A DEEP shade of gloom continued all that day to linger upon Mr Blair's countenance. He retired immediately to his chamber. Sarah, after a while, dried her tears, and followed him thither; but she heard her father's voice as if he was speaking earnestly within, and knowing that nobody was in the room with him, she was afraid to open the door. In a few minutes he came forth: he started on seeing the child, kissed her hastily, and without saying a word to her, ran down the stairs and passed into the garden.

He paced for some time, back and forwards with rapid steps, uncovered, in the sun: then entered the house again, and taking his hat and his fishing-rod, walked along the village lane in the direction of the mountain-stream, which not far from thence mixes its waters with the Clyde.

He soon reached the wood of Cartriecraig; and sitting down on the brink of the shaded bank, began to arrange his fishing tackle. He dropped his line upon the surface of the pool, and kept his eyes fixed upon it, as it floated hither and thither with every creeping motion of the water-breeze, amidst the innumerable green and shining insects which were sporting in the cool shade. Anybody who had seen him would have said, “there sits a very personification of the quiet delight described by old Isaac Walton.”

And yet the listless and indolent attitude, and calm face of Mr Blair, were but the mask of a spirit labouring under the fever of as many restless and painful thoughts, as could well inhabit together within an innocent bosom. The scorn and wrath with which he had met the first insinuations of unmerited suspicion had indeed subsided; but the less he thought of himself now, the more was his leisure to think of poor Charlotte, suspected as basely and as foully as himself, and, unlike him, compelled to endure the presence and the power of the very person whose suspicions had insulted her.