Mr Somerville was engaged with another client, and it was a long time before Mrs Ogilvy could see him. She had to wait, trembling with impatience, and dismayed by the passage of time, following the hands of the clock with her eyes, wondering what perhaps might be happening at home. She was not, perhaps, on the face of things, a very strong defensive force, but she had got by degrees into the habit of feeling that safety depended more or less upon her presence. She might have perhaps a little tendency that way by nature, to think that her little world depended upon her, and that nothing went quite right when she was away; but this feeling was doubly strong now. She felt that the little house was quite undefended in her absence, that all the doors and windows which she could not bear to have shut were now standing wide open to let misfortune come in. When she did at last succeed in seeing Mr Somerville, however, he was very comforting to her. It was not that he did not see the gravity of the situation. He was very grave indeed upon the whole matter. He did not conceal from her his conviction that Robert stood a much worse chance if he were found in the company of the other man. “Which is no doubt unjust,” he said, “for I understood you to say that your son had a great repugnance to this scoundrel who had led him astray.” Mrs Ogilvy responded to this by a very faltering and doubtful “Yes.” Yes indeed--Robbie had said he hated the man; but there was very little appearance on his part of hating him now--and Mrs Ogilvy herself did not hate Lew. She hated nobody, so that this perhaps was not wonderful, but her feeling towards the scoundrel, as Mr Somerville called him, was more than that abstract one. She felt herself his defender, too, as well as her son’s. She was eager to save him as well as her son. To ransom Robbie by giving up his companion was not what she thought of.