It is time to let the reader of this story know who Cosmo Douglas was, whose appearance had made so great a commotion at Mount. He was--nobody. This was a fact that Mr. Mountford had very soon elicited by his inquiries. He did not belong to any known house of Douglasses under the sun. It may be said that there was something fair in Cosmo’s frank confession on this point, put perhaps it would be more true to say that it showed the good sense which was certainly one of his characteristics; for any delusion that he might have encouraged or consented to in this respect must have been found out very shortly, and it would only have been to his discredit to claim good connections which did not belong to him. ‘Honesty is the best policy’ he had said to himself, and therefore he had been honest. Nevertheless it was a standing mystery to Cosmo that he was nobody. He could not understand it. It had been a trouble to him all his life. How was he inferior to the other people who had good connections? He had received the same kind of education, he had the same kind of habits, he was as much a ‘gentleman,’ that curious English distinction which means everything and nothing, as any of them. He did not even feel within himself the healthy thrill of opposition with which the lowly born sometimes scorn the supposed superiority of blue blood. He for his part had something in his heart which entirely coincided with that superstition. Instinctively he preferred for himself that his friends should be well born. He had as natural a predilection that way as if his shield held ever so many quarterings; and it was terrible to know that he had no right to any shield at all. In his boyhood he had accepted the crest which his father wore at his watchchain, and had stamped upon his spoons and forks, with undoubting faith, as if it had descended straight from the Crusaders; and when he had read of the ‘dark grey man’ in early Scotch history, and of that Lord James who carried Bruce’s heart to the Holy Land, there was a swell of pride within him, and he had no doubt that they were his ancestors. But as he grew older it dawned upon Cosmo that his father had assumed the bleeding heart because he found it represented in the old book of heraldry as the cognisance of the Douglasses, and not because he had any hereditary right to it--and, indeed, the fact was that good Mr. Douglas knew no better. He thought in all simplicity that his name entitled him to the symbol which was connected with the name, and that all those great people so far off from the present day were ‘no doubt’ his ancestors, though it was too far back to be able to tell.