Nor, if the weather
was dark with him, that he tried to shake his darkness into others'
skies. Nor that he meanly succumbed to the weight, whatever it was,
that bore upon him. He did his work, and achieved at least the show of
equanimity. Strickland wondered. What was it that had happened? It
never occurred to him that it had happened here in this dale. But in
all that life of Alexander's in the wider world there must needs have
been relationships of lands established. Somewhere, something had
happened to overcloud his day, to uncover ancestral resemblances,
possibilities. Something, somewhere, and he had had news of it this
autumn.... It happened that Strickland had never seen Glenfernie with
Elspeth Barrow.
Mrs. Grizel was not observant. So that her nephew came to breakfast,
dinner, and supper, so that he was not averse to casual speech of
household interests, so that he seemed to keep his health, so that he
gave her now and then words and a kiss of affection, she was willing
to believe that persons addicted to books and the company of
themselves had a right to stillness and gravity. Alice stayed in
Edinburgh; Jamie soldiered it in Flanders. Strickland wrote and
computed for and with the laird, then watched him forth, a solitary
figure, by the fir-trees, by the leafless trees, and down the circling
road into the winter country.
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