from the hospital, she had to come down to the court on the very day that she should have sat for the examination by which she had hoped to win a University scholarship.  “The wee thing was that keen on her buiks!” he said, with caressing contempt, “and she was like to cry her heart out.  So I put it all right.”  “What did you do?” Yaverland had asked, expecting to hear of some generous offer to pay her fees, and remembering that he had heard that the Scotch were passionate about affairs of education.  “I offered her a situation as typist here, as my typist had just left,” said Mr. Mactavish James, with an ineffable air of self-satisfaction.  Yaverland had been about to burst into angry laughter, when the old man had gone on, “Ay, and I thought I had found a nest for the wee lassie.  But a face as bonnie as hers brings its troubles with it!  Ay, ay!  I’m sorry to have to say it.”

Oh! it went slower and smoother like a dragged-out song at a ballad concert.  “There’s one in the office will not leave the puir lassie alone....”  Yaverland had fumed with rage at the idea; and then had been overcome with a greater loathing of this false and theatrical old man.  Inglis and the man who wanted her were at least slaves of some passion that was the fruit of their affairs.  But this man was both of them.  He had not wished this girl well.  He had rejoiced in her poverty because it stimulated the flow of the juices of pity; he had rejoiced in her disappointment; he had rejoiced in Inglis’s villainy because he could pity her; he had rejoiced in the unknown man’s lust because he could step protectively in front of Ellen; and, worse than this, hadn’t he savoured in the story vices that he himself had had to sacrifice for the sake of standing well with the world?  Had he not felt how lovely it must be to be Inglis and hunt little weak slips of girls and make more money?  Had he not felt himself revisited by the warm fires of lust in thinking of this unknown man’s pursuit of Ellen and wallowed in it?  Yaverland had risen quickly, and said haltingly, trying to speak and not to strike because the man was old and his offence indefinite.  “No doubt you’ve been very good to Miss Melville.”  Mr. Mactavish James had been amazed by the grim construction of the speech, the lack of any response matching his “crack” in floridity.  He had expected comment on his generosity.  Positive resentment had stolen into his face as Yaverland had turned his back on him and rushed up the wet streets to rescue Ellen from the world.

Alas, that it should turn out that he too was something from which her delicate little soul asked to be rescued!  He could not bear the thought of altering her.  The prospect of taking her as his wife, of making her live in close contact with his masculinity, dangerous both in its primitive sense of something vast and rough, and also as something more experienced than her, seemed as iniquitous as the trampling of some fine white wild flower.  But then, she was beautiful,