for my backwardness,
there was the charge of discourtesy. What could they think of ray
breeding that I had not mentioned their daughter? What could I think
from their silence regarding her but that they were vexed at my
indifference to her, and with the usual Highland pride were determined
not even to mention her name till she was asked for. Upon my word,
I was in a trouble more distressing than when I sat in the mist in the
Moor of Rannoch and confessed myself lost! I thought for a little, in a
momentary wave of courage, of leading the conversation in her direction
by harking back to the day when the town was abandoned, and she took
flight with the child into the woods. Still the Provost, now doing all
the talking, while his wife knit hose, would ever turn a hundred by-ways
from the main road I sought to lead him on.

By-and-by, when the crack had drifted hopelessly away from all
connection with Mistress Betty, there was a woman's step on the stair.
My face became as hot as fire at the sound, and I leaned eagerly forward
in my chair before I thought of the transparency of the movement.

The Provost's eyes closed to little slits in his face; the corner of his
mouth curled in amusement.

"Here's Peggy back from Bailie Campbell's," he said to his wife, and I
was convinced he did so to let me know the new-comer, who was now moving
about in the kitchen across the lobby, was not the one I had expected.
My disappointment must have shown in my face; I felt I was wasting
moments the most precious, though it was something to be under the same
roof as my lady's relatives, under the same roof as she had slept below
last night, and to see some of her actual self almost, in the smiles
and eyes and turns of the voice of her mother. I stood up to go, slyly
casting an eye about the chamber for the poor comfort of seeing so
little as a ribbon or a shoe that was hers, but even that was denied
me. The Provost, who, I'll swear now, knew my trouble from the outset,
though his wife was blind to it, felt at last constrained to relieve it.

"And you must be going," he said; "I wish you could have waited to see
Betty, who's on a visit to Carlunnan and should be home by now."

As he said it, he was tapping his snuff-mull and looking at me pawkily
out of the corners of his eyes, that hovered between me and his wife,
who stood with the wool in her hand, beaming mildly up in my face. I
half turned on my heel and set a restless gaze on the corne