Alice Aytoun saw, when her visitor was gone, still more visibly than she had done in the morning, that Mrs. Catherine was sad.--She could not help observing the long, wistful looks bestowed upon herself--the hundred little indulgences which Mrs. Catherine gave her that day, as she would have given them to a sick child; and Alice wondered. These steadfast, compassionate looks became painful at last, and there was so great a chill of gravity and sadness about the stranger, Archibald Sutherland, that Alice, carried that tremulous happiness of hers--so much deeper, and yet so much less exuberant than it had been one little month ago--into her own pretty room. Bessie sat there sewing, and disconsolate. Johnnie Halflin had protested vehemently last night that "the Tower wadna be like itsel when she gaed away." The Falcon's Craig groom had particularly distinguished little Bessie by his notice. Mr. Foreman's lad from Portoran had bidden her "be sure and come soon back again," when he shook hands with her. Jacky, with her eldritch voice, had attempted to sing 'Bessie Bell' in her honor--and to leave it all! So little Bessie sat sentimental and despondent in the room, with some vision of breaking hearts, and never being happy again, while her youthful mistress sat down by the window, and looked over to Merkland. Ah! that breadth of hazy air which hovered between the house of Merkland and Alice Aytoun's chamber window, how full of beautiful shapes it was--and how instinct with gladness! Mrs. Catherine dined at four--never later, except on some very great and solemn occasion; and when dinner was over that day, and the darkness of the long January night had begun, Mrs. Catherine took her youthful kinswoman by the arm, and led her away from the dining-room without speaking. They did not go up stairs; they went away through that dim passage, and stopped at the door of the little room. Alice was terrified. Mrs. Catherine unlocked the door, drew the girl in with her, and closed it again in silence. Alice's heart began to beat loud, in awe and terror. What strange discipline was this? There was a fire burning brightly; the waning gloaming without gave the whins, that almost touched the window, a ghostly look. The gray crag above seemed to be looking in with a pale, withered, inquisitive face. Mrs. Catherine seated herself on one of the chairs and bade Alice take the other. The firelight fell warm and bright upon that fine dark portrait on the opposite wall. There was a lamp upon the table, but it was not lighted. Alice sat trembling, silent, apprehensive. What could Mrs. Catherine have to tell her? "Alison," said Mrs. Catherine, "do you see that picture?" "Yes," said Alice, timidly. The light was hovering about it, shooting now a spark of radiance into the eye, and now moving in a strange, fantastic smile upon the lip. Alice had heard from some of the visitors at the Tower of Mrs. Catherine's brother, and knew that this was his portrait.