it was a fine piece, the gift of Mistress Clem, in distinct old-faced type,
on paper that had begun to grow foxy in the warehouse - not by service -
and she was used to wrap it in a handkerchief every Sunday after its
period of service was over, and bury it end-wise at the head of her
trunk. As she now took it in hand the book fell open where the leaf
was torn, and she stood and gazed upon that evidence of her bygone
discomposure. There returned again the vision of the two brown eyes
staring at her, intent and bright, out of that dark corner of the kirk.
The whole appearance and attitude, the smile, the suggested gesture of
young Hermiston came before her in a flash at the sight of the torn
page. "I was surely fey!" she said, echoing the words of Dandie, and
at the suggested doom her high spirits deserted her. She flung herself
prone upon the bed, and lay there, holding the psalm-book in her hands
for hours, for the more part in a mere stupor of unconsenting pleasure
and unreasoning fear. The fear was superstitious; there came up again
and again in her memory Dandie's ill-omened words, and a hundred grisly
and black tales out of the immediate neighbourhood read her a commentary
on their force. The pleasure was never realised. You might say the
joints of her body thought and remembered, and were gladdened, but her
essential self, in the immediate theatre of consciousness, talked
feverishly of something else, like a nervous person at a fire. The
image that she most complacently dwelt on was that of Miss Christina
in her character of the Fair Lass of Cauldstaneslap, carrying all before
her in the straw-coloured frock, the violet mantle, and the yellow cobweb
stockings. Archie's image, on the other hand, when it presented itself
was never welcomed - far less welcomed with any ardour, and it was exposed
at times to merciless criticism. In the long vague dialogues she held in
her mind, often with imaginary, often with unrealised interlocutors,
Archie, if he were referred to at all came in for savage handling. He
was described as "looking like a stork," "staring like a caulf," "a face