But Mary was an heiress, and to wed and bring her there, would involve open war with her guardian, and too probably the loss of her inheritance! 'Would I had never seen her!' thought he; 'and yet--yet how vague and empty now would life be without her!' CHAPTER IV. A FRUITLESS TASK. Prior to all this, Sir Piers had taken poor little Mary seriously to task in person. She was full of her own fond, happy thoughts, and in her own peculiar sanctum or boudoir, when the general, influenced no doubt by some recent remarks of Hew, came in looking black as a thundercloud--as black, at least, as he ever could find it in his brave old heart to be with her; and here she was queen, for her boudoir was her pet place in the Edinburgh mansion. The walls were silver-grey, picked out with bouquets of roses. There were delicate cretonne hangings to match, and funny little black and gold chairs with crimson satin cushions; wood-brackets from Switzerland, and all manner of pretty china things, including porcelain pugs of all sorts and sizes; and here she received him with that charming, coaxing air, which no one could resist, and Sir Piers, perhaps, least of all. She knew that a lecture was coming, and on what subject, too; thus she was a little nervous, and her pretty dimples came and went, so fast! It never occurred to Sir Piers that there was gross selfishness in thus seeking to control Mary, and to absorb her fortune into the exchequer of the future baronets of Eaglescraig; though he certainly deemed that he was fully justified in preventing another family mesalliance, and with a nameless gamester. 'Give way to the whim of a girl!' he thought; 'no--no; I shall not be a chicken-hearted fool in my old age!' 'You have been out and abroad again, I understand, and without Mrs. Garth, Mary,' he began, while caressing her head, as she seated herself on a low stool by his side. 'I am close on twenty, and surely old enough to be trusted out of sight now!' said Mary, laughing. 'Hew says no--when that fellow is about.' 'Hew forgets himself!' said she, with a shrug of her pretty shoulders; 'I shall soon reach my twenty-first birthday, dearest grand-uncle, and surely then I shall be my own mistress,' she added, laughing. To the general she had ever looked up in a sweet, grave, old-fashioned and child-like manner that gave him great power over her, but this he felt was, somehow, passing away. He felt some sympathy for her too, for the human heart is, perhaps, the only part of us that does not grow old with years; but he deemed that he had a duty to do, and heard her now with uneasiness, as he withdrew his hand from her head that nestled on his knee. 'Even in your twenty-first year, child, you will not be independent of me,' he said; 'I have still a control over your fortune, if I fail to control your future.' 'I care not for it!' said she, pouting.