must have been so for Kirstie at any time when the occasion chanced; but
it so fell out that she was deprived of this delight in the hour when
she had most need of it, when she had most to say, most to ask, and when
she trembled to recognise her sovereignty not merely in abeyance but
annulled. For, with the clairvoyance of a genuine love, she had pierced
the mystery that had so long embarrassed Frank. She was conscious, even
before it was carried out, even on that Sunday night when it began, of
an invasion of her rights; and a voice told her the invader's name.
Since then, by arts, by accident, by small things observed, and by the
general drift of Archie's humour, she had passed beyond all possibility
of doubt. With a sense of justice that Lord Hermiston might have
envied, she had that day in church considered and admitted the
attractions of the younger Kirstie; and with the profound humanity and
sentimentality of her nature, she had recognised the coming of fate.
Not thus would she have chosen. She had seen, in imagination, Archie
wedded to some tall, powerful, and rosy heroine of the golden locks,
made in her own image, for whom she would have strewed the bride-bed
with delight; and now she could have wept to see the ambition falsified.
But the gods had pronounced, and her doom was otherwise.

She lay tossing in bed that night, besieged with feverish thoughts.
There were dangerous matters pending, a battle was toward, over the fate
of which she hung in jealousy, sympathy, fear, and alternate loyalty and
disloyalty to either side. Now she was reincarnated in her niece, and
now in Archie. Now she saw, through the girl's eyes, the youth on his
knees to her, heard his persuasive instances with a deadly weakness, and
received his overmastering caresses. Anon, with a revulsion, her temper
raged to see such utmost favours of fortune and love squandered on a
brat of a girl, one of her own house, using her own name - a deadly
ingredient - and that "didna ken her ain mind an' was as black's your