“Who is it? Who is the man?” she said. She followed every change of his face, every movement, every question, with eyes large with panic and terror. What he said first, he had the grace to say under his breath out of some revived tradition of respect, “Would you be any the wiser if I told you a name--that you never heard before?” he said. “No, Robbie, no. But tell me one thing, is it a man you have wronged? Oh Robbie, tell me, tell me that, for pity’s sake!” “No!” he shouted with a rage that overcame all other feelings. “Damn him! damn him! it’s he that has never done anything but hunt and harm me.” “Oh, God be thanked!” cried his mother, suddenly rising and going to him. “Oh Robbie, my dear, the Lord be praised! and God forgive that unfortunate person, for if it’s him, it’s not you!” He submitted unwillingly for a moment to the arm which she put round him, drawing his head upon her breast, and then put her not ungently away. “If there’s any consolation in that, you can take it,” he said: “There’s not much consolation in me, any way.” And then he reached his large hand over the table to her little bookcase, which stood against the wall. “I can always read a book,” he said, “a story-book; it’s the only thing I can do. You used to have all the Scotts here.” “They are just where they used to be, Robbie,” she said, in a subdued tone. She watched him, still standing while he chose one; and throwing himself back in his chair, began to read. It added a little sense of embarrassment, of confusion and disorder, to all the heavier trouble, that he had thrown himself into her chair, the place in which she had sat through all those years when there was no one to interfere with her. Glad was she to give up the best place in the house to him, whatever he might please to choose; but it gave her a feeling of disturbance which she could not explain, not being even aware at first what it was that caused it. She did not know where to sit, nor what to do. She could not go back to fetch her open Bible, nor sit down to read it, partly because it would be a reproach to him sitting there reading a novel--only a novel, no reading for Sabbath, even though it was Sir Walter’s; partly because it would seem like indifference, she thought, to occupy herself with reading at all, when at any moment he might have something to say to her again. CHAPTER VII.