Publisher's Synopsis
ABOUT half-past ten it was John's brave good fortune to offer his arm to Miss Mackenzie, andescort her home. The night was chill and starry; all the way eastward the trees of the differentgardens rustled and looked black. Up the stone gully of Leith Walk, when they came to cross it, thebreeze made a rush and set the flames of the street-lamps quavering; and when at last they hadmounted to the Royal Terrace, where Captain Mackenzie lived, a great salt freshness came in theirfaces from the sea. These phases of the walk remained written on John's memory, each emphasisedby the touch of that light hand on his arm; and behind all these aspects of the nocturnal city he saw, in his mind's-eye, a picture of the lighted drawing-room at home where he had sat talking with Flora;and his father, from the other end, had looked on with a kind and ironical smile. John had read thesignificance of that smile, which might have escaped a stranger. Mr. Nicholson had remarked hisson's entanglement with satisfaction, tinged by humour; and his smile, if it still was a thoughtcontemptuous, had implied consent.At the captain's door the girl held out her hand, with a certain emphasis; and John took it and kept ita little longer, and said, 'Good-night, Flora, dear, ' and was instantly thrown into much fear by hispresumption. But she only laughed, ran up the steps, and rang the bell; and while she was waitingfor the door to open, kept close in the porch, and talked to him from that point as out of afortification. She had a knitted shawl over her head; her blue Highland eyes took the light from theneighbouring street-lamp and sparkled; and when the door opened and closed upon her, John feltcruelly alone.He proceeded slowly back along the terrace in a tender glow; and when he came to GreensideChurch, he halted in a doubtful mind. Over the crown of the Calton Hill, to his left, lay the way toColette's, where Alan would soon be looking for his arrival, and where he would now have no moreconsented to go than he would have wilfully wallowed in a bog; the touch of the girl's hand on hissleeve, and the kindly light in his father's eyes, both loudly forbidding. But right before him was theway home, which pointed only to bed, a place of little ease for one whose fancy was strung to thelyrical pitch, and whose not very ardent heart was just then tumultuously moved. The hilltop, thecool air of the night, the company of the great monuments, the sight of the city under his feet, withits hills and valleys and crossing files of lamps, drew him by all he had of the poetic, and he turnedthat way; and by that quite innocent deflection, ripened the crop of his venial errors for the sickle ofdestin