She sat in silence a minute or two, turning her work this way and that, and then burst forth,—­

“I’d not stand in your shoes for much, Alice Strathsay!” she cried, “that’s certain.  My mother’s in a rare passion, and here’s Sir Angus home!”

“Sir Who?” said Effie puzzled; “it was just Mr. Ingestre two years ago.”

“Well, it’s been Sir Angus a twelvemonth now and more,—­ever since old Sir Brenton went, and he went with a stroke.”

“Yes,” said Mary, “it was when Angus arrived in London from Edinboro’, the day before joining his ship.”

“And why didn’t we ever hear of it?”

“I don’t just remember, Effie dear,” replied Margray, meditatively, “unless ’t were—­it must have been—­that those were the letters lost when the Atlantis went down.”

“Poor gentleman!” said Mary.  “It was one night when there was a division in the House, and it divided his soul from his body,—­for they found him sitting mute as marble, and looking at their follies and strifes with eyes whose vision reached over and saw God.”

“For shame, Mary Strathsay, to speak lightly of what gave Angus such grief!”

“Is that lightly?” she said, smoothing my hair with her pretty pink palms till it caught in the ring she wore.  “Never mind what I say, girlie; it’s as like to be one word as the other.  But I grieved for him.  He’s deep and quiet; a sorrow sinks and underlies all that’s over, in the lad.”

“Hear her!” said Margray; “one would fancy the six feet of the Ingestre stature were but a pocket-piece!  The lad!  Well, he’ll put no pieces in our pockets, I doubt,” (Margray had ever an eye to the main chance,) “and it’s that angers my mother.”

“Hush, Margray!” I heard Mary say, for I had risen and stolen forth.  “Thou’lt make the child hate us all.  Were we savages, we had said less.  You know, girl, that our mother loved our father’s face in her, and counted the days ere seeing it once more; and having lost it, she is like one bewildered.  ’T will all come right.  Let the poor body alone,—­and do not hurt the child’s heart so.  We’re right careless.”

I had hung on tiptoe, accounting it no meanness, and I saw Margray stare.

“Well,” she murmured, “something may be done yet.  ’T will go hard, if by hook or crook Mrs. Strathsay do not have that title stick among us”; and then, to make an end of words, she began chattering anent biases and gores, the lace on Mary Campbell’s frill, the feather on Mary Dalhousie’s bonnet,—­and I left them.

I ran over to Margray’s, and finding the boy awake, I dismissed his nurses the place, and stayed and played with him and took the charge till long past the dinner-hour, and Margray came home at length, and then, when I had sung the child asleep again, for the night, and Margray had shown me all the contents of her presses, the bells were ringing nine from across the river, and I ran back as I came, and up and into my little bed, and my heart was fit to break, and I cried till the sound of the sobs checked me into silence.  Suddenly I felt a hand fumbling down the coverlid, and ’t was Nannie, my old nurse, and her arm was laid heavily across me.