"You'd have some reason to say so, Cecil, if you'd known him when he was four years old," answered her aunt. "At four I think he was the loveliest child that ever was created. Such blue eyes! not your wishy-washy, milk-and-water colour that some parents call blue, but as deep and dark as that purple convolvulus in the vase yonder." And then the widow went on to relate to Cecil the very familiar legend of how poor Margaret went off into a consumption soon after the infant's birth, and how she, being alone in England at the time, took up her abode in Andrew Gordon's house, to superintend the rearing of the child,--"which saved my expenses elsewhere, and was doing a favour to the poor helpless widower," said Mrs. MacClaverhouse parenthetically; "and then, you know, my dear, the General, being particularly fond of children, like most people who have none of their own, took a tremendous fancy to his poor sister's child; so nothing would do but that the boy must be continually in Portland Place whenever his uncle was in England, and I'm sure I wonder that darling child's constitution was not completely ruined by the mangoes and chutnee and raging hot curries the General allowed him to eat. And when Hector was at Oxford, and my husband had settled down after the last Affghan war, it was just the same. I think the young man spent as much of his time in Portland Place as at the University; and it was the General who put a military career into his head, much to his father's annoyance; for Andrew would have liked him to go into the house and preach about poor-laws, and national surveys, and main-drainage and such-like. However, whatever Hector wished was sure to be done sooner or later; for I do believe there never was a young man so completely spoiled by every body belonging to him; and the end of it was that his father bought him a commission in the 11th Plungers, as you know." Yes, the story was a very old one for Cecil. She had listened with unfailing patience to her aunt's prosy discourses about Hector Gordon; and as the dowager was generally in a good temper when she talked of him, her niece had no unpleasant association with his name. But familiar as his graces and merits had become to her, through the praises of his aunt, Cecil felt no special interest in the young Captain. She knew that he had been a good son and a brave soldier, but then there are so many good sons and brave soldiers in the world. She knew that he had distinguished himself in India by doing something desperate in connection with a fort; but then young men in India are always doing desperate things in connection with forts. If ever any image of Hector Gordon presented itself to Lady Cecil's imagination, it took the shape of a clumsy Scotchman, with high cheekbones and sandy hair. Mrs. MacClaverhouse called his hair auburn; but then that word auburn has such a wide signification.