“I might make a fool of myself if I laughed at any one.  So I generally avoid it.  We may as well get the good out of what we do not understand —­ or at least try if there be any in it.  Will you come, Sutherland?”

Hugh rose, and took his leave with Falconer.

“How pleased she seemed with you, Falconer!” said he, as they left the house.

“Yes, she touched me.”

“Won’t you go and see her again?”

“No; there is no need, except she sends for me.”

“It would please her —­ comfort her, I am sure.”

“She has got one of God’s angels beside her, Sutherland.  She doesn’t want me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that maid of hers.”

A pang —­ of jealousy, was it? —­ shot through Hugh’s heart.  How could he see —­ what right had he to see anything in Margaret?

Hugh might have kept himself at peace, even if he had loved Margaret as much as she deserved, which would have been about ten times as much as he did.  Is a man not to recognize an angel when he sees her, and to call her by her name?  Had Hugh seen into the core of that grand heart —­ what form sat there, and how —­ he would have been at peace —­ would almost have fallen down to do the man homage.  He was silent.

“My dear fellow!” said Falconer, as if he divined his feeling —­ for Falconer’s power over men and women came all from sympathy with their spirits, and not their nerves —­ “if you have any hold of that woman, do not lose it; for as sure as there’s a sun in heaven, she is one of the winged ones.  Don’t I know a woman when I see her!”

He sighed with a kind of involuntary sigh, which yet did not seek to hide itself from Hugh.

“My dear boy,” he added, laying a stress on the word, " —­ I am nearly twice your age —­ don’t be jealous of me.”

“Mr. Falconer,” said Hugh humbly, “forgive me.  The feeling was involuntary; and if you have detected in it more than I was aware of, you are at least as likely to be right as I am.  But you cannot think more highly of Margaret than I do.”

And yet Hugh did not know half the good of her then, that the reader does now.

“Well, we had better part now, and meet again at night.”

“What time shall I come to you?”

“Oh! about nine I think will do.”

So Hugh went home, and tried to turn his thoughts to his story; but Euphra, Falconer, Funkelstein, and Margaret persisted in sitting to him, the one after the other, instead of the heroes and heroines of his tale.  He was compelled to lay it aside, and betake himself to a stroll and a pipe.

As he went down stairs, he met Miss Talbot.

“You’re soon tired of home, Mr. Sutherland.  You haven’t been in above half an hour, and you’re out again already.”

“Why, you see, Miss Talbot, I want a pipe very much.”

“Well, you ain’t going to the public house to smoke it, are you?”