"He glanced at me. Whether he thought me the temptation, or only wished to include me in the question, I don't know.
"'Oh! no,' said Mr. Blount; 'stay at home for this once—I'll explain it all; and we can go out and have a sail, if the day continues as fine as it promises.'
"Mr. Marston hesitated; he looked at me as if for an opinion, but I said nothing.
"'Well,' he said, 'I can't resist. I'll take your advice, Mr. Blount, and make this a holiday.'
"I think Mr. Marston very much improved in some respects. His manners and conversation are not less spirited, but gentler; and he is so very agreeable! I think he has led an unhappy life, and no doubt was often very much in the wrong. But I have remarked that we condemn people not in proportion to their moral guilt, but in proportion to the inconvenience their faults inflict on us. I wonder very much what those stories were which caused Mr. Carmel and Laura Grey to speak of him so bitterly and sternly? They were both so good that things which other people would have thought lightly enough of, would seem to them enormous. I dare say it is all about debt, or very likely play; and people who have possibly lost money by his extravagance have been exaggerating matters, and telling stories their own way. He seems very much sobered now, at all events. One can't help pitying him.
"He went down to the jetty before luncheon. I found afterwards that it was to get cloaks and rugs arranged for me.
"He lunched with us, and we were all very talkative. He certainly will prevent our all falling asleep in this drowsy place. We had such a pleasant sail. I gave him the tiller; but his duties as helmsman did not prevent his talking. We could hear one another very well, in spite of the breeze, which was rather more than Sir Harry would have quite approved of.
"Mr. Marston had many opportunities to-day of talking to me without any risk of being overheard. He did not, however, say a single word in his old vein. I am very glad of this; it would be provoking to lose his conversation, which is amusing, and, I confess, a great resource in this solitude.
"He is always on the watch to find if I want anything, and gets or does it instantly. I wish his farm was at this side of the lake. I dare say when Sir Harry comes back we shall see as little as ever of him. It will end by his being drowned in that dangerous lake. It seems odd that Sir Harry, who is so tender of my life and Mr. Blount's, should have apparently no feeling whatever about his. But it is their affair. I'm not likely to be consulted; so I need not trouble my head about it.
"I write in my room, the day now over, and dear old Rebecca Torkill is fussing about from table to wardrobe, and from wardrobe to drawers, pottering, and fidgeting, and whispering to herself. She has just told me that Mrs. Shackleton, the housekeeper here at Dorracleugh, talked to her a good deal this evening about Mr. Marston. She gives a very good account of him. When he went to school, and to Oxford, she saw him only at intervals, but he was a manly, good-natured boy she said, 'and never, that she knew, any harm in him, only a bit wild, like other young men at such places.' I write, as nearly as I can, Rebecca's words.