'La! Miss Finlayson! The tea is for a young lady just arrived. Did you not know? She have rid up with General Drysdale and the Capting all in a titty tit. And my lady, far from being poorly, is quite set up and lively about having a stranger to entertain this drizzly afternoon, and indeed, Miss, she have made us all pooty lively upstairs with so many orders. Rooms to prepare--a hot bath--tea--and all the young lady's things to be dried. For indeed she had not a dry stitch to sit down in. And oh! such tears and tatters along of her having been climbing hills and precipices in the mist, and the Capting bringing her home safe and sound--for my lady says it is most remarkable. But how she is agoing to go down to dinner in that black stuff dress I confess I do not understand. Seeing as how she appears a sweet young lady indeed, and it would be a pity if she were not properly dressed, and she an old friend of the family, as I could see by my lady. Though she has not been here before in my time. But here comes Mrs. Kipper herself; no doubt she knows the young lady--' 'Hoot!' responded the housekeeper, 'it's juist auld Doctor Brown's daughter. I've kenned the lassie sin' she could rin. My lady would often have her mother up from the manse, and she would be sent down here to me, and the young laird with her, to keep them out of mischief, and two bonnie bairns they were, and unco couthie; and thinks I to mysel', I'm wonderin' will my leddy ever rue the way the castle and the manse have forgathered. And I wad no say but the Captain may have a kindness for Miss Mary yet. I thought her brother, with his Free Kirk havers and his goin' clean against the master's wishes, would have peuten sic notions out of his head. But there's no tellin'. They're dour chields the Drysdales, that kenna how to let go; and if our young Captain has wance ta'en the notion, they may save their breath to cool their parritch, that would gainsay him. He'll gang his ain gate.' Julia heard it all, while with her scissors she snipped the ends of her flower stalks, and arranged her nosegays. In her rôle of affability and general good nature with the household, her presence imposed no restraint on those confidential servants; in fact, it rather stimulated them to talk, and show how much at heart they had the interests of the family, and how well they understood whatever was going on. It suited her to know whatever was to be thus picked up, so long as it could be done without betraying unseemly curiosity, and she was much too wise to compromise herself by putting questions to a domestic; but this intelligence was far from welcome to her, and what was worse, Mrs. Kipper's speculations were but confirmation of her own fears.