There were letters or no letters from Colin; there were little events at the works or in the village; the dominie called or he did not call.
Occasionally there were visitors connected with the mines or furnaces, and sometimes there were social evening gatherings of the neighboring young people, or formal state dinners for the magistrates and proprietors who were on terms of intimacy with the laird.
For the first year of Colin's absence, if his letters were not quite satisfactory, they were condoned.

It did not please his father that Colin seemed to have settled himself so completely in Rome, among "artists and that kind o' folk," and he was still more angry when Colin declared his intention of staying away another year.

Poor father! How he had toiled and planned to aggrandize this only son, who seemed far more delighted with an old coin or an old picture than with the great works which bore his name.

In all manner of ways he had made it clear to his family that in the dreamy, sensuous atmosphere of Italian life he remembered the gray earnestness of Scottish life with a kind of terror.
Tallisker said, "Give him his way a little longer, laird.

To bring him hame now is no use.