A pleasant independent creature with a
hundred a year of her own, sensible and vigorous and
good-tempered, belonging as well to the pre-eminently
right denomination. she had virtues that might have
figured handsomely in an advertisement had Aunt Lizzie,
in the plenitude of her good will, thought fit to take
that measure on Christie's behalf. But nothing was farther
from Aunt Lizzie's mind. We must, in fairness, add Christie
Cameron to the sum of Finlay's acquaintance with the sex;
but even then the total is slender, little to go upon.
Yet the fact which Mr Finlay would in those days have
considered so unimaginable remained; it had come into
being and it remained. The chief interest of his life,
the chief human interest, did lie in his relations with
Advena Murchison. He might challenge it, but he could
not move it; he might explain, but he could not alter
it. And there had come no point at which it would have
occurred to him to do either. When at last he had seen
how simple and possible it was to enjoy Miss Murchison's
companionship upon unoccupied evenings he had begun to
do it with eagerness and zest, the greater because Elgin
offered him practically no other. Dr Drummond lived, for
purposes of intellectual contact, at the other end of
the century. the other clergy and professional men of
the town were separated from Finlay by all the mental
predispositions that rose from the virgin soil.
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