before my marriage, and advised me to be very
cautious with Mr. Neil Ruleson."

"I will send for him," said Christine, a little coldly, and then she
drew the conversation towards the Raths and Ballisters. "Were they
closely connected with Doctor Trenabie?" she asked.

"In a distant way," said Roberta, "but they are firm friends, for many
generations."

"The Domine does not talk much about himsel'."

"No. He never did. He vowed himself early in life to chastity and
poverty, for Christ's sake, and he has faithfully kept his vow. Old
Ballister gave him the kirk of Culraine at fifty pounds a year, and
when the death of his father made him a comparatively rich man, he
continued his humble life, and put out all the balance of his money in
loans to poor men in a strait, or in permanent gifts, when such are
necessary. Reginald used to consider him a saint, and many times he
said that if I was married to a good man, he would try and live such a
life as Magnus Trenabie."

"Once I knew Colonel and Angus Ballister."

"I heard Angus lately boasting about his acquaintance with you--that
is since your book has set the whole newspaper world to praising
you."

"He is married. I saw him with his bride."

"A proud, saucy, beautiful Canadian, educated in a tip-top New York
boarding school, in all the pronounced fads of the day. Now, I have
seen New York girls of this progressive kind, and the polish being
natural to them, they were not only dashing and impertinent, they were
fascinating in all their dictatory moods. But this kind of polish is
intolerable when laid over a hard, calculating, really puritanical
Scotch nature. Such a girl has to kill some of her very best
qualities, in order to take it on at all."

"She would be gey hard to live wi'. I wouldn't stay wi' her--not a
day."

"Yet, I can tell you, both English and Scotch men are enslaved easily
by this new kind of girl. She is only the girl of the period and the
place, but they imagine her to be the very latest improvement in
womanly styles. Now, I will astonish you. Reginald married the sister
of Angus Ballister's wife. She is equally beautiful, equally
impertinent and selfish, and she holds Reginald in a leash. She makes
fun of my dowdy dress and ways, and of my antiquated moralities, even
to my brother, in my very presence, and Reggie looks at me critically,
and then at Sabrina--that is the creature's name--and says--'Roberta,
you ought to get Brina to show you how