painful; for on the threshold, in a
rough wrap-rascal and an extraordinary big laced hat, there stood James
More.

I ought to have been glad perhaps without admixture, for there was a
sense in which the man came like an answer to prayer. I had been saying
till my head was weary that Catriona and I must separate, and looking
till my head ached for any possible means of separation. Here were the
means come to me upon two legs, and joy was the hind-most of my
thoughts. It is to be considered, however, that even if the weight of
the future were lifted off me by the man's arrival, the present heaved
up the more black and menacing; so that, as I first stood before him in
my shirt and breeches, I believe I took a leaping step backward like a
person shot.

"Ah," said he, "I have found you, Mr. Balfour," and offered me his
large, fine hand, the which (recovering at the same time my post in the
doorway, as if with some thought of resistance) I took him by
doubtfully. "It is a remarkable circumstance how our affairs appear to
intermingle," he continued. "I am owing you an apology for an
unfortunate intrusion upon yours, which I suffered myself to be
entrapped into by my confidence in that false-face, Prestongrange; I
think shame to own to you that I was ever trusting to a lawyer." He
shrugged his shoulders with a very French air. "But indeed the man is
very plausible," says he. "And now it seems that you have busied
yourself handsomely in the matter of my daughter, for whose direction I
was remitted to yourself."

"I think, sir," said I, with a very painful air, "that it will be
necessary we two should have an explanation."

"There is nothing amiss?" he asked. "My agent, Mr. Sprott--"

"For God's sake moderate your voice!" I cried. "She must not hear till
we have had an explanation."

"She is in this place?" cries he.

"That is her chamber-door," said I.

"You are here with her alone?" he asked.

"And who else would I have got to stay with us?" cries I.

I will do him the justice to admit that he turned pale.

"This is very unusual," said he. "This is a very unusual circumstance.
You are right, we must hold an explanation."

So saying, he passed me by, and I must own the tall old rogue appeared
at that moment extraordinary dignified. He had now, for the first time,
the view of my chamber, which I scanned (I may say) with his eyes. A bit
of morning sun glinted in by the window-pane, and showed it off; my bed,
my ma