Robert went in again to Edinburgh a few days later, with results very similar. Mrs Ogilvy once more waited for him half through the night: but she sat with her window closed, and with a book in her hand, reading or making believe to read, and with no longer any passion of tears or panic in her heart, but a vague misery, a thrill of expectation she knew not of what, of bad or good, of danger or safety. He came in always, sometimes a little earlier, sometimes a little later, with a kind of regularity which she had to accept, which, indeed, she accepted, without remonstrance or complaint. The atmosphere about him was always the same, tobacco and whisky, to both which things the little fragrant feminine house was getting accustomed, to which she consented with a pang indescribable, but which had no consequences to make any complaint of, as she acknowledged with thankfulness. When he did not go to Edinburgh, he remained quietly enough in the house, doing nothing, saying not very much, taking his walks in the darkening, when it was quite late, and consequently keeping her in a sort of perennial uneasiness, only intensified on those occasions when he went to Edinburgh. On no evening was she sure that he might not come in, in a state of alarm, bidding her extinguish every light, and watching from the chinks of the window lest some one clandestine might be roaming round the house; or that he might not appear with another at his elbow, the man whom he hated yet would obey, the shedder of blood, as she called him; or, finally, that he might never come back at all,--that the man who had so much influence over him might sweep him away, carry him off, notwithstanding all his unwillingness. It is not to be supposed that much comfort now dwelt in the Hewan, in the constant contemplation of so many dangers. Yet everything was more or less as before. The mistress of the house gave no external sign of trouble. To anxious eyes, had there been any to inspect her, there would have appeared new lines in her countenance; but no eyes were anxious about her looks. She pursued her usual habits, as careful as always of the neatness of her house, her dress, her garden, everything surrounding her. Her visitors still came, though this was her hardest burden. To them she said nothing of her son’s return. He withdrew hurriedly to his room whenever there was the smallest sign of any one approaching; and few of them were of his time. The neighbourhood had changed in fifteen years, as the face of the country changes everywhere. There were plenty of people in the neighbourhood who knew Robert Ogilvy, but these were not of the kind who go out in the afternoon to tea. The habit had not begun when he left home. There were wives of his own contemporaries among the ladies who paid their visits at the Hewan, but Robert was not acquainted with them. Of those whom he had known of old, the elder ladies were like his mother, receiving their