"What a pretty place it is after all," she said suddenly, and in so saying spoke the truth. Framed in by an amphitheatre of purple heather-clad hills and dark green fir-clad spurs, Gleneira House with its swelling lawns stretching away to the rocky beach of the loch, its tall silver pines and clumps of rhododendrons looked bright and cheerful despite the nameless want which hangs always round an empty house; the dead look, as if, the soul having passed from it, naught remained save for it to hasten back to the dust whence it came. There was something, however, which struck one as homelike in its low irregular outline, its bow windows set in rose, jasmine, and magnolia; above all in its clustered stacks of chimneys rising without respect to symmetry and suggesting comfortable firesides within. Cosy firesides in corners, not set back to back in pairs after the modern fashion. A conglomerate building altogether, not unlike a two-storied summer-house full of French windows. An airy feminine sort of house, unlike the usual aggressively stony Scotch mansions, yet fitting in strangely with its fairylike background of hills, and woods, and lochs. "Very pretty, but awfully out of repair," replied Will, disconsolately. "The roof won't last much longer." "Why doesn't he--Captain Macleod I mean--put on a new one?" "My dear Marjory! He can't afford it. A man has to spend a lot in an expensive regiment like his, and----" "Nine years since he was in the Glen," interrupted the girl, bent on her own thoughts. "I don't remember him a bit. What is he like, Will?" "Awfully handsome; about the handsomest boy I ever saw, and I don't suppose he has changed much." "I know that--anything more?" "Spends a heap of money." "I know--anything more?" "Yes; you will like him." "Why?" "Women always do." Marjory turned down the corners of her mouth; a trick which with her meant disapproval, disgust, dislike, disappointment,--such a variety of small d's that Will was wont to say it was quite as reprehensible as the collective big one of his sex. "He really is an awfully nice fellow," continued Will; "but the place is going to rack and ruin. The farm houses are so poor that the south country men won't take them, and a slack style of tenant only means going from bad to worse. He ought to marry money. It is the only way out of the difficulty, since he won't skin the woods or let the place." "Why doesn't he come and live here as his fathers did," put in the girl, quickly; "why shouldn't he be satisfied to do his duty to the people as his fathers did?"