vengeful.

He was recognized amongst his school-fellows as remarkable for his love
of fair-play; so much so, that he was their constant referee. Add to
this that, notwithstanding his sympathy with Satan, he almost invariably
sided with his master, in regard of any angry reflection or seditious
movement, and even when unjustly punished himself, the occasional
result of a certain backwardness in self-defence, never showed any
resentment--a most improbable statement, I admit, but nevertheless
true--and I think the rest of his character may be left to the gradual
dawn of its historical manifestation.

He had long ere this discovered who the angel was that had appeared
to him at the top of the stair upon that memorable night; but he could
hardly yet say that he had seen her; for, except one dim glimpse he
had had of her at the window as he passed in the street, she had not
appeared to him save in the vision of that night. During the whole
winter she scarcely left the house, partly from the state of her health,
affected by the sudden change to a northern climate, partly from the
attention required by her aunt, to aid in nursing whom she had left the
warmer south. Indeed, it was only to return the visits of a few of Mrs.
Forsyth's chosen, that she had crossed the threshold at all; and those
visits were paid at a time when all such half-grown inhabitants as
Robert were gathered under the leathery wing of Mr. Innes.

But long before the winter was over, Rothieden had discovered that the
stranger, the English lady, Mary St. John, outlandish, almost heathenish
as her lovely name sounded in its ears, had a power as altogether
strange and new as her name. For she was not only an admirable performer
on the pianoforte, but such a simple enthusiast in music, that the man
must have had no music or little heart in him in whom her playing did
not move all that there was of the deepest.

Occasionally there would be quite a small crowd gathered at night by the
window of Mrs. Forsyth's drawing-room, which was on the ground-floor,
listening to music such as had never before been heard in Rothieden.
More than once, when Robert had not found Sandy Elshender at home on the
lesson-night, and had gone to seek him, he had discovered him lying in
wait, like a fowler, to catch the sweet sounds that flew from the opened
cage of her instrument. He leaned against the wall with his ear laid
over the edge, and as near the window as he dared to put it,