"Well, begad! this passes my comprehension!" he exclaimed at length, as he buttoned his accurately fitting straw-coloured kid gloves. "To what do you refer, friend Cosmo?" asked Flora, looking at him almost spitefully. "To this whole matter. Do you know, my fair friend, that you are perhaps the first young lady of your age that, in all my experience, ever took a fancy to a hobbledehoy lad in preference to a man; so while you reconsider the offer, you will perhaps permit me?" He bowed, and conceiving her consent given, proceeded to light a pipe, by the then very elaborate process of a small flint, steel and matches in a little silver tinder-box, on the lid of which his coat of arms was engraved. "And so you studied together, I presume, under that absurd Dominie Skaill, with the knee-breeches and huge shoe-buckles (like a heavy father at Old Drury), keen grey eyes, and Scotch cheekbones one might hang one's hat on, eh?" "Yes," replied Flora, tying the ribbons of her gipsy hat under her dimpled chin with an angry jerk. "And you learned Latin, Coptic, and Sanscrit together, I suppose," he continued in his cool sneering tone; "and to conjugate the verb _to love_, in all." "Exactly so, and in Greek, Chaldaic, and Chinese, and ever so many more languages, so that we became very perfect in grammar," replied she, smiling wickedly, while the grim Master's cat-like eyes filled with a very baleful green light; yet he had not the sense to see that his operations were conducted on a wrong plan before such a fortress as the fair lady of Ardgour. "Come, Miss Warrender, whatever we do, hang it, don't let us quarrel, and so make fools of ourselves." "I have not the least intention of quarrelling, and trust that you have none." "Then allow me to kiss you once, and we shall become better friends, I promise you." "Kiss _me_!" exclaimed Flora, starting. "Yes--why not--what does a little kiss signify?" "So little that you shall never have one from me, were it to save your life," said Flora, with a burst of laughter. "Perhaps your fair cheek has become sacred since that beggarly little rival of mine saluted it? It is a capital joke, is it not?" "Perhaps," said Flora, reddening, and rising to withdraw; "and what then?" "If so, I would say you were as great an idiot as my old grandmother Grizel Kennedy, of Kilhenzie, was." "Respectful to her and polite to me! And she----" "After Prince Charles Edward kissed her at the Holyrood ball, she never permitted the lips of mortal man--not even those of my worthy grandfather Cosmo, Lord Rohallion, K.T., and so forth, to salute her, lest the charm of the royal kiss should be broken; and their married life extended over some forty years and more." At this apocryphal story, which has been told of more old ladies in Scotland than Grizel of Rohallion, Flora laughed heartily, as well she might; and her merriment made the Master excessively provoked.