and a laird, and still unseen by Christina. Small wonder that, as
she stood there in her attitude of pretty decency, her mind should run
upon him! If he spared a glance in her direction, he should know she
was a well-behaved young lady who had been to Glasgow. In reason he
must admire her clothes, and it was possible that he should think her
pretty. At that her heart beat the least thing in the world; and she
proceeded, by way of a corrective, to call up and dismiss a series of
fancied pictures of the young man who should now, by rights, be looking
at her. She settled on the plainest of them, - a pink short young man
with a dish face and no figure, at whose admiration she could afford to
smile; but for all that, the consciousness of his gaze (which was really
fixed on Torrance and his mittens) kept her in something of a flutter
till the word Amen. Even then, she was far too well-bred to gratify her
curiosity with any impatience. She resumed her seat languidly - this was
a Glasgow touch - she composed her dress, rearranged her nosegay of
primroses, looked first in front, then behind upon the other side, and
at last allowed her eyes to move, without hurry, in the direction of
the Hermiston pew. For a moment, they were riveted. Next she had
plucked her gaze home again like a tame bird who should have meditated
flight. Possibilities crowded on her; she hung over the future and grew
dizzy; the image of this young man, slim, graceful, dark, with the
inscrutable half-smile, attracted and repelled her like a chasm. "I
wonder, will I have met my fate?" she thought, and her heart swelled.

Torrance was got some way into his first exposition, positing a deep
layer of texts as he went along, laying the foundations of his
discourse, which was to deal with a nice point in divinity, before
Archie suffered his eyes to wander. They fell first of all on Clem,
looking insupportably prosperous, and patronising Torrance with the
favour of a modified attention, as of one who was used to better things