She held up a shining half-crown, which in his gracious mood the hopeful lover had bestowed upon the gatekeeper.

‘I wonder if that’s to be the Laird o’ Bourhill?’ she said meditatively.  ‘Ye wadna see him as he gaed by?—­a very braw man, an’ rich, they say—­a Fordyce o’ Gorbals Mill.  Hae ye heard o’ them?’

‘Ay, often.’  Teen’s colour seemed to have deepened, but it might be only the fire which glowed upon it.  ’Ye dinna mean to say that that micht happen?’

‘What for no’?’ queried Mrs. Macintyre easily, as she cut a slice from the loaf and held it on a fork before the fire.  ‘She’s bonnie an’ she’s guid, besides being weel tochered.  She’ll no’ want for wooers.  I say, did ye ken Walter Hepburn, that carries on auld Skinny’s business noo in Colquhoun Street?’

‘Yes, well enough,’ answered Teen slowly.

‘There was a time when I wad hae said the twa—­him an’ Miss Gladys, I mean—­were made for ane anither, but it’s no’ noo.  He seems to hae forgotten her, an’ maybe it’s as weel.  She maun mak’ a braw mairriage, an’ Fordyce is a braw fellow.  I wish ye had noticed him.’

‘Oh, I’ve seen him afore,’ said Teen, with an evident effort, and somehow the conversation did not flow very freely, but was purely a one-sided affair, Teen simply sitting glowering into the fire, with an expression on her face which indicated that she was only partially interested in the gatekeeper’s cheery talk.  It was rather a relief when Tammy returned with the ‘wee jug’ full of cream, and his own mind full of the arrival of a new calf, a great event, which had happened at the dairy that very afternoon.

Mrs. Macintyre was, on the whole, disappointed with her guest, and saw her depart after tea without regret.  She was altogether too reticent and silent for that garrulous person’s liking.  She would have been very much astonished had she obtained a glimpse into the girl’s mind.  Never, indeed, in all her life had Teen Balfour been so troubled and so anxious.  Once or twice that evening Gladys caught her looking at her with a glance so penetrating and so anxious that it impressed her with a sort of uneasiness.  She did not feel particularly happy herself.  Now that her lover had gone, and that the subtle charm of his personality and presence was only a memory, she half regretted what had happened that afternoon.  She felt almost as if she had committed herself, and she was surprised that she should secretly chafe over it.

‘Teen,’ she said quite suddenly, when they were sitting alone at the library fire after supper, when Miss Peck had gone to give her housekeeping orders for the morning, ‘had you ever a lover?’

This extraordinary and unexpected question drove the blood into the colourless face of Teen, and she could not for the moment answer.

‘Well, yes,’ she said at length, with a faint, queer smile.  ’Maybe I’ve had twa-three o’ a kind.’

‘Two or three?’ echoed Gladys in a surprised and rather disapproving voice.  ’That is very odd.  But, tell me, have you ever seen anybody who wished to marry you, and whom you wished to marry?’