We sat down to our dinner, so simple and so well-cooked that it was just what I liked.  I wanted very much to tell my friend what had occurred in Catherine’s shop, but I would not begin till we were safe from interruption; and so we chatted away concerning many things, he telling me about his seafaring life, and I telling him some of the few remarkable things that had happened to me in the course of my life-voyage.  There is no man but has met with some remarkable things that other people would like to know, and which would seem stranger to them than they did at the time to the person to whom they happened.

At length I brought our conversation round to my interview with Catherine Weir.

“Can you understand,” I said, “a woman finding it so hard to forgive her own father?”

“Are you sure it is her father?” he returned.

“Surely she has not this feeling towards more than one.  That she has it towards her father, I know.”

“I don’t know,” he answered.  “I have known resentment preponderate over every other feeling and passion—­in the mind of a woman too.  I once heard of a good woman who cherished this feeling against a good man because of some distrustful words he had once addressed to herself.  She had lived to a great age, and was expressing to her clergyman her desire that God would take her away:  she had been waiting a long time.  The clergyman—­a very shrewd as well as devout man, and not without a touch of humour, said:  ’Perhaps God doesn’t mean to let you die till you’ve forgiven Mr—–.’  She was as if struck with a flash of thought, sat silent during the rest of his visit, and when the clergyman called the next day, he found Mr—–­ and her talking together very quietly over a cup of tea.  And she hadn’t long to wait after that, I was told, but was gathered to her fathers—­or went home to her children, whichever is the better phrase.”

“I wish I had had your experience, Dr Duncan,” I said.

“I have not had so much experience as a general practitioner, because I have been so long at sea.  But I am satisfied that until a medical man knows a good deal more about his patient than most medical men give themselves the trouble to find out, his prescriptions will partake a good deal more than is necessary of haphazard.—­As to this question of obstinate resentment, I know one case in which it is the ruling presence of a woman’s life—­the very light that is in her is resentment.  I think her possessed myself.

“Tell me something about her.”

“I will.  But even to you I will mention no names.  Not that I have her confidence in the least.  But I think it is better not.  I was called to attend a lady at a house where I had never yet been.”

“Was it in—–?” I began, but checked myself.  Dr Duncan smiled and went on without remark.  I could see that he told his story with great care, lest, I thought, he should let anything slip that might give a clue to the place or people.