To describe the blank which fell upon the successful man as he went briskly up through the woods, which in his heart he called his own, reflecting upon his success and how he had won it all unaided, his happy selection of a house, his still happier luck in a wife, and saw the pair of limp young figures without interest in anything, vaguely standing about in front of the colonnade, would be too much for words. They stood a little apart, Archie with his hands in his pockets, Marion drawing lines in the ground with the end of her parasol. They were not even looking at “the view.” The air of caring for nothing, finding no interest in anything, was so strong in them both that they might have been taken as impersonations of ennui, that most hopeless of all the immoralities. They did not know what to do with themselves--they would never know what to do with themselves, Rowland thought in despair. They would stand about his life as they were doing about the vacant space in front of the house, empty, indifferent, uninterested. Going wrong, he said to himself (heaven forgive him!) was almost better than that--anything is better than nullity, the state of doing and being nothing. The outline of them against the light struck him as he came up to them like a dull blow. “Well,” he said, “what have you been doing since I saw you last?” “Nothing,” said Marion, with a slight look up at him, and a yawn, “for there is nothing to do.” “No--thing,” said Archie with hesitation and a less assured, more anxious look. He wanted to speak to his father about those puppies, if he could only venture: but he did not dare. “You might have explored the woods,” said Rowland, “or gone down to the loch, or taken a boat, or rambled up the hill--there’s a hundred things to do.” “The woods are very damp: I would have spoiled my shoes: and the hills very craggy: it would have torn my frock: and Archie, he is too lazy to row a boat, and too grumpy to speak. Will it soon be time to go back to Glasgow? You might have taken me with you, papa.” “It is a pity I did not: for there was company at the Manse, and I have an invitation for you.” “Oh papa!” Archie too looked up with a certain lightning of his preoccupied face. “Yes--if you are not too fine for it. It is to go to some place that is called the Burn, to a lady whose name is Miss Eliza, who has a number of nieces and nephews, and something always going on, tennis, or boating, or dancing.” “Oh, papa!” Marion’s eyes shone; but presently a little cloud came over her. “I have not had much chance of learning tennis. The MacColls can play, they’ve got a nice ground of their own--they have just everything! But there’s no club you can get into out of the Sauchiehall Road, and you want shoes and things. I never was in the way of learning.” A little furtive moisture glistened in Marion’s eyes. “I could let you see the way,” said Archie.