THE THREESOME Whether or not I was to be so much blamed, or rather perhaps pitied, I must leave others to judge of.

My shrewdness (of which I have a good deal, too) seems not so great with the ladies.

No doubt, at the moment when I awaked her, I was thinking a good deal of the effect upon James More; and similarly when I returned and we were all sat down to breakfast, I continued to behave to the young lady with deference and distance; as I still think to have been most wise.

Her father had cast doubts upon the innocence of my friendship; and these, it was my first business to allay.

But there is a kind of an excuse for Catriona also.
We had shared in a scene of some tenderness and passion, and given and received caresses; I had thrust her from me with violence; I had called aloud upon her in the night from the one room to the other; she had passed hours of wakefulness and weeping; and it is not to be supposed I had been absent from her pillow thoughts.