“She just stared at me.  ’Are you gone clean daft, Dr Drummond?’ she said.  ’There could be no grounds serious enough for that.  I will not believe that Hugh Finlay has compromised himself in any way.’  I had to stop her; I was obliged to tell her there was nothing of the kind—­nothing of the kind; and later on I’ll have to settle with my conscience about that.  ‘I meant,’ I said, the reasonable grounds of an alternative:  ‘An alternative?’ said she.  To cut a long story short,” continued the Doctor, leaning forward, always with the finger in his waistcoat pocket to emphasize what he said, “I represented to Mrs Kilbannon that Miss Cameron was not in sentimental relations toward you, that she had some reason to suspect you of having placed your affections elsewhere, and that I myself was very much taken up with what I had seen of Miss Cameron.  In brief, I said to Mrs Kilbannon that if Miss Cameron saw no objection to altering the arrangements to admit of it, I should be pleased to marry her myself.  The thing was much more suitable in every way.  I was fifty-three years of age last week, I told her, ‘but’ I said, ’Miss Cameron is thirty-six or seven, if she’s a day, and Finlay there would be like nothing but a grown-up son to her.  I can offer her a good home and the minister’s pew in a church that any woman might be proud of—­and though far be it from me,’ I said, ’to depreciate mission work, either home or foreign, Miss Cameron in that field would be little less than thrown away.  Think it over,’ I said.

“Well, she was pleased, I could see that.  But she didn’t half like the idea of changing the original notion.  It was leaving you to your own devices that weighed most with her against it; she’d set her heart on seeing you married with her approval.  So I said to her, to make an end of it, ‘Well, Mrs Kilbannon,’ I said, ’suppose we say no more about it for the present.  I think I see the finger of Providence in this matter; but you’ll talk it over with Miss Cameron, and we’ll all just make it, for the next few days, the subject of quiet and sober reflection.  Maybe at the end of that time I’ll think better of it myself, though that is not my expectation.’

“‘I think,’ she said, ‘we’ll just leave it to Christie.’”

As the Doctor went on with his tale, relaxation had stolen dumbly about Finlay’s brow and lips.  He dropped from the plane of his own absorption to the humorous common sense of the recital:  it claimed and held him with infinite solace.  His eyes had something like the light of laughter in them, flashing behind a cloud, as he fixed them on Dr Drummond, and said, “And did you?”

“We did,” said Dr Drummond, getting up once more from his chair, and playing complacently with his watch-charms as he took another turn about the study.  “We left it to Miss Cameron, and the result is”—­the Doctor stopped sharply and wheeled round upon Finlay—­“the result is—­ why, the upshot seems to be that I’ve cut you out, man!”