We will now take our readers to Uplands Park, the day of Miles's expected visit there by Lord Randolph Gray. Business in town had detained this gentleman from that rendezvous of fashionable men, in the month of August--Scotland. It was near the end of the following month, and a select few were assembled for shooting, and its accompaniment of flirtation, in a country-house, where there exists so much more _laissez aller_ than in town. Lord Randolph's aunt, the Countess of Lysson, took the head of the lady department at her bachelor nephew's. A word about this nephew: He was one whose mould had assuredly not been broken when he was born--there were hundreds like him; he was one in a _cornet_ of comfits, very nice, but very insipid--the filling up of the world between the good and bad. A good-natured man, in short, with plenty of money. Some one persuaded him that he was, or ought to be, passionately fond of pictures, because he was of yachting and other fashionable amusements. Now, what possible connection could exist between these two, except as far as mere fashion went, it would be difficult to define. However, he was very fond of handsome women, and these are more or less the subject of the pencil; consequently, on his return to town from Italy, where he had seen much of Miles in society, as a rising artist, he sought him out, and engaged his pencil on "The Aurora," before alluded to. Besides, he had liked the man, and discovering that even at home, men of talent were warmly received into society, he followed the reading of others (for he possessed not one single original idea,) and invited him cordially to his house. But the visit to Uplands was one more of business than pleasure, else Miles would never have quitted Minnie. No one was aware, of his mere acquaintances, that Tremenhere was a man who had lost the position he had lost; he was known as a man of good family and cultivated understanding--no one inquired beyond: married or single--who cared to inquire? He was an agreeable companion, and therefore many sought his society. When he arrived at Uplands, the first person almost he met was Lady Dora, who was there with her mother. Not all her self-possession checked the deep glow which over-spread her cheek. It was half the suddenness of the meeting, and half indignant pride, that he should have degraded her cousin, as she deemed it, to the level of a mere artist's wife. They met in the drawing-room before dinner. There were only two or three persons yet assembled, and these were dowagers, sitting cosily beside a cheering wood-blaze, before the lamps were lighted. It was a large comfortable room, and already the rich crimson curtains fell before the windows. It had been a chilly, rainy day; and Lady Dora, having passed some hours of it in the billiard-room, now sat before one of Erard's most brilliant pianos, playing desultory strains, as they occurred to her memory. Lady Lysson had not yet appeared, nor Lady Dora's mother.