'I quite agree with you, doctor. There is evidently great congeniality between them, even in their respective touches of eccentricity.' But the doctor's remark had suggested to her what she herself had failed to observe; Lord Curryfin's subsidence from ardour into deference, in his pursuit of herself. She had been so undividedly 'the cynosure of neighbouring eyes,' that she could scarcely believe in the possibility of even temporary eclipse. Her first impulse was to resign him to her young friend. But then appearances might be deceitful. Her own indifference might have turned his attentions into another channel, without his heart being turned with them. She had seen nothing to show that Miss Niphet's feelings were deeply engaged in the question. She was not a coquette; but she would still feel it as a mortification that her hitherto unquestioned supremacy should be passing from her. She had felt all along that there was one cause which would lead her to a decided rejection of _Lord Curryfin._ But her Orlando had not seized the golden forelock; perhaps he never would. After having seemed on the point of doing so, he had disappeared, and not returned. He was now again within the links of the sevenfold chain, which had bound him from his earliest days. She herself, too, had had, perhaps had still, the chance of the golden forelock in another quarter. Might she not subject her after-life to repentance, if her first hope should fail her when the second had been irrevocably thrown away? The more she contemplated the sacrifice, the greater it appeared. Possibly doubt had given preponderance to her thoughts of Mr. Falconer; and certainly had caused them to repose in the case of Lord Curryfin; but when doubt was thrown into the latter scale also, the balance became more even. She would still give him his liberty, if she believed that he wished it; for then her pride would settle the question; but she must have more conclusive evidence on the point than the Reverend Doctor's metaphorical deduction from a mythological fiction. In the evening, while the party in the drawing-room were amusing themselves in various ways, Mr. MacBorrowdale laid a drawing on the table, and said, 'Doctor, what should you take that to represent?' _The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ An unformed lump of I know not what. _Mr. MacBorrowdale._ Not unformed. It is a flint formation of a very peculiar kind. _The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ Very peculiar, certainly. Who on earth can have amused himself with drawing a misshapen flint? There must be some riddle in it; some ænigma, as insoluble to me as _Aelia Laelia Crispis_.{1} 1 This ænigma has been the subject of many learned disquisitions. The reader who is unacquainted with it may find it under the article 'ænigma' in the _Encyclopedia Britannica_; and probably in every other encyclopaedia.