dread lest he might chance to see the address of the letter she had been writing. I may mention here that Lady Bellair accepted the invitation with pleasure for herself and Liftore, promised to bring Caley, but utterly declined to take charge of Demon, or allow him to be of the party. Thereupon Florimel, who was fond of the animal, and feared much, as he was no favourite, that something would _happen_ to him, wrote to Clementina, praying her to visit her in her lovely loneliness --good as The Gloom in its way, though not quite so dark--and to add a hair to the weight of her obligations if she complied, by allowing her deerhound to accompany her. Clementina was the only one, she said, of her friends for whom the animal had ever shown a preference. Malcolm retired from his sister’s presence much depressed, saw Mrs Courthope, who was kind as ever, and betook himself to his own room, next to that in which his strange history began. There he sat down and wrote urgently to Lenorme, stating that he had an important communication to make, and begging him to start for the north the moment he received the letter. A messenger from Duff Harbour well mounted, he said, would ensure his presence within a couple of hours.