and
to himself only to stand aside and envy. He seemed excluded, as of
right, from the favour of such society--seemed to extinguish mirth
wherever he came, and was quick to feel the wound, and desist, and
retire into solitude. If he had but understood the figure he presented,
and the impression he made on these bright eyes and tender hearts; if he
had but guessed that the Recluse of Hermiston, young, graceful, well
spoken, but always cold, stirred the maidens of the county with the
charm of Byronism when Byronism was new, it may be questioned whether
his destiny might not even yet have been modified. It may be questioned,
and I think it should be doubted. It was in his horoscope to be
parsimonious of pain to himself, or of the chance of pain, even to the
avoidance of any opportunity of pleasure; to have a Roman sense of duty,
an instinctive aristocracy of manners and taste; to be the son of Adam
Weir and Jean Rutherford.

2. _Kirstie_

Kirstie was now over fifty, and might have sat to a sculptor. Long of
limb, and still light of foot, deep-breasted, robust-loined, her golden
hair not yet mingled with any trace of silver, the years had but
caressed and embellished her. By the lines of a rich and vigorous
maternity, she seemed destined to be the bride of heroes and the mother
of their children; and behold, by the iniquity of fate, she had passed
through her youth alone, and drew near to the confines of age, a
childless woman. The tender ambitions that she had received at birth had
been, by time and disappointment, diverted into a certain barren zeal of
industry and fury of interference. She carried her thwarted ardours into
housework, she washed floors with her empty heart. If she could not win
the love of one with love, she must dominate all by her temper. Hasty,
wordy, and wrathful, she had a drawn quarrel with most of her
neighbours, and with the others not much more than armed neutrality. The
grieve's wife had been "sneisty"; the sister of the gardener who kept
house for him had shown herself "upsitten"; and she wrote to Lord
Hermiston about once a year demanding the discharge of the offenders,
and justifying the demand by much wealth of detail. For it must not be
supposed that the quarrel rested with the wife and did not take in the
husband also--or with the gardener's sister, and did not speedily
include the gardener himself. As the upshot of all this petty
quarrelling and intemperate speech, she was practical