'_Apropos_ of Captain Colville,' said the old lady, looking down on her young friend, 'I hope you have not lost your heart to him, Mary?' 'I should think not,' replied Mary, stoutly, but colouring so deeply, nevertheless, that Mrs. Wodrow could see how the crimson suffused even her delicate neck. 'That is well, Mary; mischief enough has been wrought among us already,' resumed Mrs. Wodrow, her benign old face becoming cloudy. Mary knew to what she referred, but seemed, or affected to seem, wholly intent on the cap; and Mrs. Wodrow looked admiringly and affectionately down on her dimpled wrists and little white hands. 'I do wish I had something nice and fresh for trimming!' she exclaimed, as she twirled round the cap for inspection. 'I think these rosebuds will do with this spray of ivy,' she added, searching a flower-box, and putting her head meditatively on one side. 'Then, Mrs. Wodrow,' she exclaimed, 'if I fail to please you, you must be a dreadful coquette, you old dear!' 'Thanks, pet Mary; when did you ever fail to please me?' said the old lady, caressing the girl's head, and adding, anxiously, 'You do not look well, Mary; where were you this morning? Not in the clachan, I hope, as I hear there is scarlatina there.' 'I have no fear; I took a kind message from Robert about a sick baby. I fear it is dying, and God pity the poor mother, the only light of whose life is likely to go out in darkness.' 'You have a tender heart, Mary. Robert, poor Robert; you know he has failed to pass, Mary?' 'Yes; I am so sorry, and so is Ellinor.' 'Ellinor may well be,' said Mrs. Wodrow, with some asperity. 'Why?' asked Mary, her colour deepening again. 'Because her fair face has come between him and his wits, poor fellow, and I shouldn't wonder if we lose him altogether.' 'Lose him!' repeated Mary, in a breathless voice; 'how?' 'He seems desperate and says that rather than slave for another session at college he will go for a soldier.' 'Oh, never, never think of such a thing!' 'He and Ellinor seem to have quarrelled.' 'Quarrelled--surely not! About what or who?' 'That man Sir Redmond Sleath, and his attentions to her.' 'They will make up this quarrel as they have made up others long ago,' said poor Mary, cheerfully, as she little knew to what a crisis the baronet's admiration for her sister was coming--nay, had come. She knew nothing of the scene in the conservatory and other minor scenes, of the present of jewellery, of utterances and promises. She believed the whole affair was only a lovers' quarrel, stimulated by jealousy on Robert's part, and vanity on that of Ellinor; and meantime she sympathised with Mrs. Wodrow, and would have done so with Robert had he been there, but he was fully and painfully occupied elsewhere at that precise time.