let's meet at dinner as though nothing had happened, I'll put it this
way, if you like - that I know my own character, that I'm looking
forward (with great pleasure, I assure you) to a long visit from you,
and that I'm taking precautions at the first. I see the thing that we -
that I, if you like - might fall out upon, and I step in and OBSTO
PRINCIPIIS. I wager you five pounds you'll end by seeing that I mean
friendliness, and I assure you, Francie, I do," he added, relenting.

Bursting with anger, but incapable of speech, Innes shouldered his rod,
made a gesture of farewell, and strode off down the burn-side. Archie
watched him go without moving. He was sorry, but quite unashamed. He
hated to be inhospitable, but in one thing he was his father's son. He
had a strong sense that his house was his own and no man else's; and to
lie at a guest's mercy was what he refused. He hated to seem harsh.
But that was Frank's lookout. If Frank had been commonly discreet, he
would have been decently courteous. And there was another
consideration. The secret he was protecting was not his own merely; it
was hers: it belonged to that inexpressible she who was fast taking
possession of his soul, and whom he would soon have defended at the cost
of burning cities. By the time he had watched Frank as far as the
Swingleburn-foot, appearing and disappearing in the tarnished heather,
still stalking at a fierce gait but already dwindled in the distance
into less than the smallness of Lilliput, he could afford to smile at
the occurrence. Either Frank would go, and that would be a relief - or
he would continue to stay, and his host must continue to endure him.
And Archie was now free - by devious paths, behind hillocks and in the
hollow of burns - to make for the trysting-place where Kirstie, cried
about by the curlew and the plover, waited and burned for his coming by
the Covenanter's stone.