considerations of personal dignity when she
desired to humiliate him. But he was a good deal surprised at the
ability with which she set forth and defended her own view of her
affairs, for she did not tell him that the Rev. Mr. Cairns had been with
her all the morning, flattering her vanity, worshiping her power and
generally instructing her in her own greatness--also putting in a word
or two anent his friend Mr. Crathie, and his troubles with her
ladyship's fisher-tenants. She was still, however, so far afraid of her
brother--which state of feeling was perhaps the main cause of her
insulting behavior to him--that she sat in some dread lest he might
chance to see the address of the letter she had been writing.

I may mention here that Lady Bellair accepted the invitation with
pleasure for herself and Liftore, promised to bring Caley, but utterly
declined to take charge of Demon or allow him to be of the party.
Thereupon, Florimel, who was fond of the animal, and feared much, as he
was no favorite, that something would _happen_ to him, wrote to
Clementina, praying her to visit her in her lovely loneliness--good as
The Gloom in its way, though not quite so dark--and to add a hair to the
weight of her obligation if she complied by allowing her deerhound to
accompany her. Clementina was the only one, she said, of her friends for
whom the animal had ever shown a preference.

Malcolm retired from his sister's presence much depressed, saw Mrs.
Courthope, who was kind as ever, and betook himself to his old room,
next to that in which his strange history began. There he sat down and
wrote urgently to Lenorme, stating that he had an important
communication to make, and begging him to start for the North the
moment he received the letter. A messenger from Duff Harbor well mounted
would ensure Malcolm's presence within a couple of hours.

He found the behavior of his old acquaintances and friends in the Seaton
much what he had expected: the few were as cordial as ever, while the
many still resented, with a mingling of the jealousy of affection, his
forsaking of the old life for one they regarded as unworthy of a bred at
least, if not born, fisherman. A few there were still who always had
been, for reasons known only to themselves, less than friendly. The
women were all cordial.

"Sic a mad-like thing," said old Futtocks, who was now the leader of the
assembly at the Barn, "to gang scoorin' the cuintry on that mad brute o'
a mer