Cosmo, Lord Fettercairn of that Ilk (and Strathfinella in the Mearns) was by nature a proud, cold, selfish, and calculating man, whose chief passion in life was a combined spirit of enormous vanity and acquisitiveness, which he inherited from his predecessors, whom he resembled in political caution and selfishness, and also in personal appearance, to judge from the portraits of three generations, by Sir John de Medina, Aikman, and Raeburn, adorning the walls of the stately room in the house of Craigengowan, where this rather stormy interview took place. Tall and thin in figure, with flat square shoulders and sandy-coloured hair, cold grey eyes, and irregular features, he was altogether a contrast to his son Lennard, who inherited his slightly aquiline nose and perfect face from his mother, but his firm dark eyes and rich brown hair from a previous generation; and these, together with an olive complexion, rendered more dusky by five years' exposure to an Indian sun, made his aspect a very striking one. My Lady Fettercairn's birth and breeding were, as Sir Bernard Burke had recorded, irreproachable, and she certainly seemed a _grande dame_ to the tips of her long slender fingers. She was about forty-five years of age, but looked ten younger. The upper part of her aristocratic face was strikingly handsome; but the lower, with its proud and firm lips, was less pleasant to look at. Her complexion was almost colourless, her hair of the lightest brown, like her eyebrows and lashes; while her eyes were clear and blue as an Alpine sky, and, as Lennard often thought with a sigh, they seemed quite as--cold. Her manner was always calm, assured, and self-possessed. She would smile, but that smile never degenerated into honest laughter, while her pale and impressive face was without a line--especially on her forehead--that seemed to indicate either thought or reflection, and certainly she had never known care or sorrow or even annoyance until now. 'She is beautiful, mother,' urged the young man, breaking an ominous silence, with reference to the object of his love. 'Perhaps; but she is not one of us,' exclaimed Lady Fettercairn, cresting up her handsome head haughtily, and a whole volume of intense pride and hauteur was centred in the last word she spoke. 'Who is this Flora MacIan, as she calls herself?' asked his father in a similar tone; 'but I need not ask. You have already told us she is the governess in a house you have been recently visiting--that of Lady Drumshoddy--a governess, with all her beauty, poor and obscure.' 'Not so obscure,' said Lennard, a wave of red passing under the tan of his olive cheek; 'her father was a gallant old officer of the Ross-shire Buffs, who earned his V.C. at the battle of Khooshab, in Persia, and her only brother and support fell when leading on his Grenadiers at the storming of Lucknow. The old captain was, as his name imports, a cadet of the Macdonalds of Glencoe.'