ind a bride in my Lady
Cochrane's daughter. Ye have given me fair warning and have used very
plain speech, but I was wondering with myself all the time"--and then
as her mother waited and questioned her by a look--"whether miscalling
a man black with the shameful lies of his enemies is not the surest
way to turn the heart of a woman towards him. But doubtless ye ken
best." Without further speech Jean left her mother's room, who felt
that she would have succeeded better if her daughter had been less
like herself.

Jean gave, truth to tell, little heed to the stories of Claverhouse's
savagery, partly because rough deeds were being done on both sides,
and they were not so much horrified in the West Country of that time
at the shooting of a man as we are in our delicate days; partly, also,
because she had been fed on those horrors for years, and had learned
to regard Claverhouse and the other Royalist officers as men capable
of any atrocity. Gradually the dramatic stories had grown stale and
lost their bite, and when she noticed that with every new telling it
was necessary to strengthen the horrors, Jean had begun to regard them
as works of political fiction. But this was another story about
Claverhouse's engagement to Helen Graham. Jean would not admit to
herself, even in her own room or in her own heart, that she was in
love with Graham, and she was ready to say to herself that no marriage
could be more preposterous than between a Cochrane and a Graham. It
did not really matter to her whether he had been engaged or was going
to be engaged to one Graham or twenty Grahams. She had never seen him
till a few days ago, and very likely, having done all he wanted, he
would never come to Paisley Castle again. Their lives had touched just
for a space, and then would run forever afterwards apart. They had
passed some pleasant hours together, and she would ever remember his
face; perhaps he might sometimes recall hers. So the little play would
end without ill being done to her or him. Still, as she knew her
mother was not overscrupulous, and any stick was good enough wherewith
to beat Claverhouse, she would like to know, if only to gratify a
woman's curiosity, whether Claverhouse was really going to marry this
kinswoman of his, and, in passing, whether he was the mercenary
adventurer of her mother's description.

This was the reason of a friendly duel between that vivacious woman
Kirsty Howieson, Jean Cochrane's maid and humble fr