The Doctor looked at the young man in a manner even more acute, more shrewd, and more kindly than was his wont.  His eye searched Finlay thoroughly, and his smile seemed to broaden as his glance travelled.

“Man,” he said, “you’re shivering,” and rolled him an armchair near the fire. ("The fellow came into the room,” he would say, when he told the story afterward to the person most concerned, “as if he were going to the stake!”) “This is extraordinary weather we are having, but I think the storm is passing over.”

“I hope,” said Finlay, “that my aunt and Miss Cameron are well.  I understand they are out.”

“Oh, very well—­finely.  They’re out at present, but you’ll see them bye-and-bye.  An excellent voyage over they had—­just the eight days.  But we’ll be doing it in less than that when the new fast line is running to Halifax.  But four days of actual ocean travelling they say now it will take.  Four days from imperial shore to shore!  That should incorporate us—­that should bring them out and take us home.”

The Doctor had not taken a seat himself, but was pacing the study, his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets; and a touch of embarrassment seemed added to the inveterate habit.

“I hear the ladies had pleasant weather.”  Finlay remarked.

“Capital—­capital!  You won’t smoke?  I know nothing about these cigars; they’re some Grant left behind him—­a chimney, that man Grant.  Well, Finlay”—­he threw himself into the arm-chair on the other side of the hearth—­“I don’t know what to say to you.”

“Surely,” said Finlay restively, “it has all been said, sir.”

“No, it has not all been said,” Dr Drummond retorted.  “No, it has not.  There’s more to be said, and you must hear it, Finlay, with such patience as you have.  But I speak the truth when I say that I don’t know how to begin.”

The young man gave him opportunity, gazing silently into the fire.  He was hardly aware that Dr Drummond had again left his seat when he started violently at a clap on the shoulder.

“Finlay!” exclaimed the Doctor.  “You won’t be offended?  No—­you couldn’t be offended!”

It was half-jocular, half-anxious, wholly inexplicable.

“At what,” asked Hugh Finlay, “should I be offended?”

Again, with a deep sigh, the Doctor dropped into his chair.  “I see I must begin at the beginning,” he said.  But Finlay, with sudden intuition, had risen and stood before him trembling, with a hand against the mantelpiece.

“No,” he said, “if you have anything to tell me of importance, for God’s sake begin at the end.”

Some vibration in his voice went straight to the heart of the Doctor, banishing as it travelled, every irrelevant thing that it encountered.

“Then the end is this, Finlay,” he said.  “The young woman, Miss Christie Cameron, whom you were so wilfully bound and determined to marry, has thrown you over—­that is, if you will give her back her word—­has jilted you—­that is, if you’ll let her away.  Has thought entirely better of the matter.”