He gave as circumstantial an account of his morning adventure as the flutter of his spirits would permit. When he described the situation of his late _couche_, and how he had started to his feet, without remembering where he was, Lady Arandale seriously reprimanded him for his thoughtlessness. All the Misses Morven were clamorous; Lady Morven said he might really have fallen on the centre of the luncheon table, and frightened them all to death! Frances scolded him with tears in her eyes. Julia alone did not speak, but she looked round, became pale, and the next moment red. The blood rushed from and to the heart of Edmund with a corresponding ebb and flow. After a pause, as though to change the too engrossing subject, thus implied by the silence of both, he asked her abruptly, if she had sung since she had been at the Craigs? One song had been attempted, at Lady Arandale’s particular request, to try the effect of an echo. Luncheon ended, the whole party proceeded towards the handsome castellated mansion already mentioned, to view the fine collection of pictures it contained. CHAPTER XXI. “I look’d around, and all was gone.” We left our party crossing the now well rolled lawn towards the house. On their arrival at the great door, which was open, a strange scene presented itself in the entrance-hall, in the centre of which stood a short fat gentleman looking with much astonishment at a little thin old woman, who, from her long, tapering, stomachered waist occupying one half of her height, her full petticoats spreading like a hoop; her short sleeves and mittens; her hair, white as though it were powdered, drawn up over a high sugar-loaf shaped cushion, and her small cap on the top of all—resembled much one of the figures in the frontispiece of an old play book. Her diminutive features had nothing remarkable about them, but the little reddish knob or button at the end of her nose, which seemed placed there expressly to support her spectacles. These, in visible hurry and trepidation, she was adjusting with one hand, while, with the other, she was grasping the fat gentleman’s arm, and, at the same time, exclaiming as with looks of terrified amazement she scanned his appearance, “Ye dinna pretend to tell me, sir, that ye are Maister Lauson!” The fat gentleman affirmed that he certainly was Mr. Lauson. The little woman seemed of opinion that she knew better, and maintained that he was not. The advance of the entering party, and the Earl, addressing the fat gentleman by the name of Lauson, seemed to complete the dismay of poor Mrs. M’Kinley, the housekeeper, for such was the name, and such the quality of the little woman. “Lauson! Lauson! Lauson!” she reiterated, clasping her hands, “wha iver heerd o’ sick a thing!—Jean!” she cried next, “Jean! Jean! Jean! Some on ye caw Jean!” A hard-working looking woman entered. “Hear ye to that, Jean!” said Mrs. M’Kinley, “hear ye to that! yon Maister Lauson! Heard ye iver the like o’ that?”