all learn, but I remember how that little stave of it ran in my
head after the free-traders had bade him "Wheesht, in the deil's name,"
and the grating of the oars had taken its place, and I stood and watched
the dawn creeping on the sea, and the boat drawing away, and the lugger
lying with her foresail backed awaiting it.

* * * * *

The gap made in our money was a sore embarrassment, and, among other
consequences, it had this: that I must ride to Edinburgh, and there
raise a new loan on very questionable terms to keep the old afloat; and
was thus, for close upon three weeks, absent from the house of
Durrisdeer.

What passed in the interval I had none to tell me, but I found Mrs.
Henry, upon my return, much changed in her demeanour. The old talks with
my lord for the most part pretermitted; a certain deprecation visible
towards her husband, to whom I thought she addressed herself more often;
and, for one thing, she was now greatly wrapped up in Miss Katharine.
You would think the change was agreeable to Mr. Henry; no such matter!
To the contrary, every circumstance of alteration was a stab to him; he
read in each the avowal of her truant fancies. That constancy to the
Master of which she was proud while she supposed him dead, she had to
blush for now she knew he was alive, and these blushes were the hated
spring of her new conduct. I am to conceal no truth; and I will here say
plainly, I think this was the period in which Mr. Henry showed the
worst. He contained himself, indeed, in public; but there was a
deep-seated irritation visible underneath. With me, from whom he had
less concealment, he was often grossly unjust, and even for his wife he
would sometimes have a sharp retort: perhaps when she had ruffled him
with some unwonted kindness; perhaps upon no tangible occasion, the mere
habitual tenor of the man's annoyance bursting spontaneously forth. When
he would thus forget himself (a thing so strangely out of keeping with
the terms of their relation), there went a shock through the whole
company, and the pair would look upon each other in a kind of pained
amazement.

All the time, too, while he was injuring himself by this defect of
temper, he was hurting his position by a silence, of which I scarce know
whether to say it was the child of generosity or pride. The free-traders
came again and again, bringing messengers from the Master, and none
departed empty-handed. I never durst re