Not very long after Lily left Edinburgh Lumsden had encountered Sir Robert one evening at one of the big dinner-parties which were the old gentleman’s chief pleasure, and he had taken an opportunity to address the young fellow on the subject which could not be forgotten between them. He warned Lumsden that he would permit no nonsense, no clandestine correspondence, and that it was a thing which could not be done, as his faithful servants at Dalrugas kept him acquainted with every thing that passed, and he would rather carry his niece away to England or even abroad (that word of fear and mystery) than allow her to make a silly and unequal marriage. “You are sensible enough to understand the position,” the old man had said. “From all I hear of you you are no hot-headed young fool. What you would gain yourself would be only a wife quite unused to shifts and stress of weather, and probably a mere burden upon you, with her waiting-woman serving her hand and foot, and her fine-lady ways--not the useful helpmate a struggling man requires.” “I should not be afraid of that,” said Lumsden, with a pale smile, for no lover, however feeble-hearted, likes to hear such an account of his love, and no youth on the verge of successful life can be any thing but impatient to hear himself described as a struggling man. “I expect to make my way in my profession, and I have reason to expect so. And Lily----” “Miss Ramsay, if you please. She is a fine lady to the tips of her fingers. She can neither dress nor eat nor move a step without Robina at her tail. She is not fitted, I tell you, for the wife of a struggling man.” “But suppose I tell you,” cried Lumsden with spirit, “that I shall be a struggling man only for a little while, and that she is in every way fitted to be _my_ wife?” “Dismiss it from your mind, sir; dismiss it from your mind,” said Sir Robert. “What will the world say? and what the world says is of great consequence to a man that has to struggle, even if it is only at the beginning. They will say that you’ve worked upon a girl’s inexperience and beguiled her to poverty. They will say that she did not know what she was doing, but you did. They will say you were a fool for your own sake, and they will say you took advantage of her.” “All which things will be untrue,” said Lumsden hotly.