Now he looked at the woman beside him, and now he looked straight ahead with kindled eyes.
Elspeth walked with slightly quickened breath, with knitted brows.

The laird of Glenfernie was above her in station, though go to the ancestors and blood was equal enough! It carried appeal to a young woman's vanity, to be walking so, to feel that the laird liked well enough to be where he was.

She liked him, too.

Glenfernie House was talked of, talked of, by village and farm and cot, talked of, talked of, year by year--all the Jardines, their virtues and their vices, what they said and what they did.

She had heard, ever since she was a bairn, that continual comment, like a little prattling burn running winter and summer through the dale.