t
go. It was now that the name of The Recluse became general for the young
man. Some say that Innes invented it; Innes, at least, spread it abroad.

"How's all with your Recluse to-day?" people would ask.

"O, reclusing away!" Innes would declare, with his bright air of saying
something witty; and immediately interrupt the general laughter which he
had provoked much more by his air than his words, "Mind you, it's all
very well laughing, but I'm not very well pleased. Poor Archie is a good
fellow, an excellent fellow, a fellow I always liked. I think it small
of him to take his little disgrace so hard and shut himself up. 'Grant
that it is a ridiculous story, painfully ridiculous,' I keep telling
him. 'Be a man! Live it down, man!' But not he. Of course it's just
solitude, and shame, and all that. But I confess I'm beginning to fear
the result. It would be all the pities in the world if a really
promising fellow like Weir was to end ill. I'm seriously tempted to
write to Lord Hermiston, and put it plainly to him."

"I would if I were you," some of his auditors would say, shaking the
head, sitting bewildered and confused at this new view of the matter,
so deftly indicated by a single word. "A capital idea!" they would add,
and wonder at the _aplomb_ and position of this young man, who talked as
a matter of course of writing to Hermiston and correcting him upon his
private affairs.

And Frank would proceed, sweetly confidential: "I'll give you an idea,
now. He's actually sore about the way that I'm received and he's left
out in the county--actually jealous and sore. I've rallied him and I've
reasoned with him, told him that every one was most kindly inclined
towards him, told him even that _I_ was received merely because I was
his guest. But it's no use. He will neither accept the invitations he
gets, nor stop brooding about the ones where he's left out. What I'm
afraid of is that the wound's ulcerating. He had always one of those
dark, secret, angry natures--a little underhand and plenty of bile--you
know the sort. He must have inherited it from the Weirs, whom I suspect
to have been a worthy family of weavers somewhere; what's the cant
phrase?--sedentary occupation. It's precisely the kind of character to
go wrong in a false position like what his father's made for him, or
he's making for himself, whichever you like to call it. And for my part,
I think it a disgrace," Frank would say generously.

Presently the sorro