tell me you haven't been there. I shall not believe you.'

'I haven't been near the place, mother,' said Francis; but as he said
it his face glowed with a heat that did not come from the fire. He was
not naturally an untruthful boy, and what he said was correct, for he
had passed the house half a mile away; but his words gave, and were
intended to give the impression that he had not been that day with any
of the people of Corbyknowe. His mother objected to his visiting the
farmer, but he knew instinctively she would have objected yet more to
his spending half the day with Kirsty, whom she never mentioned, and of
whom she scarcely recognized the existence. Little as she loved her
son, Mrs. Gordon would have scorned to suspect him of preferring the
society of such a girl to her own. In truth, however, there were very
few of his acquaintance whose company Francis would not have chosen
rather than his mother's--except indeed he was ill, when she was
generally very good to him.

'Well, this once I shall believe you,' she answered, 'and I am glad to
be able. It is a painful thought to me, Frank, that son of mine should
feel the smallest attraction to low company. I have told you twenty
times that the man was nothing but a private in your father's
regiment.'

'He was my father's friend!' answered the boy.

'He tells you so, I do not doubt,' returned his mother. 'He was not
likely to leave that mouldy old stone unturned.'

The mother sat, and the son stood before her, in a drawing-room whose
furniture of a hundred years old must once have looked very modern and