rs, it is to be feared, called
him the dashing McLean, but he was at this time nearly forty years old,
an age when bachelors like to take a long rest from thinking of
matrimony, before beginning again. Fifteen years earlier he had been in
love, but the girl had not cared to wait for him, and, though in India
he had often pictured himself returning to Redlintie to gaze wistfully
at her old home, when he did come back he never went, because the house
was a little out of the way. But unknown to him two ladies went, to whom
he had told this as a rather dreary joke. They were ladies he esteemed
very much, though having a sense of humor he sometimes chuckled on his
way home from Magenta Cottage, and he thought out many ways of adding
little pleasures to their lives. It was like him to ask Miss Kitty to
sing and play, though he disliked music. He understood that it is a hard
world for single women, and knew himself for a very ordinary sort of
man. If it ever crossed his head that Miss Kitty would be willing to
marry him, he felt genuinely sorry at the same time that she had not
done better long ago. He never flattered himself that he could be
accepted now, save for the good home he could provide (he was not the
man to blame women for being influenced by that), for like most of his
sex he was unaware that a woman is never too old to love or to be loved;
if they do know it, the mean ones among them make a jest of it, at which
(God knows why) their wives laugh. Mr. McLean had been acquainted with
the sisters for months before he was sure even that Miss Kitty was his
favorite. He found that out one evening when sitting with an old friend,
whose wife and children were in the room, gathered round a lamp and
playing at some child's game. Suddenly Ivie McLean envied his friend,
and at the same moment he thought tenderly of Miss Kitty. But the
feeling passed. He experienced it next and as suddenly when arriving at
Bombay, where some women were waiting to greet their husbands.

Before he went away the two gentlewomen knew that he was not to speak.
They did not tell each other what was in their minds. Miss Kitty was so
bright during those last days, that she must have deceived anyone who
did not love her, and Miss Ailie held her mouth very tight, and if
possible was straighter than ever, but oh, how gentle she was with Miss
Kitty! Ivie's last two weeks in the old country were spent in London,
and during that time Miss Kitty liked to go aw