From the other window you can look out upon Demeyet, somewhat sullenly receiving the radiance of the sunset. He, stout rebel, loves better the young morning, whose earliest glance is over his head, before her eyelids are fully opened. How she glances up playfully behind him, how she shrinks under his great shoulder, you will see, when you see the sun rise upon the links of Forth. But Demeyet, like many another, does not know when fortune is kindest to him, nor ever guesses that he himself, with those royal purple tints upon his robed shoulders, and the flitting shades which cover his brow, like the waving of a plume, shows his great form to better advantage now, than when the faint morning red, and the rising light behind, darken him with his own shadow. Wherefore Demeyet receives the sunlight sullenly, and glooms upon merry Agnes Muir at the window of Allenders’ drawing-room, till she can almost fancy that he lifts a shadowy arm, and clenches a visionary hand to shake it at her threateningly with defiance and disdain. A silver tea-service, engraven with the Allenders’ crest, and china the most delicate that Agnes ever saw, glitter on the table, which is covered besides with every rare species of “tea-bread,” known to the ingenious bakers of Stirling. And now Agnes glides round and round the table, endeavouring to recollect some one thing omitted, but cannot find any excuse for ringing the bell and summoning one of her hand-maidens to get another survey of the _tout ensemble_, which dazzles the eyes of the little wife. Harry has gone to Stirling to meet and bring home his sisters; and Uncle Sandy, their escort and guardian, is with them for a visit; and so is poor little Katie Calder, the oppressed attendant of Miss Jean. It is true that Agnes is very affectionate and very grateful--that, herself motherless, she clings to Martha, and would immediately succumb in any strait to the stronger mind, and character, and will of the eldest member of their little household; but withal, Agnes is mortal, and it is impossible to deny that there is quite a new and delightful pleasure to her in feeling herself, and in having others feel, that it is her house to which the sisters are coming home--that she is the head of the family, the house-mother, and that all the glories of this grandest of palaces are her own. Now a faint rumbling of distant carriage-wheels strikes on the excited ear of Agnes, but no carriage is visible from the windows--so she runs impatiently up some flights of narrow winding stairs, and emerges, out of breath, upon the gallery, which conducts to the little turret of Allenders. This gallery is very small--three people standing in it would make quite a little crowd; but then it commands a far-off view of the Forth, beyond Alloa in one direction, and of Stirling’s crowned rock, and the Highland hills, and what is still more important at this moment, of the Stirling road, on the other.