'Miss Wellwood and I are already old friends,' said Captain Colville, with a pleasant smile, as he slid at once into conversation with Mary, laughingly, about their meeting by the river. 'You have not been fishing for some days past, Miss Wellwood,' he remarked, incidentally. 'No, I have been otherwise occupied,' replied Mary, as she thought 'he has been looking for me, or has missed me,' and she knew not whether to be flattered or provoked by the discovery, while, with secret pleasure, Colville was looking into her minute and handsome face, with its starry blue eyes, and tender, mobile mouth--a face as rare in its candour and innocence of expression as in its delicate beauty. Sir Redmond Sleath--of whom more anon--was tall, fair-haired, and undoubtedly handsome, with a tawny or blonde moustache, and regular features. He was every way the style of man to please a woman's fancy, yet to those who watched him closely it was evident that his blue eyes--for they were a species of cold China blue rather than grey--had a shifty, almost dishonest expression, and that no smile ever pervaded them, even when his lips laughed. He was in morning costume, with accurately fitting, light-coloured gloves, and a dainty 'button-hole' in the lapel of his black coat; while Colville wore a dark velvet shooting-coat and tan gaiters, his thick, brown hair carefully dressed, his dark moustache pointed, a plain signet ring glittering on his strong brown hand--an onyx, which bore, as Ellinor's sharp, artistic eye observed, the Wellwood crest, or one uncommonly like it--a demi-lion rampant; but then the crests of so many families are the same. Dr. Wodrow, the minister of Invermay (called of old the Kirktown of Mailler), was a tall, stout, and more than fine-looking man, with aquiline features, and a massive forehead, from which his hair, very full in quantity, and now silvery white, seemed to start up in Jove-like spouts, to fall behind over his ears and neck. He had keen, dark-grey eyes, always a pleasant smile, with a calm, kind, and dignified, if not somewhat pompous, manner, born, perhaps, of the consciousness that, after the laird, he was a chief man in the parish. His one little vanity, or pet weakness, was pride in his descent from the pious but superstitious old author of 'Analecta Scotica,' and other almost forgotten works, but who was a great man in his time, before and after the Treaty of Union, and in honour of whom he had named his only son 'Robert.' The afternoon tea proceeded in due course, served in fine old dragon china, brought in by old Elspat, a hard-featured little woman, in deep black, owing to her recent bereavement, who curtseyed in an old-fashioned way to each and all, and with whom the minister shook hands, somewhat to the surprise of his London friends.