looked as if it would be very easy to make her
cry, and she had had a preference for wearing grey and brown and such
modest colours that made it plain she feared to be noticed. To display a
capacity for pain so visibly was just to invite people to test it. If
she had been a girl who could look after herself, doubtless she would
have got him. He paid her the high compliment of wishing that she had,
although he had done very well out of the marriages he had made, for his
first wife, Annie Logan, had brought him his partnership in the firm,
and his second, Christian Lawrie, had brought him a deal of money. But
Isabella had been such a bonny wee thing.

His skin became alive again, and remembered the few responding kisses
that he had wheedled from her, contacts so shy that they might have been
the poisings of a moth. He shuddered, and said, "Ech! Somebody's walking
over my grave!" though, indeed, what had happened was that his youth had
risen from its grave. He decided to be generous to Isabella and not bear
her a grudge for causing him this revisiting heartache. With the softest
pity that the lot of beauty in this world should be so hard, though
quite without self-condemnation, he thought how very sure the poor girl
must have been that he meant to marry her before she abandoned that
proud physical reserve that was the protecting integument of her
sensitive soul. That sensitiveness seemed fair ridiculous when things
were going well with him; but once or twice in his life, when he had
been ill, it had appeared so dreadful that he had desired either to be
young again and give a different twist to things, or to die utterly and
know no after-life.

No, dealing unkindly with the lasses was an ill thing to do. It made one
depressed afterwards even if it paid, just as cheating the widow and
orphan did. His eyes went back to Ellen, who had moved again. "I must
settle this business of Nelly's," he thought. "Of course, Philip is
quite right. It would not be suitable. Besides, he is getting on nicely
with Bob McLennan's girl, and that would be a capital match even for us.
But I must put things straight for my Nelly, my poor wee Nelly." He
rose, first feeling for his crutch, for he was fair dying on his legs
with the gout, and padded slowly towards the open door.

And at the sound of that soft bearish tread Ellen felt as if she were
going to die. There had arrived at last that moment for which she had
waited with an increasing faint