The Reverend Robert laughed, not without some secret shame; it was a good lesson, and did him service. He began to see the vulgarity of this assumption; his own natural taste had kept himself within bounds, anxious as he was to maintain the decorums which he fancied necessary to his “position;” but this was sufficiently ludicrous to make him ashamed of the stiff gentility to which he had been endeavouring to train his good-humoured sister. His heavy brother of Fairholm was labouring to _make_ his wife a lady--a very impossible process, as her appearance showed. She had a soft large face, a drooping head, a tall, gawky person--and when the handsome Mr Insches and his cheerful sister seated themselves beside her, she giggled. Miss Insches talked, and so did the Reverend Robert: the bride answered by a hysteric titter. It was her sole accomplishment. She had by no means a gift for conversation, but she could giggle to perfection. Mr Wright came to the rescue, in his own person, and by means of ecclesiastical subjects a long half hour was spent; but Robert made no mention of the intended party. He was by no means proud of having made acquaintance with the bride. “Robert,” said Miss Insches solemnly, as they left the house, “whatever ye do, dinna gang and break our hearts with a gawky like yon. I’m no caring for siller; but man, Robert, if ye canna get a lady, dinna take up with a fule!” The Reverend Robert smiled--pleasantly before his eyes glided the graceful nervous figure, with its swift motions, and springing step, and eloquent face. Secretly in his own mind he did at that moment elect the poor schoolmistress to the honourable vacant seat at the head of his dignified table. It was true she was poor, and had for years laboured to earn her own bread; but Helen Buchanan was a gentlewoman born! In the meantime Helen Buchanan remained perfectly unconscious of her election. Mr Insches, his good qualities, and his indifferent ones, had passed from her mind altogether. She was not even angry at his desertion of her, during the earlier part of that Mossgray party, and met him the next time she saw him after it with a quite unclouded face. If William Oswald had been the offender, the offence would have ruffled in a very different way the memory of Helen. It was a bad omen for the Reverend Robert. And William Oswald was gone. He had established himself now, a permanent inhabitant of Edinburgh, practising his profession as it pleased the public to give him opportunity; and the public was not unpropitious. His father had many connections in other little towns like Fendie, and Fendie itself was respectably litigious. William Oswald was pronounced “a rising young man,” “a sagacious lad,” by voices of authority in the sacred precincts of the Parliament House. His prospects were fair and prosperous--the banker began to be proud of his thriving son.