“I shall make it my business to see you are supplied,” said I.

“Why, very good,” said he, “and we shall make a man of you yet, Mr. David.”

By this time, I can hardly say that I was minding him at all, beyond an odd thought of the kind of father-in-law that he was like to prove; and all my cares centred about the lass his daughter, to whom I determined to convey some warning of her visitor.  I stepped to the door accordingly, and cried through the panels, knocking thereon at the same time:  “Miss Drummond, here is your father come at last.”

With that I went forth upon my errand, having (by two words) extraordinarily damaged my affairs.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XXVI

THE THREESOME

Whether or not I was to be so much blamed, or rather perhaps pitied, I must leave others to judge of.  My shrewdness (of which I have a good deal, too) seems not so great with the ladies.  No doubt, at the moment when I awaked her, I was thinking a good deal of the effect upon James More; and similarly when I returned and we were all sat down to breakfast, I continued to behave to the young lady with deference and distance; as I still think to have been most wise.  Her father had cast doubts upon the innocence of my friendship; and these, it was my first business to allay.  But there is a kind of an excuse for Catriona also.  We had shared in a scene of some tenderness and passion, and given and received caresses; I had thrust her from me with violence; I had called aloud upon her in the night from the one room to the other; she had passed hours of wakefulness and weeping; and it is not to be supposed I had been absent from her pillow thoughts.  Upon the back of this, to be awaked, with unaccustomed formality, under the name of Miss Drummond, and to be thenceforth used with a great deal of distance and respect, led her entirely in error on my private sentiments; and she was indeed so incredibly abused as to imagine me repentant and trying to draw off!

The trouble betwixt us seems to have been this:  that whereas I (since I had first set eyes on his great hat) thought singly of James More, his return and suspicions, she made so little of these that I may say she scarce remarked them, and all her troubles and doings regarded what had passed between us in the night before.  This is partly to be explained by the innocence and boldness of her character; and partly because James More, having sped so ill in his interview with me, or had his mouth closed by my invitation, said no word to her upon the subject.  At the breakfast, accordingly, it soon appeared we were at cross purposes.  I had looked to find her in clothes of her own:  I found her (as if her father were forgotten) wearing some of the best that I had bought for her and which she knew (or thought) that I admired her in.  I had looked to find her imitate my affectation of distance, and be most precise and formal; instead I found her flushed and wild-like, with eyes extraordinary bright, and a painful and varying expression, calling me by name with a sort of appeal of tenderness, and referring and deferring to my thoughts and wishes like an anxious or a suspected wife.