For some days Lady Nancy Gordon had been anxiously puzzling her brain for some thought or scheme whereby she could help the unfortunate Bard who was plunged in such depths of poverty and misfortune. She was thinking of him now as she sat at the harpsichord, her fingers wandering idly over the keyboard in a running accompaniment to her thoughts. Her father softly entered the room at this juncture, but she did not turn her head nor intimate that she was aware of his presence. Presently her touch grew more and more tender. Anon she glided into one of those dreamily joyous, yet sorrowful, mazurkas, that remind one of gay wild flowers growing in rich profusion over silent and forgotten graves. Lady Nancy had reason to boast of herself, for she was a perfect mistress of the instrument—and as her fingers closed on the final chord, she wheeled round abruptly on the chair, and rising to her feet greeted her father with a tender smile. For a moment she regarded him in thoughtful silence, then as he laid down his paper, she walked up to him, a frown of displeasure wrinkling her smooth, white forehead. “I think, father,” she said deliberately, with a haughty uptilt of her pretty nose, “I think it is perfectly disgraceful the way that hackney scribbler who writes for yon journal,” indicating the paper on the table, “either through malice or ignorance affixes such degrading epithets to the name of the Bard of Scotland, for by no other name will I ever speak of Robert Burns,” and she flashed an angry glance at the offending paper. “Poor obstinate lad,” sighed the Duke thoughtfully. His mind went back to the day after the garden party at Glencairn Hall, when he had sent for Robert to honor them with his presence at Gordon House, and how the poet had taken offense at some thoughtless remark of his, given in kindly spirit; how with haughty pride, and wounded dignity, he had gotten up from the table and after thanking them for their hospitality, declared he had not come to be insultingly patronized and pitied, and refusing to listen to reason, or explanation, he had left in bitter resentment and blind misunderstanding. Lady Nancy too was thinking the same thoughts, and after a moment’s meditation she looked into her father’s kindly face and remarked earnestly: “Father, something must be done for him and his family at once.” “But, my dear,” he meekly replied, “our hands are tied by his own obstinacy.” “Can we not get up a subscription for him?” she asked. He shook his head slowly. “’Twould be to no purpose, Nancy,” he returned thoughtfully. “He would refuse all offers of pecuniary aid. I know well his independent principles, and so do you.”