own very still. Gilian ceased to make the
pictures in his mind.

"I met her ghost up there on the road this very night, and I had a hand
below her chin," said the Cornal with a gulp.

"You did not dare, you did not dare!" cried his brother, an apple-red
upon his check, and half rising in his chair.

"Surely, surely--in a ghost," said the Cornal. "I would never have
mentioned it had it been herself. Sit down, Dugald. It was her daughter.
I never saw her so close before, and the look of her almost gave me a
stroke. It was what I felt when I first saw her mother with a younger
man than you or I. Just like that I met them in the gloaming, with
Turner very jaunty at her side, rapping his leg with his riding-cane,
half a head higher than myself, a generation less in years. It was a
cursed bitter pill, Dugald! Then I understood what you had meant and
what Mary meant by her warnings. But I was cool--oh yes! I think I was
cool. I only made to laugh and pass on, and she stopped me with her own
hand. 'I kept it from you as long as I could,' she said: 'it was cruel,
it was the blackest of sins, but this is the man for me.'"

"That was the man for her," echoed the General, his sentence stifled in
a sigh.

"'This is the man for me.' Turner stood beside her, looking with an
admiration, but to do him justice, ill at case, and with some--with
some--with some pity for me. Oh! that stunned me! 'Is it so indeed?' I
said in a little when I came to myself, feeling for the first time old.
'And must it be farewell with me as with my brother Dugald?'"

"You should not have said that at all," said the General. "I would not
have said it."

"I daresay not; I daresay not," said the Cornal slowly, pondering on it.
"But, mind you, I was in a curious position, finding myself the second
fool of a family that had got fair warning. She birked up and took her
gallant's arm. Said I then, 'We'll maybe get you yet; I have a younger
brother still.' It was a stupid touch of bravado. 'Jock!' said she,
laughing, all her sorrow for her misdoing gone; 'Jock! Not the three of
you together; give me youth and action.' Then she went away with her new
fancy, and I was left alone. I was left alone. I was left alone."

His voice, that had risen to a shout as he gave the woman's words,
declined to a crackle, a choked harsh utterance that almost failed to
cross the table.

Up got the General. "Never mind, never mind, Colin," said he as it were
to a vexed child.