Mrs Ogilvy went up with a slow step to her own house. She was in haste to get there--yet would have liked to linger, to leave herself a little more time before she confronted again those two who were so strong against her in their combination, so careless of what she said or felt. She thought, with a sickness at her heart, of those “jolly voices” which that woman had heard. She knew exactly what they were--the noise, the laughter, which at first she had been so glad to hear as a sign that Robbie’s heart had recovered the cheerfulness of youth, but which sometimes made her sick with misery and the sense of helplessness. She would find them so now, rattling away with their disjointed talk, and in her fatigue and trouble it would “turn her heart.” She went up slowly, saying to herself, as a sort of excuse, that she could not walk as she once could, that her breath was short and her foot uncertain and tremulous, so that she could not be sure of not stumbling even in the approach to her own house. It was a great surprise to her to see that Robbie was looking out for her at the door. Her alarm jumped at once to the other side. Something had happened. She was wanted. The fact that she was being looked for, instead of pleasing her, as it might have done in other circumstances, alarmed her now. She hurried on, not lingering any more, and reached the door out of breath. “Is anything wrong? has anything happened?” she cried. “What should have happened?” he answered, fretfully; “only that you have been so long away. What have you been doing in Edinburgh? We thought, of course, you would be back for dinner.” “I could not help it, Robbie. I had to wait till I saw--the person I went to see.” “And who was the person you went to see?” he said, in that tone half-contemptuous, as if no one she wished to see could be of the slightest importance, and yet with an excited curiosity lest she might have been doing something prejudicial and was not to be trusted. These inferences of voice jarred on Mrs Ogilvy’s nerves in the weariness and over-strain. “It is of no consequence,” she said. “Let me in, Robbie--let me come in at my own door: I am so wearied that I must rest.” “Who was keeping you out of your own door?” he cried, making way for her resentfully. “You tell me one moment that everything is mine--and then you remind me for ever that it’s yours and not mine, with this talk about your own door.”