She thought of those sunset meetings, and of one who was wont to sit beside her then for hours, lost in love and happiness. Lady Rohallion loved her husband well and dearly; but there were times when conscience upbraided her, and she pitied the memory of that younger brother whom she had deceived and deluded, and whom, like a thoughtless young coquette, she had permitted--it might be, lured--to love her. In fancy she traced out what her path--a less splendid one, assuredly--might have been, had Rohallion not won her heart, and most unwittingly broken his brother's, for so the people said. And thus, while "speculating on a future which was already a _past_," the handsome, the gallant, and earnest young Ranulph Crawford, the lover of her girlhood, rose before her in fancy, and her eyes grew moist as she thought of his fatal end, for he died, a self-made exile, an obscure soldier of fortune, in defence of the Tuileries, and the public papers had recorded the story of his fall--not in the flowery language of the present, but in the cold brevity of that time--"as one Captain Crawford, a Scot, whose zeal outran his discretion, who in charging the populace, was wounded, taken, and beheaded by them." "Clarissa Harlowe" had fallen from her hand, and the mimic sorrows of the novel were forgotten in the real griefs of Lady Winifred's waking dream. From these, however, she was roused by the clatter of a horse's hoofs at the haunted gate beside the gun-battery, and almost immediately after a servant announced the glad tidings, "My Lady Rohallion, his lordship has arrived!" CHAPTER VI. LORD ROHALLION. "She gazed--she reddened like a rose-- Syne pale as ony lily; She sank within my arms and cried, 'Art thou my ain dear Willie?' 'By Him who made yon sun and sky, By whom true love's regarded, I am the man!' and thus may still True lovers be rewarded."--BURNS. Hastening to the drawing-room, she immediately found herself in the arms of her husband, who was throwing off his drab-coloured riding-coat, with its heavy cape, his small triangular Nivernois hat, boot-tops, and whip, to his favourite valet and constant attendant, old Jack Andrews. Rohallion kissed his wife's hand and then her forehead, for he had not outlived either affection or respect, though verging on his fifty-fifth year; and he had all that gentleness of bearing and true politeness which the Scottish gentlemen of the old school, prior to, and long after the Union, acquired from our ancient allies, the French. "And you returned from London----" "By sea, Winny--by sea," said Rohallion, "After all my entreaties!" "Zounds! Winny, I can't abide the mail, and am too old to post it now, as my old friend Monboddo used to do yearly, to kiss the king's hand; and so preferred the 'Lord Nelson' smack, from London to Leith, armed with twelve carronades, and sailing without convoy." "And the voyage was pleasant?"