Francis lay for some time, thinking Kirsty sure to come back to him, but half wishing she would not. He rose at length to see whether she was on the way, but no one was in sight. At once the place was aghast with loneliness, as it must indeed have looked to anyone not at peace with solitude¹. Having sent several ringing shouts, but in vain, after Kirsty, he turned, and, in the descending² light of an autumn afternoon, set out on the rather long walk to his home, which was the wearier that he had nothing pleasant at hand to think about.

 

Passing the farm where Kirsty lived, about two miles brought him to an ancient turreted³ house on the top of a low hill, where his mother sat expecting him, ready to tyrannize over him as usual, and none the less ready that he was going to leave her within a week.

 

‘Where have you been all day, Frank?’ she said.

 

‘I have been a long walk,’ he answered.

 

‘You’ve been to Corbyknowe!’ she returned. ‘I know it by your eyes! I know by the very colour of them you’re going to deceive me! Now don’t tell me you haven’t been there; I shall not believe you.’

 

‘I haven’t been near the place, mother,’ said Francis; but as he said it his face glowed with a heat that did not come from the fire. He was not naturally an untruthful boy, and what he said was correct, for he had passed the house half a mile away; but his words gave, and were intended to give the impression that he had not been that day with any of the people of Corbyknowe. His mother objected to his visiting the farmer, but he knew instinctively⁴ she would have objected yet more to his spending half the day with Kirsty, whom she never mentioned, and of whom she scarcely recognized the existence. Little as she loved her son, Mrs. Gordon would have scorned to suspect him of preferring the society of such a girl to her own. In truth, however, there were very few of his acquaintance whose company Francis would not have chosen rather than his mother’s—except indeed he was ill, when she was generally very good to him.

 

‘Well, this once I shall believe you,’ she answered, ‘and I am glad to be able. It is a painful thought to me, Frank, that son of mine should feel the smallest attraction to low company. I have told you twenty times that the man was nothing but a private in your father’s

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