The expected company began to arrive. A faint colour rose on the calm cheek of the youthful hostess as she received them, and the young representative of the Mossgray Graemes felt the ingenuous blood glow in his face as eye after eye fell upon him, and acquaintance after acquaintance was made. He felt that there was great consideration paid him, and that, however matters might eventually be decided, it was very clear that these dignified landed people looked upon him, Halbert Graeme, as the heir of Mossgray. Helen Buchanan, feeling very shy and proud, and _de trop_, sat by herself in a corner. Near enough for her to hear every word of their conversation, were a group of ladies, old and young, whose glances fell upon her often, but who took no further notice of the humble guest. Girls were among them, gay and confident--mothers, kindly and solicitous, but all looked at her with cold, criticising eyes, and no one said a word of courtesy, or made the slightest attempt to admit her within their circle. They knew her very well; some had been specially introduced to her by her friend Lilias, who was at present occupied with other guests, yet they all suffered her to sit alone and in silence like a Pariah, while their cheerful, animated conversation went on so near. The proud heart swelled bitterly as she listened; for Helen had unconsciously attached importance to this invitation, and accepted it with a flutter of the heart. The disappointment was very painful; it brought the melancholy of her temperament upon her: had it not been for the bulwark of her pride, Helen, out of those downcast, indignant, gleaming eyes, could have shed bitter tears. Her own shy frankness, which could not rest till it had established terms of kindly intercourse with all who came near her, and the pain it gave herself to see any one uneasy, made her feel the slight the more. So well it would have become one of those comely mothers to spread the shield of their protection over the stranger--so seemly it would have been for the well-endowed and many-friended girls beside her to have helped her with the frank friendship of youth. Helen drew back into her corner, and felt the pain of being alone in all its bitterness. She did not know that the gracious courtesy of which she thought, was a thing, like genius, born and not made--a gift in which the ignoble have no part. The Reverend Robert Insches was there. He hovered about the group at Helen’s side, but he did not come near herself. She felt his desertion also a little. The Reverend Robert would have cheered her loneliness with all his heart, but he saw no other person who condescended to seek the society of the plebeian schoolmistress of Fendie; and the Reverend Robert was also by origin plebeian, and trembled for his acquired position. So he dared not draw all eyes upon himself, by volunteering the attention which no one else seemed inclined to give.