But, though Mrs. Campbell’s heart relented towards Matty, and was filled with vague hopes which centred in her, it was very hard to find out what Colin’s thoughts were on the same subject. He scarcely spoke¹ of the Franklands at all, and never named or referred to the ladies of the house. When his mother spoke, with natural female wiles² to tempt³ him into confidence, of special inquiries⁴ made for him, Colin took no notice of the inference. She even went so far as to refer specially⁵ to Miss Matty with no greater effect. “There’s one in the house as anxious as me,” said the Mistress, with tender exaggeration, as she smoothed his pillow and made her morning inquiries; but her son only smiled faintly, and shook his head with an almost imperceptible movement of incredulity. He asked no questions, showed no pleasure at the thought, but lay most of the day in a silence which his mother could find no means of breaking.

The first horror, the first resistance, had gone out of Colin’s mind; but he lay asking himself inevitable⁶ questions, facing the great problem for which he could find no solution, which no man has been able to explain. Had the thoughts of his mind been put into words, the chances are that to most people who have never themselves come to such a trial Colin would have seemed a blasphemer or an infidel. But he was neither the one nor the other, and was indeed incapable⁸ by nature either of scepticism or of profanity. The youth had been born of a sternly-believing{166} race, which recognised in all God’s doings an eternal right, beyond justice and beyond reason, a right to deal with them and theirs as he might please; but Colin himself was of the present age, and was fully⁹ possessed

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