Had he ever said the word ‘love,’ this Kinnaird, whose memory was a living presence in the chamber of slow death?  The minister believed that he had not.  There was no annal in the family letters of his name, although other rejected suitors were mentioned freely.  Had he told his love by look or gesture, and left it unspoken, or had look and gesture been misunderstood, and the whole slight love-story been born where it had died, in the heart of the maiden?  ’Where it had died!’—­it had not died.  Seventy years had passed, and the love-story was presently enacting itself, as all past and all future must for ever be enacting to beings for whom time is not.  Then, too, where was he who, by some means, whether of his own volition or not, had become so much a part of the pulsing life of a young girl that, when all else of life passed from her with the weight of years, her heart still remained obedient to him?  Where was he?  Had his life gone out like the flame of a candle when it is blown?  Or, if he was anywhere in the universe of living spirits, was he conscious of the power which he was wielding?  Was it a triumph to him to know that he had come, gay and debonair, in the bloom of his youth, into this long-existing sanctuary of home, and set aside, with a wave of his hand, husband, children, and friends, dead and living?

Whatever might be the psychical aspects of the case, one thing was certain, that the influence of Kinnaird—­Kinnaird alone of all those who had entered into relations with the lady—­was useful at this time to come between her and the distressing symptoms that would have resulted from the mania of self-starvation.  For some months longer she lived in comfort and good cheer.  This clear memory of her youth was oddly interwoven with the forgetful dulness of old age, like a golden thread in a black web, like a tiny flame on the hearth that shoots with intermittent brilliancy into darkness.  She was always to see her lover upon the morrow; she never woke to the fact that ‘to-day’ lasted too long, that a winter of morrows had slipped fruitless by.

The interviews between Jeanie Trim and Kinnaird were not monotonous.  All else was monotonous.  December, January, February passed away.  The mornings and the evenings brought no change outwardly in the sick-room, no change to the appearance of the fine old face and still stately figure, suggested no variety of thought or emotion to the lady’s decaying faculties; but at the hours when she sat and contentedly ate the food that the maid brought her, her mental vision cleared as it focused upon the thought of her heart’s darling.  It was she whose questions suggested nearly all the variations in the game of imagination which the young woman so aptly played.

‘Was he riding his black mare, Jeanie Trim?’

’I didna see the beast.  He stood on his feet when he was tapping at the door.’

‘Whisht!  Ye could tell if he wore his boots and spurs, an’ his drab waistcoat, buttoned high?’