time. I don't perceive why you should be so gracious to old mistress
Conal, and so hard upon him. Certainly you would not speak as he did
to any man, but he has been brought up differently; he is not such a
gentleman as you cannot help being. In a word, you ought to have
treated him as an inferior, and been more polite to him."






CHAPTER X.

THE PLOUGH-BULLS.





Partly, it may be, from such incidents at the outset of their
acquaintance, there was for some time no further meeting betwixt any
of the chief's family and that of the new laird. There was indeed
little to draw them together except common isolation. Valentine
would have been pleased to show gratitude to his helpers on that
stormy night, but after his sisters' account of their call, he felt
not only ashamed, which was right, but ashamed to show his shame,
which was a fresh shame. The girls on their part made so much of
what they counted the ridiculous elements of their "adventure,"
that, natural vengeance on their untruthfulness, they came
themselves to see in it almost only what was ridiculous. In the same