'Consider—blood is thicker than water, among us in Scotland particularly.'
'Ellinor and I will never stoop so low,' replied Mary, alternately interlacing her fingers in her lap, and mechanically caressing the head of Jack, who had placed his nose on her knee, and regarded her wistfully with his great black eyes, as if he knew instinctively that something distressed his mistress by the expression of her face.
'Well, what will be, will be!' said Dr. Wodrow, from his fatalist or Presbyterian point of view, as he cast his eye upward to the ceiling.
Mary heard his voice as one hears in a dream. The flies buzzed in the window curtains, the last of the birds still twittered about among the climbing creepers at the open sash, the roses sent forth their fragrance still, and the drooping foliage of the silver birches was gently stirred by the soft evening breeze.
The old clock ticked loudly on the mantelpiece—unnaturally so—as Mary thought it seemed to do 'when mamma and papa died;' but when the minister urged again that she should attempt to temporise,
'No,' she exclaimed, emphatically, 'we shall not accept a farthing or a farthing's worth of what belonged to our common ancestors. It would ill become Colonel Wellwood's daughters to do so now.'
'Lady Dunkeld, I doubt not, has great influence with your cousin Wellwood.'
'She knows him, then?'
'Yes; people in "Society," as it is called, all know something of each other.'
'And you would have me seek his interest through her? Enough of this, dear Dr. Wodrow. I think you should know me better,' said Mary, covering her eyes with white and tremulous fingers, as if she would thrust back her tears.