Valuable as an additional attestation of the enormous impression made by Carlyle upon all who came near him even at this early date, and of the prodigious expectations entertained of his future career, these words reveal also such a character in the writer herself as almost to compel speculation as to what might have happened if she had become his wife. That there was real affection on both sides is evident. The obstacle was partly in circumstances. In the opinion of her aunt and guardian, and of others, Margaret Gordon, who, though the daughter of a poor colonial, and left with little or nothing, was one of the aristocratic family of the Aberdeenshire Gordons, could hardly marry a Kirkcaldy schoolmaster. But perhaps some dread on her own part, arising from those perceptions of the harder side of his character which she communicated to himself so tenderly and frankly, may have aided in the separation. Her subsequent history could be told in some detail by persons still living. She became the wife of Alexander Bannerman of Aberdeen, a man of note in the commerce of that city, and of a family of old standing and landed estates in the shire. There were traditions of him in his youth as “Sandy Bannerman,” one of the wild Maule of Panmure and Duke of Gordon set, who filled the north with their pranks; but my own recollection of him in his more mature days is of the staid and highly respectable Alexander Bannerman, latterly Sir Alexander Bannerman, who was long the Whig M.P. for Aberdeen, and in that capacity was very attentive to the interests of the city, and very kind to old pensioners and the like who had any grievances or claims on the Government. The Whigs promoted him at last to a colonial governorship; and I think he died in that post. I might have seen Carlyle’s “Blumine” myself when she was Lady Bannerman, if only when she drove through the streets of Aberdeen to grace one of her husband’s elections; but I have no recollection that I ever did. To my surprise, Carlyle did not seem indisposed to talk of the “Blumine” episode in his life at Kirkcaldy. He used to make inquiries about the Aberdeenshire Bannermans; and he once sketched the whole story to me, in a shadowy way and without naming names (though I then knew them for myself), but dwelling on various particulars, and especially on those casual meetings with his first love in her married state which he has described in his _Reminiscences_. Though he talked prettily and tenderly on the subject, the impression left was that the whole thing had become “objective” to him, a mere dream of the past. But fifty years had then elapsed since those Kirkcaldy days when Margaret Gordon and he were first together.