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not been his mother's; Finralia's experience of women had been of a very different description.

If anything could have cut Mary more to the heart than her father's partisanship of Finralia, it was Aldour's disordered, anxious air. Ordinarily, Aldour had a grand confidence in the character of his house. He was hearty and he was cordial in his honest, ponderous way, and he had not a qualm as to the perfect reception and entertainment of his guests. But on this occasion he was evidently nervous over the family bearing to Finralia. He was feverishly glad to see him, extravagantly pressing of his claims. He wiped his forehead with his bandana and pushed back his wig while he looked at Mary's and Anne's curtsies ; he fretted because Mrs. Macdonnel did not come in quickly from her herb garden; he fumed because Marac or Farquhar, or any or every domestic, did not serve refreshments at an unaccustomed hour, while Mary perceived nothing amiss. Her mother, after her first start, was composedly civil; Anne, though confounded, was invariably gentle; she herself with hot cheeks was remembering what was due to a stranger in their dwelling. Marac and Farquhar were hurrying to set aside the dinner and offer a more temporary supply of viands. True, Annie and Niel and even Malcolm ranged themselves in a row, much as if they had been placed there for the stranger's inspection, as good mothers were apt to rank their children, as Lady Errol favoured Johnson and Boswell with the goodly show of her six daughters and two sons--and doubtles

whatever the great lexicographer might think, and he was a bachelor, the homely Countess's heart swelled more proudly at the sight of the round-faced troop than at the possession of the Slaines Castle which they came to view-and they stared at the bearer of the only familiar name in their vocabulary whom they had never seen at Aldour-possibly they had imagined him a species of ogre—and Annie did whisper to Mary, was the otter-hound at Finralia's heels the dog which tore the kids in the spring? Farquhar always said the trespasser must come from Finralia. But what could be expected from children?

Yet Aldour was so dissatisfied, and so strained the point of honour, that, on an impulse as it seemed, to the stiffening of his wife's good manners, he insisted on Finralia's remaining to share their dinner-their pot-luck-and accompanying them afterwards to the top of Ben Falloch; and Finralia assented, as a matter of course, in his cold, careless way.

Mary fancied her ears were deceiving her-hoped her father was not fey-supposed that when such an unaccountable event had come to pass, Dunglas, of course, would not arrive to join the party. Mary had only reckoned on the coincidence from 'the easy, sauntering, playful, humdrum way' of their late intercourse with John Dunglas, and we have all observed how, in such cases, persons become more and more necessary to each other, because, in fact, they see no great motive to care for any one else,' and having expressed the preliminaries so easily, we have most of us witnessed

the end; or, if we have not, we have read how the Crawfords and the Bertrams fell into daily walks between the Park and the Vicarage, and riding-lessons on the pony, and dancing, and singing, and even acting together, in the mornings and evenings, and so and so-Edmund Bertram was fascinated by Mary Crawford, and Henry Crawford by Fanny Price, and, alack! alack! Maria Bertram and Julia Bertram both ran wild after the same gay Lothario, Henry Crawford, and disturbed the courses of true love and reversed the natural conclusions. John Dunglas had been shooting, fishing, buying oats, appointing fanks, and settling the marches of his father's property, as Mary soon discovered, three times a week since Anne Macdonald arrived in Aldour; and on one of these recent occasions Mary had mentioned, incidentally, 'We mean to climb Ben Falloch on Wednesday. My father has business in the morning, but he can spare us the afternoon. We cannot find another day, and it is getting on in the season, and there will be danger of harvest work interfering; we had better "take the wind as it blows in our barn door." What is your opinion of the weather, Dunglas?' And Mary had felt quite sure beforehand, that if young Dunglas were shy of volunteering his escort at first, he would none the less appear on the scene at the moment of starting, with some lame enough plea of bait, or game, or her father's advice on the bench, and then and there he would be told off for the expedition without farther ceremony.

But since Finralia had entered in his room-since Finralia was to ascend Ben Falloch with them-Mary Aldour would not be at all surprised if John Dunglas played them false—after he had got sufficient hint for an eager gallant-and chose to miss the honour altogether. The single untoward accident disposed her to such gloomy views of human nature and human affairs in general.

CHAPTER VI.

MARY ALDOUR THROWS DOWN HER GLOVE TO

M

FINRALIA.

ARY made up her mind to the hardship. 'A cat may look at a king,' says the proverb; and really the bad odour of Finralia was not aggravated by anything

of its pristine freshness. The worst that Mary knew against him was-that he was Finralia, that he had not only drunk his bottle when a boy-which was no great offence in those days, and neither was it held an extenuation that after an excess he took an oath and drank no more, as drinking was considered-but he had consorted with all the bad company in Inverluig, championed wicked, unhappy Mrs. Mercer, and been actively engaged in the riot on which her father sat, when the town's officer, the officious, imprudent little man who had interfered with gentlemen, had been all but murdered in their hands. All that had happened when Mary was a girl, and might have been forgotten. See, her father had lost sight of it. All that was established against Finralia at the present moment was his ill name and his

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