And skilfully did he manage his retreats and returns, curtailing his absences with such moderation that, for a long time, they awoke no suspicion in the mind of his grandmother.
I suspect myself that the old lady thought he had gone to his prayers in the garret.

And I believe she thought that he was praying for his dead father; with which most papistical, and, therefore, most unchristian observance, she yet dared not interfere, because she expected Robert to defend himself triumphantly with the simple assertion that he did not believe his father was dead.

Possibly the mother was not sorry that her poor son should be prayed for, in case he might be alive after all, though she could no longer do so herself--not merely dared not, but persuaded herself that she would not.

Robert, however, was convinced enough, and hopeless enough, by this time, and had even less temptation to break the twentieth commandment by praying for the dead, than his grandmother had; for with all his imaginative outgoings after his father, his love to him was as yet, compared to that father's mother's, 'as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine.' Shargar would glance up at him with a queer look as he came in from these excursions, drop his head over his task again, look busy and miserable, and all would glide on as before.
When the first really summer weather came, Mr.Lammie one day paid Mrs.Falconer a second visit.

He had not been able to get over the remembrance of the desolation in which he had left her.