The concern in which I fell instantly on this address put me with the same swiftness on my guard; and we were no sooner in the chamber, and the light made, than she beheld the old, dour, stubborn countenance of the student of Heineccius. Doubtless she was more than usually hurt; and I know for myself I found it more than usually difficult to maintain my strangeness. Even at the meal I durst scarce unbuckle and scarce lift my eyes to her; and it was no sooner over than I fell again to my civilian, with more seeming abstraction and less understanding than before. Methought, as I read, I could hear my heart strike like an eight-day clock. Hard as I feigned to study, there was still some of my eyesight that spilled beyond the book upon Catriona. She sat on the floor by the side of my great mail, and the chimney lighted her up, and shone and blinked upon her, and made her glow and darken through a wonder of fine hues. Now she would be gazing in the fire, and then again at me: and at that I would be plunged in a terror of myself, and turn the pages of Heineccius like a man looking for the text in church. Suddenly she called out aloud. "O, why does not my father come?" she cried, and fell at once into a storm of tears. I leapt up, flung Heineccius fairly in the fire, ran to her side, and cast an arm round her sobbing body. She put me from her sharply. "You do not love your friend," says she. "I could be so happy too, if you would let me!" And then, "O, what will I have done that you should hate me so?" "Hate you!" cries I, and held her firm. "You blind lass, can you not see a little in my wretched heart? Do you think when I sit there, reading in that fool-book that I have just burned, and be damned to it, I take ever the least thought of any stricken thing but just yourself? Night after night I could have grat to see you sitting there your lone. And what was I to do? You are here under my honour; would you punish me for that? Is it for that that you would spurn a loving servant?" At the word, with a small, sudden motion, she clung near to me. I raised her face to mine, I kissed it, and she bowed her brow upon my bosom, clasping me tight. I sat in a mere whirl, like a man drunken. Then I heard her voice sound very small and muffled in my clothes. "Did you kiss her truly?" she asked. There went through me so great a heave of surprise that I was all shook with it. "Miss Grant!" I cried, all in a disorder. "Yes, I asked her to kiss me good-bye, the which she did." "Ah, well!" said she, "you have kissed me too, at all events." At the strangeness and sweetness of that word I saw where we had fallen; rose, and set her on her feet. "This will never do," said I. "This will never, never do. O, Catrine, Catrine!" Then there came a pause in which I was debarred from any speaking. And then, "Go away to your bed," said I. "Go away to your bed and leave me."