iety.
For another, I could not but compare the case of Mr. Alexander with that
of Miss Katharine, for whom my lord had never found the least attention.
And for a third, I was wounded by the change he discovered to his wife,
which struck me in the nature of an infidelity. I could not but admire,
besides, the constancy and kindness she displayed. Perhaps her
sentiment to my lord, as it had been founded from the first in pity,
was that rather of a mother than a wife; perhaps it pleased her--if I
may say so--to behold her two children so happy in each other; the more
as one had suffered so unjustly in the past. But, for all that, and
though I could never trace in her one spark of jealousy, she must fall
back for society on poor neglected Miss Katharine; and I, on my part,
came to pass my spare hours more and more with the mother and daughter.
It would be easy to make too much of this division, for it was a
pleasant family, as families go; still the thing existed; whether my
lord knew it or not, I am in doubt. I do not think he did; he was bound
up so entirely in his son; but the rest of us knew it, and in a manner
suffered from the knowledge.

What troubled us most, however, was the great and growing danger to the
child. My lord was his father over again; it was to be feared the son
would prove a second Master. Time has proved these fears to have been
quite exaggerate. Certainly there is no more worthy gentleman to-day in
Scotland than the seventh Lord Durrisdeer. Of my own exodus from his
employment it does not become me to speak, above all in a memorandum
written only to justify his father....

[EDITOR'S NOTE.--_Five pages of Mr. Mackellar's MS. are here omitted.
I have gathered from their perusal an impression that Mr. Mackellar,
in his old age, was rather an exacting servant. Against the seventh
Lord Durrisdeer (with whom, at any rate, we have no concern) nothing
material is alleged_.--R. L. S.]

... But our fear at the time was lest he should turn out, in the person
of his son, a second edition of his brother. My lady had tried to
interject some wholesome discipline; she had been glad to give that up,
and now looked on with secret dismay; sometimes she even spoke of it by
hints; and sometimes, when there was brought to her knowledge some
monstrous instance of my lord's indulgence, she would betray herself in
a gesture or perhaps an exclamation. As for myself, I was haunted by the
thought both day and