It was in Edinburgh she first met with Willy Erskine, though he was a neighbour at home. He was one of the Erskines of Drumthwacket, of as good a family as any in Fife. One of Mrs. Sinclair’s perplexities was to make out in what way the Erskines and the Auchintorlie family were connected, but she never succeeded in clearing it up. That there was some connection she was sure, and Willy was very welcome when he paid those frequent visits in Heriot Row, where they were living, and sat so long that Nora grew tired of him, though he was a handsome young fellow. “Poor callant! so far away from home, what would he do but come and see me, that am his mother’s near connection?” Mrs. Sinclair would say. And if she could have been angry with her Nora, it would have been for this cause. “Not so very near, mamma,” Nora would answer. “And if all our connections were to come as often”-- “They all show a very proper feeling, my dear,” was her mother’s reply; and nothing could be more true. Cousins to the fifth degree always turned up to take care of Nora at her balls--to dance with her when there--to cheer her mother’s solitude when she was gone, according to their several ages and sexes. The Sinclairs were a very “well-connected” family, and it was a circumstance which added much to the comfort of their life. As for Willy Erskine, he was a very nice young fellow, everybody allowed. He was not rich, to be sure. The Drumthwacket household was known not to be a rich one, and he was the third son. But he was doing what it was the proper thing for a third son to do. It had not been his vocation to go to India, like his second and fourth brothers, though, no doubt, that would have been the best way; and New Zealand and Australia had not been discovered, so to speak, in those days. His eldest brother was at the Bar, and Johnny, the fifth, was to be the clergyman of the family; so that Willy’s lot was clear before him, even had he not been impelled towards it by a naturally scientific turn of mind. He was pursuing his medical studies at Edinburgh University during those years when Nora and her mother came in the winter to Heriot Row. In summer it was quite a practicable thing to walk from Drumthwacket, which was only sixteen miles off, down to Anstruther on one pretence or other--an expedition which made it quite natural as well as necessary to “look in” at the Gushat-house, somewhere near the time of the early dinner. The fare on Mrs. Erskine’s table was homely, but it never occurred to her to grumble at the frequent visitor, or put on company punctilios, or even a fresh tablecloth, for Willy. The latter was a point upon which the population of the Gushat-house were always very easy in their minds; for no lady in Fife had a better stock of “napery,” and none were more delicately, femininely alive to the beauties of clean linen. Besides which, everybody in those days washed at home, and clean tablecloths