As Cecilia went into the house a man who had ridden up to the stable and left his horse there entered the garden. Fullarton’s shadow lay across the path, and Lady Eliza looked up to find him standing by her. Her thoughts had been far away, but she came back to the present with a thrill. He took a letter from his pocket, and handed it to her, smiling. ‘This is from my sister,’ he said. ‘If you knew her as well as I do you would understand that it has taken us some trouble to get it. But here it is. Be lenient, Eliza.’ Robert, if he had given himself the gratification of teasing his nephew, had yet expressed himself willing to take the part of Noah’s dove, and go out across the troubled waters to look for a piece of dry land and an olive-branch. His task had not been an easy one at first, and he had been obliged to make a personal matter of it before he could smooth the path of the unlucky lover. But his appeal was one which could not fail, and, as a concession to himself, his friend had consented to look with favour upon Crauford, should he return bringing the letter she demanded. Having disposed of one difficulty, Fullarton found that his good offices were not to end; he was allowed no rest until he sat down with his pen to bring his sister, Lady Fordyce, to a more reasonable point of view and a suitable expression of it. As he had expected, she proved far more obdurate than Lady Eliza; for her there was no glamour round him to ornament his requests. ‘God gave you friends, and the devil gave you relations,’ says the proverb, but it does not go on to say which power gave a man the woman who loves him. Perhaps it is sometimes one and sometimes the other. Be that as it may, though Robert returned successful from Morphie, it took him more time and pains to deal with Lady Fordyce than he had ever thought to expend on anybody. He sat down upon the bench while Lady Eliza drew off her gloves and began to break the seal with her tapered fingers. He wondered, as he had done many times, at their whiteness and the beauty of their shape. ‘You have the most lovely hands in the world, my lady,’ he said at last; ‘some of the hands in Vandyke’s portraits are like them, but no others.’ He was much relieved by having finished his share in a business which had begun to weary him, and his spirits were happily attuned. She blushed up to the edge of her wig; in all her life he had never said such a thing to her. Her fingers shook so that she could hardly open the letter. She gave it to him. ‘Open it,’ she said; ‘my hands are stiff with picking fruit.’ He took it complacently and spread it out before her.