The girl was the person ye saw get up from the coffin--the one that ye were so frightened of." This last word of explanation was apparently added that he might be assured Alec followed him, and the listener, standing still in the half-darkened room, did not just then feel resentment for the unnecessary insult.

He made some sound to show that he heard.
"Then"-- stiffly--"she took the train, and she has been living here ever since, a very respectable young woman, and much thought of.

I'm glad to have seen her." "Well ?" "I thought it right to tell ye, and I'm going home to-morrow or next day." That was evidently all that was to be told him, and Alec refrained from all such words as he would like to have emitted.

But when he was going dumbly out of the room, Bates spoke again.
"Ye're young yet; when ye feel inclined to give your heart to any young thing that you've a caring for, gie it as on the altar of God, and not for what ye'll get in return, and if ye get in answer what ye're wanting, thank God for a free gift." Then Alec knew that Sissy had been unkind to Bates.
The night being yet early, he willingly recognised an obligation to go and tell Miss Rexford that their mutual solicitude had in some way been rendered needless.

It was easy for him to find the lady he desired to see, for while the weather was still warm it was the habit in Chellaston to spend leisure hours outside the house walls rather than in, and Alec Trenholme had already learned that at evening in the Rexford household the father and brother were often exhausted by their day's work and asleep, and the mother occupied by the cribs of her little ones.