rry
her towards death and despair. Had it been a doctor of psychology, he
might have been pardoned for divining in the girl a passion of childish
vanity, self-love _in excelsis_, and no more. It is to be understood
that I have been painting chaos and describing the inarticulate. Every
lineament that appears is too precise, almost every word used too
strong. Take a finger-post in the mountains on a day of rolling mists; I
have but copied the names that appear upon the pointers, the names of
definite and famous cities far distant, and now perhaps basking in
sunshine; but Christina remained all these hours, as it were, at the
foot of the post itself, not moving, and enveloped in mutable and
blinding wreaths of haze.

The day was growing late and the sunbeams long and level, when she sat
suddenly up, and wrapped in its handkerchief and put by that psalm-book
which had already played a part so decisive in the first chapter of her
love-story. In the absence of the mesmerist's eye, we are told nowadays
that the head of a bright nail may fill his place, if it be steadfastly
regarded. So that torn page had riveted her attention on what might else
have been but little, and perhaps soon forgotten; while the ominous
words of Dandie--heard, not heeded, and still remembered--had lent to
her thoughts, or rather to her mood, a cast of solemnity, and that idea
of Fate--a pagan Fate, uncontrolled by any Christian deity, obscure,
lawless, and august--moving undissuadably in the affairs of Christian
men. Thus even that phenomenon of love at first sight, which is so rare
and seems so simple and violent, like a disruption of life's tissue, may
be decomposed into a sequence of accidents happily concurring.

She put on a grey frock and a pink kerchief, looked at herself a moment
with approval in the small square of glass that served her for a toilet
mirror, and went softly downstairs through the sleeping house that
resounded with the sound of afternoon snoring. Just outside the door,
Dandie was sitting with a book in his hand, not reading, only honouring
the Sabbath by a sacred vacancy of mind. She came near him and stood
still.

"I'm for off up the muirs, Dandie," she said.

There was something unusually soft in her tones that made him look up.
She was pale, her eyes dark and bright; no trace remained of the levity
of the morning.

"Ay, lass? Ye'll have yer ups and downs like me, I'm thinkin'," he
observed.

"What for do ye say that?"