“Lady Beith was saying you never would forgive it. She was saying that you could never forgive any one’s faults but your own.”
“Lady Beith is very impertinent. And pray what faults has Lady Beith ever seen in me?”
“It was her general way of speaking, Madame. She has that way.”
“Then you might tell Lady Beith’s woman, that such general ways of speaking are extremely vulgar. When her ladyship speaks of the Mistress of Braelands again, I will ask her to refer to me, particularly. I have my own virtues as well as my own faults, and my own position, and my own influence, and I do not go into the generalities of life. I am the Mistress of Braelands yet, I hope.”
“I hope so, Madame. As I was saying, Mrs. Archibald is biddable as a child; but then again, she is quite capable of taking the rudder into her own hands, and driving in the teeth of the wind. You can’t ever be sure of fisher blood. It is like the ocean, whiles calm as a sleeping baby, whiles lashing itself into a very fury. There is both this and that in the Traills, and Mrs. Archibald is one of them.”
“Any way and every way, this marriage is a great sorrow to me.”
“I am not disputing that, Madame; but I am sure you remember what the minister was saying to you at his last visitation—that every sorrow you got the mastery over was a benefactor.”
“The minister is not always orthodox, Allister.”
“He is a very good man; every one is saying that.”
“No doubt, no doubt, but he deviates.”