ook down, to look unconscious, to
look seriously impressed in church, and in every conjuncture to look her
best. That was the game of female life, and she played it frankly.
Archie was the one person in church who was of interest, who was
somebody new, reputed eccentric, known to be young, and a laird, and
still unseen by Christina. Small wonder that, as she stood there in her
attitude of pretty decency, her mind should run upon him! If he spared a
glance in her direction, he should know she was a well-behaved young
lady who had been to Glasgow. In reason he must admire her clothes, and
it was possible that he should think her pretty. At that her heart beat
the least thing in the world; and she proceeded, by way of a corrective,
to call up and dismiss a series of fancied pictures of the young man who
should now, by rights, be looking at her. She settled on the plainest of
them--a pink short young man with a dish face and no figure, at whose
admiration she could afford to smile; but for all that, the
consciousness of his gaze (which was really fixed on Torrance and his
mittens) kept her in something of a flutter till the word Amen. Even
then, she was far too well-bred to gratify her curiosity with any
impatience. She resumed her seat languidly--this was a Glasgow
touch--she composed her dress, rearranged her nosegay of primroses,
looked first in front, then behind upon the other side, and at last
allowed her eyes to move, without hurry, in the direction of the
Hermiston pew. For a moment they were riveted. Next she had plucked her
gaze home again like a tame bird who should have meditated flight.
Possibilities crowded on her; she hung over the future and grew dizzy;
the image of this young man, slim, graceful, dark, with the inscrutable
half-smile, attracted and repelled her like a chasm. "I wonder, will I
have met my fate?" she thought, and her heart swelled.

Torrance was got some way into his first exposition, positing a deep
layer of texts as he went along, laying the foundations of his
discourse, which was to deal with a nice point in divinity, before
Archie suffered his eyes to wander. They fell first of all on Clem,
looking insupportably prosperous, and patronising Torrance with the
favour of a modified attention, as of one who was used to better things
in Glasgow. Though he had never before set eyes on him, Archie had no
difficulty in identifying him, and no hesitation in pronouncing him
vulgar, the worst of the