To the fair inheritance he had come to steal he could not, however, add as his the blue sky above it, or the waves of the German Sea, which the North Esk flowed to join; but he was not without sense appreciative enough to enjoy the fragrance of the teeming earth, of the pine forests where the brown squirrels leaped from branch to branch, and on the mountain side the perfume of the golden whin and gorse. Appraising everything, these ideas were ever recurring to his mind, and it was full of them now as he looked around him, and at times, like one in a dream, heard the pretty babble of the high-bred, coquettish girl, who, to amuse herself, made _œillades_ at him; who called him so sweetly 'Cousin Shafto,' and who, with her splendid fortune, he was now beginning to include among the many goods and chattels which must one day accrue to him. Lord and Lady Fettercairn were, of course, fully twenty years older than when we saw them last, full of wrath and indignation at Lennard for his so-called _mésalliance_. Both were cold in heart and self-absorbed in nature as ever. The latter was determined to be a beauty still, though now upon the confines of that decade 'when the cunning of cosmetics can no longer dissemble the retribution of Time the avenger.' The former was bald now, and the remains of his once sandy-coloured hair had become grizzled, and a multitude of puckers were about his cold, grey eyes, while there was a perceptible stoop in his whilom flat, square shoulders. He was as full of family pride as ever, and the discovery of an unexpected and authentic heir and grandson to his title, that had never been won in the field or cabinet, but was simply the reward of bribery and corruption, and for which not one patriotic act had been performed by four generations, had given him intense satisfaction, and caused much blazing of bonfires and consumption of alcohol about the country-side; and smiles that were bright and genuine frequently wreathed the usually pale and immobile face of Lady Fettercairn when they rested on Shafto. We all know how the weak and easy adoption of a pretender by a titled mother in a famous and most protracted case not many years ago caused the most peculiar complications; thus Lady Fettercairn was more pardonable, posted up as she was with documentary evidence, in accepting Shafto Gyle as her grandson. We have described her as being singularly, perhaps aristocratically, cold. As a mother, she had never been given to kissing, caressing, or fondling her two sons (as she did a succession of odious pugs and lap-dogs), but, throwing their little hearts back upon themselves, left nurses and maids to 'do all that sort of tiresome thing.'