Mrs Macfarlane, while she sunk from the society of gentlewomen of her own rank, still retained such acquaintance as she had ever happened to possess, of their wild sons and brothers. With them, she was in her turn an object of great interest, on account of her transcendant beauty, or rather its fame—for the fame with such persons is of far more importance than the reality. It was not disagreeable to Mrs Macfarlane, when she walked with her husband on the Castle Hill, and found herself passed with dry recognition by persons of her own sex, to be made up to by some long-waisted Sir Harry Wildair, who, in language borrowed from Congreve or Farquhar, protested that the sun was much aided in his efforts to illuminate the world by the light of her eyes. A rattle of the fan was the least favour that could be dispensed in reward for such a compliment; and then would ensue a conversation, perhaps only interrupted by a declaration from Mr Macfarlane, that he felt the air getting rather cold, and was afraid to stay out any longer on account of his rheumatism. The society of these fops was never farther encouraged by Mrs Macfarlane; indeed, it was only agreeable to her in public places, where it consoled her a little for the ungenerous slights of more respectable persons. Yet it had some effect upon her reputation, and was partly the cause of all her misfortunes. About two years after the insurrection of 1715, the host of Edinburgh fops received an important accession in Mr George Cayley, a young English gentleman, who was sent down as one of the commissioners upon the forfeited estates. Cayley brought with him a considerable stock of cash, an oath of recent coinage, said to be very fashionable in Pall Mall, and a vest of peculiar cut, which he had lately got copied at Paris from an original belonging to the Regent Orleans. As he also brought a full complement of the most dissolute personal habits, he might be considered as recommended in the strongest manner to the friendship of the native beaux; if, indeed, his accomplishments were not apt rather to produce displeasure from their superiority. Some days after his arrival, he was introduced to Mrs Macfarlane, to whom he was an object of some interest on account of his concern in the disposal of her father’s estate. If she felt an interest in him on this account, he was not the less struck by her surpassing beauty and elegant manners, which appeared to him alike thrown away upon her husband, and the city in which she dwelt. He rushed home from the first interview in a state of mind scarcely to be imagined. That such a glorious creature should squander her light upon the humble house of an attorney, when she seemed equally fit to illuminate the halls of a palace, was in his eyes a perversion of the designs of nature. He wished that it was in his power to fly with her away—away from all the scenes where either was known, to some place far over this world’s wilderness, where every