"What if we make up our minds to stay here for the winter, Harriet?" at length said Sir Sandy, who was as easy-tempered, genial-hearted a little laird as could be met with in or out of Scotland: though he stood only five feet high in his shoes, and nothing could be seen of his face except his small retroussé nose standing out of the mass of bright yellow hair which adorned it. "It will be so cold," grumbled Harriet. "Think of all these draughts." "They won't hurt," said the laird, who was bred to such things, his paternal stronghold in the Highlands not being altogether air-tight. "I'll nail some list over the cracks, and we'll lay in a good stock of wood and keep up grand fires. I think we might be comfortable, Harriet. It must be as you decide, of course, dear; but Adela can't be left here alone, and if we say she must go with us to Rome, she may fret herself into a fever." "She is doing that as it is," returned Harriet. "We might stay here, of course--and we should get the place for an old song during the cold months. Perhaps we had better do so. Yet I should like to have been in Rome for the Christmas festivities, and for the carnival later." "We will go next Christmas instead," said Sir Sandy. As they had no children, they were not tied to their Scottish home, and could lay their plans freely. It was decided to remain in the château for the winter, and Sir Sandy began hammering at the doors and windows. So they settled down contentedly enough; and, cold though it was, in spite of the list and the hissing wood fires, which certainly gave out more sparks than heat, Sir Sandy and his wife made the best of it. It was more than could be said of Lady Adela. She not only did not make the best of things, but did not try to do so. Not that she complained of the cold, or the heat, or appeared to feel either. All seemed as one to her. Her room was large; its great old-fashioned sofa and its heavy fauteuils were covered with amber velvet. Uncomfortable-looking furniture stood about--mahogany tables and consoles with cold white marble tops. The walls of the room were papered with a running landscape, representing green plains, rivers, blue mountains, sombre pine-trees, castles, and picturesque peasants at work in a vineyard. In a recess, shut off with heavy curtains, stood the bed; it was, in fact, a bedroom and sitting-room combined, as is so frequently the case on the Continent.