Everything in and about Craigengowan seemed conducive to love-talk and confidences. The great and picturesque house itself was charming. The old orchards would ere long be heavy with fruit, and were then a sight to see; on the terrace the peacocks were strutting to and fro; there were fancy arbours admirably adapted for flirtation, and a quaint old Scottish garden (with a sun and moon dial) now gay with all the flowers of August. On a lounge near an open window facing the latter Hammersley was reclining, when Finella, after changing her driving dress, came into the drawing-room, and finely her costume suited her dark and piquante style of beauty. She wore a cream-coloured silk, profusely trimmed with filmy lace, and a cluster of scarlet flowers on the left shoulder among the lace of the collarette that encircled her slender neck; and Hammersley, as he looked at her, thought that 'beauty unadorned' was rather a fallacy. His undisguised expression of admiration as he partly rose to receive her caused her to colour a little, as she inquired if his hurt was easier now; but, instead of replying, he said, while venturing slightly to touch her hand: 'Tell me, Miss Melfort, how you came by your dear pretty name of Finella? Not from Finella in "Peveril of the Peak"?' 'Ah, I am very unlike her!' 'You are certainly quite as charming!' 'But neither dumb nor pretending to be so,' said the girl, with one of her silvery little laughs. 'Finella!' said Hammersley, as if to himself, in a low and unconsciously loving tone; 'whence the name? Is it a family one?' 'Don't you know?' she asked. 'How could I know? I know only that I will never forget it.' 'Of course you could not know. The origin of my name is one of the oldest legends of the Howe of the Mearns.' 'Howe--that is Scotch for "hollow," I believe.' 'No; "hollow" is the English for _howe_,' replied Finella, laughing, as she recalled a quip of Boucicault's to the same purpose. 'You saw the great old castle we passed in our drive home?' 'Yes.' 'Well, I am called Finella from a lady who lived there.' 'After it fell into ruin?' 'No; before it.' 'Then she must have lived a precious long time ago.' 'She certainly did--some--nearly a thousand years ago.' 'What a little quiz you are! Now, Miss Melfort, what joke is this?' 'No joke at all,' said she, quite seriously; 'you can read about it in our family history--or I shall read it to you in the "Book of Fettercairn."' She took from a table near a handsome volume, which her grandfather--to please whom she was named Finella--had in a spirit of family vanity prepared for private circulation, and as if to connect his title with antiquity, prefaced by a story well known in ancient Scottish history, though little known to the Scots of the present day.