And as I helped the Lady Mary, or pretended to help her rather, she continued to converse sweetly and comfortably to me. But all as it had been my sister Anna speaking--a thousand miles from any thought of love. Her eyes beneath the long dark lashes remained cool and quiet. “I am glad,” she said, “that ye have played the man, and withstood your enemies even to the last extremity.” “I could do no other,” I made answer. “There are very many who could very well have ‘done other’ without stressing themselves,” she said. And I well knew that she meant Mr. Boyd, who was the neighbouring minister and a recreant from the Societies. Then she looked very carefully to the ordering of certain wild flowers, which like a bairn she had been out gathering, and had now set forth in sundry flat dishes in the table-midst, in a fashion I had never seen before. More than once she spilled a little of the water upon the cloth, and cried out upon herself for her stupidity in the doing of it, discovering ever fresh delights in the delicate grace of her movements, the swinging of her dress, and in especial a pretty quick way she had of jerking back her head to see if she had gotten the colour and ordering of the flowers to her mind. This I minded for long after, and even now it comes so fresh before me that I can see her at it now. “I heard of the young lass of Drumglass and her love for you,” she said presently, very softly, and without looking at me, fingering at the flowers in the shallow basins and pulling them this way and that. I did not answer, but stood looking at her with my head hanging down, and a mighty weight about my heart. “You must have loved her greatly?” she said, still more softly. “I married her,” said I, curtly. But in a moment was ashamed of the answer. Yet what more could I say with truth? But I had the grace to add, “Almost I was heartbroken for her death.” “She was happy when she died, they said,” she went on, tentatively. “She died with her hand in mine,” I answered, steadily, “and when she could not speak any longer she still pressed it.” “Ah! that is the true love which can make even death sweet,” she said. “I should like to plant Lads’ Love and None-so-pretty upon her grave.” Yet all the while I desired to tell her of my love for herself, and how the other was not even a heat of the blood, but only for the comforting of a dying girl. Nevertheless I could not at that time. For it seemed a dishonourable word to speak of one who was so lately dead, and, in name and for an hour at least, had been my wife. Then all too soon we heard the noise of Sandy her father upon the garret stair, trampling down with his great boots as if he would bring the whole wood-work of the building with him bodily. Mary Gordon heard it, too, for she came hastily about to the end of the table where I had stood transfixed all the time she was speaking of Jean Gemmell.