So the baby was carried into the house, undressed and bathed and fed, and put to sleep in Eppie's cradle. When the shawls were removed they disclosed a little girl dressed in many delicate embroideries, and around its body was entwined part of a gold chain corresponding to the links which Roderick had observed in the grasp of the drowned woman on the beach. These properties they carefully folded up and put away to assist in the future identification of the child, and Roderick wrote a letter to the _Edinburgh Witness_ describing the waif he had rescued from the sea, in hopes it might meet the eye of some friend or relation. CHAPTER V. JULIA. When Captain John joined the family at dinner that day, it was with feelings of more than his wonted self-content. He had returned from his fishing only the hour before, and had brought with him the two finest salmon that had been caught that season. The game-keepers and retainers had admired them as in duty bound, but theirs was the admiration that pleases only _faute de mieux_, seeing that it can be counted on, while to-day his nephew, his old rival in field sports, was present to join in the applause. They sat down, a party of five, the three gentlemen already described, Lady Caroline, and her kinswoman Miss Finlayson. Lady Caroline was the great lady of the neighbourhood. She was tall and dignified, with a thorough appreciation of her own importance; also she was somewhat indolent, and therefore disposed to be good-natured and condescending, whenever her superiority was quietly acquiesced in. She spent a few weeks each summer in London with her husband, but these visits were yearly becoming shorter. There were so many persons of more consequence than herself, and she found herself so much in the position of one in a crowd, that she felt as if losing her sense of personal identity, became depressed, and hurried home never to return, or would have done so had it not been for Miss Finlayson, her judicious young friend, who never once presumed to advise or direct, but who yet could influence her in opposition to her own inclination, to remain in town to the end of the season, to return again the next year, and to do any thing else the said Miss Finlayson might desire.