"Strange!" ejaculated the mother, as she still fixed her eyes on him. Then, musing a little, "Do you know that the bride has been seen to-night on the bastle tower?" "Superstition." "An ill-used word, Hector," said she; "as if God was not the Ruler of his own world. When we see unnatural motives swaying men, and all working to an event, are we not to suppose that that event shall also be out of Nature's scheme? and that which is out of Nature's scheme must be in God's immediate hand. What motives impel you to wed a woman with whom you must be miserable, and have that misery enhanced by seeing every day her who would have rendered you happy?" "My honour pledged to the world, which must condemn and laugh at a breach of faith, not to be justified except at the expense of Isobel." "A false reason," continued the mother. "Is there more honour in adhering to a breach of honour than in returning to the honour that was broken?" "There is another reason, mother," said Ogilvy, as he carried his hand over his sorrowful face. "What is that?" "Sweet Marjory commands me." "Ah, Hector, Hector, how little you know of the heart of woman! Know you not that in a forsaken woman the heart has an irony even when it is breaking? Ask her if you should wed her rival, and the breaking heart-string will respond Yes, even as the cord of the harp will twang when it is severed. Well do I know Sweet Marjory, and what she must have felt when she uttered this command. The canker has begun, and she will die. The worm does not seek always the withered leaf. You've heard the song that Patricia used to sing-- "'The dainty worm, it loves the tomb, And gnaws, and gnaws its nightly food; But a daintier worm selects the bloom, And a daintier still affects the bud.'"