Robert accompanied him ten miles on his journey, and would have gone
further, but that he was to play on his violin before Miss St. John the
next day for the first time.

When he told his grandmother of the appointment he had made, she only
remarked, in a tone of some satisfaction,

'Weel, she's a fine lass, Miss St. John; and gin ye tak to ane anither,
ye canna do better.'

But Robert's thoughts were so different from Mrs. Falconer's that he did
not even suspect what she meant. He no more dreamed of marrying Miss St.
John than of marrying his forbidden grandmother. Yet she was no loss at
this period the ruling influence of his life; and if it had not been for
the benediction of her presence and power, this part of his history
too would have been torn by inward troubles. It is not good that a man
should batter day and night at the gate of heaven. Sometimes he can do
nothing else, and then nothing else is worth doing; but the very noise
of the siege will sometimes drown the still small voice that calls from
the open postern. There is a door wide to the jewelled wall not far from
any one of us, even when he least can find it.

Robert, however, notwithstanding the pedestal upon which Miss St. John
stood in his worshipping regard, began to be aware that his feeling
towards her was losing something of its placid flow, and I doubt whether
Miss St. John did not now and then see that in his face which made her
tremble a little, and doubt whether she stood on safe ground with a
youth just waking into manhood--tremble a little, not for herself, but
for him. Her fear would have found itself more than justified, if she
had surprised him kissing her glove, and then replacing it where he had
found it, with the air of one consciously guilty of presumption.

Possibly also Miss St. John may have had to confess to herself that
had she not had her history already, and been ten years his senior, she
might have found no little attraction in the noble bearing and handsome
face of young Falconer. The rest of his features had now grown into
complete harmony of relation with his whilom premature and therefore
portentous nose; his eyes glowed and gleamed with humanity, and his
whole countenance bore self-evident witness of being a true face and no
mask, a revelation of his individual being, and not a mere inheritance
from a fine breed of fathers and mothers. As it was, she could admire
and love him without danger of falling in love with him