Plenty of people and of all kinds. Constituents up from Scotland on business, or friends of constituents with letters of introduction from their friends to Kilsyth; to whom also came old boys from the clubs, who had nothing else to do, and liked to smoke a morning cigar or drink a before-luncheon glass of sherry with the hospitable laird; old boys who never penetrated beyond the ground-floor, save perhaps on one night in the season, which Lady Muriel set apart for the reception of "the House" and "the House" wives and daughters, when they would make their way upstairs and cling round the lintels of the drawing-room, and obstruct all circulation, and eat a very good supper, and for three or four days afterwards wag their heads at each other in the bow-windows of Brookes's or Barnes's, and inform each other with great solemnity that Lady Muriel was a "day-vilish fine woman," and that "the thing had been doosid well done at Kilsyth's the other night, eh?" Other visitors, nominally to Kilsyth, but in reality after their reception by him relegated to Lady Muriel, keen-looking, clear-eyed, high-cheek-boned men, wonderfully "canny"-looking, thoroughly Scotch, only wanting the pinch of snuff between their fingers, and the kilt round their legs, to have fitted them for taking their station at the tobacconists' doors,--factors from different portions of the estate, whom Lady Muriel took in hand, and with them went carefully through every item of their accounts, leaving them marvellously impressed with her qualities as a woman of business.