So the talk went, and Gavan took such gabble with a large pinch of ironic incredulity; but at the same time the gossip left its trail. The impetuous and devastating young lady, with her assurance and her aim at large successes, was to him a distasteful figure. There was pain in linking it with little Eppie. It stood waiting in the wings and was altogether novel and a little menacing to one’s peace of mind. He really did not want to see Miss Gilford; she belonged to a modern type intensely wearisome to him. But she was staying with her uncle and aunt--only Miss Barbara was left--at Kirklands, and the general, after a meeting in London, had written begging him to pay them all a visit, and, since there had seemed no reason for not going, here he was. Here he was, and round the corner of the wing the new Eppie stood waiting. Poor little Eppie of childhood--she was lost forever. But all the clearness of the night concentrated, at dawn, into that vivid memory of the past where they had wandered together, sharing joy and sorrow. That was long, long over. To-morrow was already here, and to-morrow belonged to the new Eppie. III Gavan spent the morning in Edinburgh, seeing an old relative, and reached Kirklands at six. It was a cold October evening, the moors like a dark, sullenly heaving ocean and a heavy bar of sunset lying along the horizon. The windows of the old white house mirrored the dying color, and here and there the inner light of fire and candle seemed like laughter on a grave face. With all its loneliness it was a happy-looking house; he remembered that; and in the stillness of the vast moors and the coming night it made him think of a warmly throbbing heart filling with courage and significance a desolate life. The general came from the long oak library, book in hand, to welcome him. Gavan was almost automatically observant of physical processes and noted now the pronounced limp, the touch of garrulity--symptoms of the fine old organism’s placid disintegration. Life was leaving it unreluctantly, and the mild indifference of age made his cordiality at once warmer and more impersonal than of old. As he led Gavan to his room, the room of boyhood, near Eppie’s, overlooking the garden and the wooded hills, he told him that Eppie and Miss Barbara were dressing and that he would have time for a talk with them before dinner at eight.