Whether or not I was to be so much blamed, or rather perhaps pitied, I
must leave others to judge of. My shrewdness (of which I have a good
deal, too) seems not so great with the ladies. No doubt, at the moment
when I awaked her, I was thinking a good deal of the effect upon James
More; and similarly when I returned and we were all sat down to
breakfast, I continued to behave to the young lady with deference and
distance; as I still think to have been most wise. Her father had cast
doubts upon the innocence of my friendship; and these, it was my first
business to allay. But there is a kind of an excuse for Catriona also.
We had shared in a scene of some tenderness and passion, and given and
received caresses; I had thrust her from me with violence; I had called
aloud upon her in the night from the one room to the other; she had
passed hours of wakefulness and weeping; and it is not to be supposed I
had been absent from her pillow thoughts. Upon the back of this, to be
awaked, with unaccustomed formality, under the name of Miss Drummond,
and to be thenceforth used with a great deal of distance and respect,
led her entirely in error on my private sentiments; and she was indeed
so incredibly abused as to imagine me repentant and trying to draw off!

The trouble betwixt us seems to have been this: that whereas I (since I
had first set eyes on his great hat) thought singly of James More, his
return and suspicions, she made so little of these that I may say she
scarce remarked them, and all her troubles and doings regarded what had
passed between us in the night before. This is partly to be explained by
the innocence and boldness of her character; and partly because James
More, having sped so ill in his interview with me, or had his mouth
closed by my invitation, said no word to her upon the subject. At the
breakfast, accordingly, it soon appeared we were at cross purposes. I
had looked to find her in clothes of her own: I found her (as if her
father were forgotten) wearing some of the best that I had bought for
her and which she knew (or thought) that I admired her in. I had looked
to find her imitate my affectation of distance, and be most precise and
formal; instead I found her flushed and wild-like, with eyes
extraordinary bright, and a painful and varying expression, calling me
by name with a sort of appeal of tenderness, and referring and deferring
to my thoughts and wishes like an anxious or a suspected wife.

But