She was the only one who felt any pleasure in the anticipated change and long journey by post-horses, as it promised at least all that novelty so charming to a young girl. Poor Lady Rohallion! She knew that by her husband's frequently expressed desire for military employment (parliamentary and diplomatic matters he detested) he was bound in honour--especially at a time when all Britain was in arms--to accept the first command offered him by the Duke of York, his old friend and comrade. She had long feared the crisis, but, as time passed on and no appointment came, she ceased to think of it; but now it had come at last, and when least expected, and she was about to be subjected to a double separation, from her husband and her son. Cut off as Britain was then from the continent, the majority of its people had few views or sympathies beyond their own fireside or immediate circle. The scene of the probable campaign in which Rohallion would serve, was wild and remote, the people desperate and lawless; our force in the field small, most pitifully so, when compared with the masses of the dreaded and then abhorred French. She could perceive that her courtly old lord vacillated between sincere sorrow for leaving her and a love for his profession, with a hope of distinguishing himself and trying his strength and skill against some of the famous marshals of the new empire--the heroes of the Italian, German, and Egyptian campaigns--those corporals of le petit caporal, who had picked up their epaulettes on the barricades of Paris, or at the foot of the guillotine on which King Louis and the noblest in France died; for thus were the marshal dukes of the great emperor viewed by the high-flying aristocracy of the Pitt administration, in the old fighting days "when George the Third was king." Lord Cockburn, in his "Memorials," describes, with happy fidelity, "a singular race of old Scottish ladies," that have completely passed away. "They were," says he, "a delightful set; strong-headed, warm-hearted, and high-spirited; the fire of their tempers not always latent; merry even in solitude; very resolute; indifferent about the modes and habits of the modern world, and adhering to their own ways, so as to stand out like primitive rocks above ordinary society. Their prominent qualities of sense, humour, affection, and spirit, were embodied in curious outsides, for all dressed, and spoke, and did exactly as they chose; their language, like their habits, entirely Scottish, but without any other vulgarity than what perfect naturalness is sometimes taken for." One of that genuine race was the handsome and stately old Lady Winifred of Rohallion.