The more Fordyce saw of his companion the more convinced was he, that, apart from any inclination of his own, he had found the woman most fitted to take the place he had made up his mind to offer her. The occasional repulses which he suffered only suggested to him such maidenly reserve as should develop, with marriage, into a dignity quite admirable at every point. Her actual fascination was less plain to him than to many others, and, though he came of good stock, his admiration for the look of breeding strong in her was not so much grounded in his own enjoyment of it as in the effect he foresaw it producing on the rest of the world, in connection with himself. Her want of fortune seemed to him almost an advantage. Was he not one of the favoured few to whom it was unnecessary? And where would the resounding fame of King Cophetua be without his beggar-maid? The letter he had written to his father contained an epitome of his feelings--at least, so far as he was acquainted with them; and, when he saw Lady Eliza emerge from a stable-door into the yard, and knew that there was no more chance of being alone with Cecilia, he was all eagerness to step out for Morphie, where his uncle had promised to call for him on his way home from Kaims. Fullarton might even now be carrying the all-important reply in his pocket. He wondered, as they took their way through the fragrant grass, how he should act when he had received it, for he had hardly settled whether to address Miss Raeburn in person or to lay his hopes before Lady Eliza, with a due statement of the prospects he represented. He leaned towards the latter course, feeling certain that the elder woman must welcome so excellent a fate for her charge, and would surely influence her were she blind enough to her own happiness to refuse him. But she would never refuse him. Why should she? He could name twenty or thirty who would be glad to be in her place. He had accused her of preferring Speid’s company to his own, but he had only half believed the words he spoke. For what was Whanland? and what were the couple of thousand a year Speid possessed? Yet poor Crauford knew, though he would scarce admit the knowledge to himself, that the only situation in which he felt at a disadvantage was in Speid’s society. CHAPTER X KING COPHETUA’S CORRESPONDENCE ‘FORDYCE CASTLE, ‘LANARK. ‘_June_ 26, 1801. ‘MY DEAR SON,