A pleasant independent creature with a hundred a year of her own, sensible and vigorous and good-tempered, belonging as well to the pre-eminently right denomination.

She had virtues that might have figured handsomely in an advertisement had Aunt Lizzie, in the plenitude of her good will, thought fit to take that measure on Christie's behalf.

But nothing was farther from Aunt Lizzie's mind.
We must, in fairness, add Christie Cameron to the sum of Finlay's acquaintance with the sex; but even then the total is slender, little to go upon.
Yet the fact which Mr Finlay would in those days have considered so unimaginable remained; it had come into being and it remained.

The chief interest of his life, the chief human interest, did lie in his relations with Advena Murchison.

He might challenge it, but he could not move it; he might explain, but he could not alter it.