A Highland welcome awaited the Queen at the little landing-place of Inverary, made gay and fragrant with heather. Old friends, whom she was honouring by her presence, waited to receive her, the Duke and Duchess of Argyle--the latter the eldest daughter of the Duchess of Sutherland, who was also present with her son, Lord Stafford, her unmarred daughter, Lady Caroline Leveson-Gower, and her son-in-law and second daughter, Lord and Lady Blantyre. An innocent warder stood in front of the old feudal keep. In the course of the Queen's visit to Germany she had made the acquaintance, without dreaming of what lay concealed in the skirts of time, of one of her future sons-in-law in a fine little boy of eight years. Now her Majesty was to be introduced, without a suspicion of what would be the result of the introduction, to the coming husband of another daughter still unborn. Here is the Queen's description of the son and heir of the house of Argyle, who was yet to win a princess for his bride. "Outside, stood the Marquis of Lorne, just two years old--a dear, white, fat, fair little fellow, with reddish hair but very delicate features, like both his mother and father; he is such a merry, independent little child. He had a black velvet dress and jacket, with a 'sporran,' scarf, and Highland bonnet." Her Majesty lunched at the castle, "the Highland gentlemen standing with halberts in the room," and returned to the _Fairy_, sailing down Loch Fyne when the afternoon was at its mellowest, and the long shadows were falling across the hillsides. At five Lochgilphead was reached, when Sir John Orde lent his carriage to convey the visitors to the Crinan Canal. The next day's sail, in beautiful weather still, was through the clusters of the nearest of the western islands, up the Sound of Jura, amidst a flotilla of small boats crowned with flags. Here were fresh islands and mountain peaks, until the strangers were within hail of Staffa.