"Yes, Bisset?"
"It's the principle of introducing a foreign substance so near the man's brain. What's glass? What's it consist of?"
"I—I don't know," confessed Cicely weakly.
"Silica! And what's silica? Practically the same as sand! Well now if ye put a handful of sand into a man's brain—or anyhow next door to it, it's bound to have some effect, bound to have some effect!"
Bisset's voice fell to a very serious note, and as he was famous for the range of his reading and was generally said to know practically by heart "The People's Self-Educator in Science and Art," Cicely asked a little apprehensively:
"But what effect can it possibly have?"
"It might take him different ways," said the philosopher cautiously though sombrely. "But it's a good thing, anyway, Miss Farmond, that the laird of Stanesland is no likely to get married."
"Isn't he?" she asked, again with that encouraging note.
Bisset replied with another question, asked in an ominous voice: