“EH, Harry, here’s a gentleman coming,” said Violet, as she sat on the floor at the western window of the drawing-room with a book on her lap. Katie Calder kneeling beside her, was looking from the window, and making a superb cat’s cradle on her fingers. It was evening and lessons and work alike concluded, the children chose each her own manner of amusement, until tea should be over, and leave them free for their out-door ramble. But it was Katie’s observation which discovered the gentleman, though Violet was by no means incurious, when the discovery was communicated to her. “Oh!” said Harry, turning from the window with a slight flush on his face, “it’s Gibbie Allenders--I might as well see him alone--but that would hurt his feelings. Mind he’s quite a foolish fellow.” This speech was addressed to no one in particular, but Harry looked annoyed and restless, and they all perceived it. Gilbert Allenders, indeed, was a kind of ghost to Harry; for already an intimacy which disgusted his finer mind, but which he seemed to have no power to struggle against, had sprung up between them, and Gilbert never failed by jibe or malicious allusion, every time they met, to remind his new kinsman under what circumstances they first saw each other. Poor Harry! his earliest error here haunted him perpetually--he could not shake its consequences off. “Has he got his smoking-room fitted up yet, Mrs. Muir Allenders,” asked Gilbert, after the ceremonies of his introduction--though he had seen Agnes before--were over. “Has Harry not begun to retreat into a den of his own yet? Ah you don’t know how we young fellows do in these respects--and really Allenders has shown so much good taste in the other parts of the house, that I am quite anxious to see the den--I’ve seen a collection of pipes in a German student’s room, that would astonish all Scotland to match--Bursch as they call themselves--horrid language that German--but I never could manage the coarse gutturals.” “We have plenty in our own tongue,” said Uncle Sandy, quietly. “Ah, Scotch--gone out of date, Sir, out of date--civilized people forget that there ever was such a jargon. I say, Harry, wasn’t that fine, that song Simson gave us the first night I saw you--magnificent--I didn’t know Allenders then, Miss Muir, quite a chance meeting, was it not extraordinary? and I think the first night he was in Stirling too--wasn’t it, Harry?” Harry cast a guilty angry look round the room; Martha started in her chair; Agnes glanced up uneasily; and Uncle Sandy involuntarily shook his head; but Rose, happy Rose, heard nothing of it all, for with her eyelids drooping in a pleasant heaviness, she was dreaming out her dream--and though it was herself whom Gilbert addressed as Miss Muir, Rose remained peacefully ignorant of all he said.