"Rotha is innocent, whoever may be guilty." He put the case to himself so frequently in this way, he tried so hard to explain to his own mind that Rotha at least was free of all taint, that the very effort made him conscious of a latent suspicion respecting Sim.
As to Sim's bearing towards Willy, it was the same as he had adopted towards almost the whole of the little world in which he lived; he took up the position of the guilty man, the man to be shunned, the man from whose contaminating touch all other men might fairly shrink.

It never occurred to Sim that there lay buried at his own heart a secret that could change the relations in which he stood towards this younger and more self-righteous son of Angus Ray.
Perhaps, if it had once been borne in upon him that another than himself was involved in the suspicion which had settled upon his name--if he had even come to realize that Rotha might suffer the stigma of a fatal reproach for no worse offence than that she was her father's daughter--perhaps, if he had once felt this as a possible contingency, he would have shaken off the black cloud that seemed to justify the odium in which he was held by those about him, and lifted up his head for her sake if not for his own.
But Sim lacked virile strength.

The disease of melancholy had long kept its seat at his heart, and that any shadow of doubt could rest on Rotha as a result of a misdeed, or supposed misdeed, of his had never yet occurred to Sim's mind.
And truly Rotha was above the blight of withering doubt.

Rude daughter of a rude age, in a rude country and without the refinements of education, still how pure and sweet she was; how strong, and yet how tender; how unconscious in her instinct of self-sacrifice; how devoted in her loyalty; how absolute in her trust! But deep and rich as was Rotha's simple nature, it was yet incomplete.
She herself was made aware that a great change was even now coming to pass.

She understood the transformation little, if at all; but it seemed as though, somehow, a new sense were taking hold of her.