that is fair destruction to the stomach, take an old
campaigner's word for it. Our country spirit at home is perhaps the most
entirely wholesome; but as that is not come-at-able, Rhenish or a white wine of
Burgundy will be next best.«
    »I shall make it my business to see you are supplied,« said I.
    »Why, very good,« said he, »and we shall make a man of you yet, Mr. David.«
    By this time I can hardly say that I was minding him at all, beyond an odd
thought of the kind of father-in-law that he was like to prove; and all my cares
centred about the lass his daughter, to whom I determined to convey some warning
of her visitor. I stepped to the door accordingly, and cried through the panels,
knocking thereon at the same time: »Miss Drummond, here is your father come at
last.«
    With that I went forth upon my errand, having (by two words) extraordinarily
damaged my affairs.
 

                                  Chapter XXVI

                                 The Threesome

Whether or not I was to be so much blamed, or rather perhaps pitied, I must
leave others to judge. My shrewdness (of which I have a good deal too) seems not
so great with the ladies. No doubt, at the moment when I awakened her, I was
thinking a good deal of the effect upon James More; and similarly when I
returned and we were all sat down to breakfast, I continued to behave to the
young lady with deference and distance; as I still think to have been most wise.
Her father had cast doubts upon the innocence of my friendship; and these, it
was my first business to allay. But there is a kind of an excuse for Catriona
also. We had shared in a scene of some tenderness and passion, and given and
received caresses; I had thrust her from me with violence; I had called aloud
upon her in the night from the one room to the other: she had passed hours of
wakefulness and weeping; and it is not to be supposed I had been absent from her
pillow thoughts. Upon the back of this, to be awaked with unaccustomed
formality, under the name of Miss Drummond, and to be thenceforth used with a
great deal of distance and respect, led her entirely in error on my private
sentiments; and she was indeed so incredibly abused as to imagine me repentant
and trying to draw off!
    The trouble betwixt us seems to have been this: that whereas I (since I had
first