Borough Muir. His father had often said within himself, as he
walked the Edinburgh streets to visit some sick kirk member, as he
had written to his friend Adam Welsh, "Has the lad a heart?" Had
he seen him on that broomy knowe over the Grannoch water, he had
not doubted, though he might well have been fearful enough of that
heart's too sudden awakening.

Never before had the youth come within that delicate AURA of charm
which radiates from the bursting bud of the finest womanhood.
Ralph Peden had kept his affections ascetically virgin. His
nature's finest juices had gone to feed the brain, yet all the
time his heart had waited expectant of the revealing of a mystery.
Winsome Charteris had come so suddenly into his life that the
universe seemed newborn in a day. He sprang at once from the
thought of woman as only an unexplained part of the creation, to
the conception of her (meaning thereby Winsome Charteris) as an
angel who had not lost her first estate.

It was a strange thing for Ralph Peden, as indeed it is to every
true man, to come for the first time within the scope of the
unconscious charms of a good girl. There is, indeed, no better
solvent of a cold nature, no better antidote to a narrow
education, no better bulwark of defence against frittering away
the strength and solemnity of first love, than a sudden, strong
plunge into its deep waters.

Like timid bathers, who run a little way into the tide and then
run out again with ankles wet, fearful of the first chill, many
men accustom themselves to love by degrees. So they never taste
the sweetness and strength of it as did Ralph Peden in these days,