Hugh Finlay?' Wait--patience!" He held up his hand, and
Finlay gripped the arm of his chair again.

"She just stared at me. 'Are you gone clean daft, Dr Drummond?' she
said. 'There could be no grounds serious enough for that. I will not
believe that Hugh Finlay has compromised himself in any way.' I had
to stop her; I was obliged to tell her there was nothing of the
kind--nothing of the kind; and later on I'll have to settle with my
conscience about that. 'I meant,' I said, the reasonable grounds of an
alternative: 'An alternative?' said she. To cut a long story short,"
continued the Doctor, leaning forward, always with the finger in his
waistcoat pocket to emphasize what he said, "I represented to Mrs
Kilbannon that Miss Cameron was not in sentimental relations toward you,
that she had some reason to suspect you of having placed your affections
elsewhere, and that I myself was very much taken up with what I had seen
of Miss Cameron. In brief, I said to Mrs Kilbannon that if Miss Cameron
saw no objection to altering the arrangements to admit of it, I should
be pleased to marry her myself. The thing was much more suitable in
every way. I was fifty-three years of age last week, I told her, 'but'
I said, 'Miss Cameron is thirty-six or seven, if she's a day, and Finlay
there would be like nothing but a grown-up son to her. I can offer her
a good home and the minister's pew in a church that any woman might be
proud of--and though far be it from me,' I said, 'to depreciate mission
work, either home or foreign, Miss Cameron in that field would be little
less than thrown away. Think it over,' I said.

"Well, she was pleased, I could see that. But she didn't half like the
idea of changing the original notion. It was leaving you to your own
devices that weighed most with her against it; she'd set her heart on
seeing you married with her approval. So I said to her, to make an end
of it, 'Well, Mrs Kilbannon,' I said, 'suppose we say no more about it
for the present. I think I see the finger of Providence in this matter;
but you'll talk it over with Miss Cameron, and we'll all just make it,
for the next few days, the subject of quiet and sober reflection. Maybe
at the end of that time I'll think better of it myself, though that is
not my expectation.'

"'I think,' she said, 'we'll just leave it to Christie.'"

As the Doctor went on with his tale, relaxation had stolen dumbly about
Finlay's brow and lips. He dropped from the pla