To all this sort of thing Sir Redmond Sleath listened with attention. We need not conceal the fact or circumstance that this enterprising baronet had marked out the soft, dreamy, artistic, and gentle Ellinor for a kind of _affaire du cœur_ peculiarly his own. Mary Wellwood, from her natural strength of character, he knew to be beyond the range of his nefarious views or schemes; and eventually, the warmth of his attentions to Ellinor were only curbed in public or veiled by a wholesome fear of his new acquaintance, Captain Colville, who, he thought, was 'idiotically smitten' by a fancy for or interest in Mary, for a time, of course, he supposed, 'as these things never lasted;' and he hoped, when the Guardsman went back to town and was fully under the influence of Blanche and her mother, to return to the vicinity of Birkwoodbrae on any pretence, and then have the field to himself. For a man like Sir Redmond there was a strange fascination in achieving the conquest of, or in 'running to earth,' as he would have phrased it, a girl so pure and confiding as Ellinor, and whose beauty and helplessness inspired him with a kind of love, as he thought it, but a selfish love peculiarly his own. It may excite surprise that such worldlings as Lord and Lady Dunkeld did not prefer a baronet as a _parti_ for their daughter's hand; but Leslie Colville was by far the richer of the two, and possessed landed property in various directions; and, however Sir Redmond might admire Blanche Galloway, he dared not raise his eyes to her, for very sufficient reasons yet to be explained. Finding that Colville, as we have said, was curiously disposed to resent some of his off-hand remarks about Mary and Ellinor Wellwood, he began to take refuge in professions of the greatest esteem for them both, and occasionally urged his regard for the youngest. 'In love again--you--and with a little country lass?' said Colville, laughing. 'You who were over head and ears, as the saying is, with Lady Sarah, all last season, as repute said.' 'When she loved me--if she was capable of it,' replied Sleath, with a dark look, 'she was indeed my Queen of Hearts.' 'And now, having married that millionaire fellow, she is Queen of Diamonds. But what could you expect of a girl who was engaged to two men at once, and wore the engagement rings of _both_?' 'Of course her heart was no longer her own when the millionaire solicited. She accepted him, and made a hecatomb of my letters and those of another fool, who is now broiling with his regiment in South Africa. 'The world well lost for love' is poetic, certainly, but devilish stupid practically.' Though entirely opposite and different in character and disposition, both these men looked forward with pleasure to the anticipated garden-party--Colville with real satisfaction to the hope of meeting Mary Wellwood once more; and Sir Redmond to the chances of furthering his own particular views. CHAPTER VI. THE VISIT.