'She is more than handsome--she is downright beautiful! Somewhat of a brunette, only a very pale and colourless one, with a small straight nose, dark hazel eyes, and dark brown hair, and her mouth is the sweetest in expression I ever saw; but I think I see you laughing at all this, you unbelieving villain! 'Even now, as I write in the library, she makes a delicious picture, with her beautiful slender throat and shapely head, as she stands in an oriel, whispering to a canary which flutters its golden wings against the bars of its cage, and takes from her rosy lips a crumb of sugar in its bill. 'She is frank and open-hearted, and somehow seems to sympathise with all my thoughts and fancies, and we have already gone some length in a mixture of confidential jest and earnest, which, though it may only amuse her, is perilous work to me. She is, perhaps, a little proud of her beauty; but what pretty girl is not? She seems a creature that draws brightness from all around her, while dispensing it in return, and to have been made only to be petted, admired, and caressed. 'You will think that I am hit hard. Well, old fellow, I grant to you that I am, and already a remoteness seems to have come over my past--our old barrack-room life at Dumbarton and elsewhere. 'To be hourly in the society of such a girl--to have her daily to walk, to ride, to sing with--is sure to have but one end. Her voice, by the way, is a clear and thrilling soprano--her touch upon the keys is full of tenderness; but a distrust of myself besets me sorely, and leaves unspoken the words that--despite the existence of Cousin Hew--hover on my lips. 'Why? you will ask. 'Because it is difficult for a man that is poor, and has not even high family to recommend him, to be deemed other than a fortune-hunter, when he aspires to an undoubted heiress; but I shall tell you all about this when I rejoin, and Fate has dropped its pall between her and me. 'I have lost at écarté to Hew Montgomerie, and have given him my I.O.U. for a hundred and eighty pounds. Please lend me the money, like a dear old fellow, and I shall square it up somehow, ere we go back to head-quarters, as we are sure to do when the spring drills commence, as I loathe to be in this fellow's debt, and the sum is rather a crusher to me. 'I hope all is right with our detachment, and that you grant no passes for more than twenty-four hours, and look sharp after our fellows. I must close now, as we are about to have a spin through the country, as far as Kilwinning, to see the company of archers practise, for old Sir Piers has more than once been captain of the popinjay in June, and a winner of the silver arrow.' He had closed and despatched his letter ere he remembered that he had omitted all mention, even by name, of Annabelle Erroll. CHAPTER VII. HEW'S 'MILD PLAY.' Fotheringhame wrote promptly back to Falconer; his letter contained the 'needful,' and some bantering advice with reference to his love affair.