Various pretty and amiable little schemes formed by Mary to bring them together, with Cecil's aid, failed, and yet their meeting ultimately came to pass in the most commonplace way imaginable. With the opening season come the weekly promenades in the beautiful Princes Street Gardens, where the regimental bands play in the afternoons, for the delectation of the fashionables and idlers of the West End. Bordered on one side by the most magnificent terrace and promenade in Europe, and on the other by the emerald-green bank of the Castle Hill, with all its waving trees, and by the mighty mass of the beetling rock on which stands the hoary fortress of a thousand memories, and more than a thousand years, these gardens are altogether unique; and already they were in almost their summer glory, for the air of the valley in which they lie was fragrant with the perfume of mignonette, of clove-carnations, roses, and heliotrope. The carefully kept shrubberies were gay with borders of brilliant flowers, and amid this varied foliage the laburnum stood up in all the glory of green and gold. In swarms the happy children were gambolling and playing about on the velvet sward or chasing in zigzag fashion the bees and butterflies. The fair promenaders were in all the bright gaiety of their spring costumes, and the grand echoes of the castle rock were responding to the music of the band under our friend Herr von Humstrumm, when Falconer and Leslie Fotheringhame came sauntering through the throng arm-in-arm, the former watchful for the figure of Mary, and the latter languidly indifferent of all on whom he cast his critical eyes, in one of which a glass was fixed. Suddenly Fotheringhame, who was rather a nonchalant personage, started, and the glass dropped from his eye, for, sooth to say, perhaps he could see better without it. A young lady passed near him, with other two--an elder and a younger--unseen by Falconer, who was looking in an opposite direction; and there can be no doubt Fotheringhame looked after her with a yearning in his gaze, so sudden, passionate, and tender, as must have touched her heart had she seen it; but Annabelle Erroll, for it was she, was all unconscious of his presence. Her companions, we need scarcely say, were Mary Montgomerie and Mrs. Garth, an old lady who still dearly 'doted on the military.'