One did not wonder that the pendulum of the clock swung long and slow.

The frantic, nervous haste of town-clocks chorded better with the pulse of human life.

Yet life in the veins of these people flowed slow and cool; their sorrows and joys were few and life-long.

The enduring air suited this woman, Margret Howth.

Her blood could never ebb or flow with sudden gusts of passion, like his own, throbbing, heating continually: one current, absorbing, deep, would carry its tide from one eternity to the other, one love or one hate.