Lewis Ross found but a cold welcome at the Tower from its aged mistress. Why she addressed him with so much reserve, and without even the familiar harshness of her usual manner, Lewis could not understand, and it roused his indignation mightily. He, an independent man, a landed proprietor of influence, a travelled, educated gentleman, to be over-borne by the caprices and prejudices of a set of old women! His dignity was hurt, his petulant pride roused. He certainly _was_ conscious of doing simple Alice Aytoun some considerable honor, and did not fancy there was anything unnatural in his mother thinking that he might have done better--but to control his liberty--to think that by all this coldness and discouragement, they could change the current of his inclination and affections--it was quite too much. Lewis did not feel by any means inclined to submit to it. He felt, too, that Archibald Sutherland shrank from his not very delicate questionings, and that, beyond all doubt, he himself, Lewis Ross, of Merkland, important person as he was, was decidedly _de trop_ in the Tower. Even Alice felt it, as she sat in her corner by the window, that delicate embroidery, which she wished to finish for a cap to Mrs. Catherine, before she returned home, trembling in her small fingers, and her heart beating loud and unsteadily. Mrs. Catherine had been so tender to herself this morning, almost as if she knew--it was so strange that she should be cold to Lewis. Mrs. Catherine left the room for a moment: Lewis approached the window, and whispered a petition, that she would meet him at "the little gate." Alice did not say no. "Immediately," whispered Lewis. "I have a great deal to say to you." Alice laid down her embroidery, and leaving the room, stole tremulously up stairs, to put on her bonnet and shawl, and steal tremulously down again, and out to her first tryste. The little gate stood on a shady by-way, or "loaning," which ran by Oranside through the grounds of Strathoran and the Tower. Lewis joined her immediately. He had much to say to her--much that was very pleasant to hear, if it was not very wise, nor even very connected and relevant, for Lewis, spite of his boyish pride and self importance, felt truly and deeply, so far as little Alice was concerned, and had not escaped the ameliorating effect of that influence, which, according to the gay old epicurean of our Scottish ballad-writers, "gives one an air, and even improves the mind."--The youthful couple wandered through the loaning, unconscious in their own dreamy happiness of the chill wind that swept through its high bare hedges, till nearly an hour had passed. But Alice suddenly saw, through the gap in the hedge, Miss Falconer riding quickly to the Tower; she came, by appointment, to bid Alice good-by, and so that most pleasant ramble must, of necessity, be terminated. Alice accompanied Lewis a little further down the lane, lest Marjory's quick eye should discover him, and then they parted.