what his unconscious blood expected for him; but it was not this. If
he had little wisdom about the hearts of women, he had less about their
behaviour. She said nothing more, but inclined her head in an angle of
deference and expectation toward what he should further communicate.

"I don't know that I have ever told you much about my life in Scotland,"
he went on. "It has always seemed to me so remote and--disconnected with
everything here. I could not suppose it would interest anyone. I was
cared for and educated by my father's only sister, a good woman. It was
as if she had whole charge of the part of my life that was not absorbed
in work. I don't know that I can make you understand. She was identified
with all the rest--I left it to her. Shortly before I sailed for Canada
she spoke to me of marriage in connection with my work and--welfare, and
with--a niece of her husband's who was staying with us at the time,
a person suitable in every way. Apart from my aunt, I do not
know--However, I owed everything to her, and I--took her advice in the
matter. I left it to her. She is a managing woman; but she can nearly
always prove herself right. Her mind ran a great deal, a little too
much perhaps, upon creature comforts, and I suppose she thought that in
emigrating a man might do well to companion himself."

"That was prudent of her," said Advena.

He turned a look upon her. "You are not--making a mock of it?" he said.

"I am not making a mock of it."

"My aunt now writes to me that Miss Christie's home has been broken
up by the death of her mother, and that if it can be arranged she is
willing to come to me here. My aunt talks of bringing her. I am to
write."

He said the last words slowly, as if he weighed them. They had passed
the turning to the Murchisons', walking on with the single consciousness
of a path under them, and space before them. Once or twice before that
had happened, but Advena had always been aware. This time she did not
know.

"You are to write," she said. She sought in vain for more words; he
also, throwing back his head, appeared to search the firmament for
phrases without result. Silence seemed enforced between them, and walked
with them, on into the murky landscape, over the fallen leaves. Passing
a streetlamp, they quickened their steps, looking furtively at the
light, which seemed leagued against them with silence.

"It seems so extraordinarily--far away," said Hugh Finlay, of Bross,
Dumfr