She then began to be surprised, she heard nothing from him. And now she felt something that prevented her calling on him. But Jean Carnie was to be married, and the next day the wedding party were to spend in festivity upon the island of Inch Coombe. She bade Jean call on him, and, without mentioning her, invite him to this party, from which, he must know, she would not be absent. Jean Carnie entered his apartment, and at her entrance his mother, who took for granted this was his sweetheart, whispered in his ear that he should now take the first step, and left him. What passed between Jean Carnie and Charles Gatty is for another chapter. CHAPTER IX. A YOUNG viscount with income and person cannot lie _perdu_ three miles from Edinburgh. First one discovers him, then another, then twenty, then all the world, as the whole clique is modestly called. Before, however, Lord Ipsden was caught, he had acquired a browner tint, a more elastic step, and a stouter heart. The Aberford prescription had done wonders for him. He caught himself passing one whole day without thinking of Lady Barbara Sinclair. But even Aberford had misled him; there were no adventures to be found in the Firth of Forth; most of the days there was no wind to speak of; twice it blew great guns, and the men were surprised at his lordship going out, but nobody was in any danger except himself; the fishermen had all slipped into port before matters were serious. He found the merchantmen that could sail creeping on with three reefs in their mainsail; and the Dutchmen lying to and breasting it, like ducks in a pond, and with no more chance of harm. On one of these occasions he did observe a little steam-tug, going about a knot an hour, and rolling like a washing-tub. He ran down to her, and asked if he could assist her; she answered, through the medium of a sooty animal at her helm, that she was (like our universities) “satisfied with her own progress”; she added, being under intoxication, “that, if any danger existed, her scheme was to drown it in the bo-o-owl;” and two days afterward he saw her puffing and panting, and fiercely dragging a gigantic three-decker out into deep water, like an industrious flea pulling his phaeton. And now it is my office to relate how Mr. Flucker Johnstone comported himself on one occasion. As the yacht worked alongside Granton Pier, before running out, the said Flucker calmly and scientifically drew his lordship's attention to three points: The direction of the wind--the force of the wind--and his opinion, as a person experienced in the Firth, that it was going to be worse instead of better; in reply, he received an order to step forward to his place in the cutter--the immediate vicinity of the jib-boom. On this, Mr. Flucker instantly burst into tears.