'Her costumes are _chic_,' continued Holcroft, '_chic_ to a degree! How I admired her portrait in the Grosvenor Gallery; and wise was the artist to label it "Fair to See."' Allan glanced at his father, and his face clouded to hear all this--praise though it was--in the mouth of Hawke Holcroft. 'You have an appreciation of beauty, apparently,' said young Cameron. 'Who has not? Thus, as Disraeli says, "the action of lovely woman on our destiny is increasing," and, as Miss Raymond----' 'I am Miss Raymond's uncle and guardian,' said Lord Aberfeldie, rather stiffly, and to Mr. Holcroft, as it seemed, a little irrelevantly, though cutting short whatever he meant to say; for the peer winced at the way in which his guest referred to his niece in the hearing of gillies and gamekeepers, and, more than all, in the presence of Allan, whose dark eyes wore rather a lowering expression; but, as all had hearty appetites after their recent exercise and long exposure in the keen, bracing mountain air of an autumn day, they were inclined to use their knives and forks rather than their tongues, and the subject, however pleasing to Mr. Holcroft, was dropped. The latter was not a pleasing type of Englishman, though his air and bearing were thoroughly those of a gentleman. He had a good square figure, but his legs were somewhat of the spindle order, as his knickerbocker suit revealed. He was flaxen-haired, fair-skinned, and somewhat freckled, with a tawny moustache and pale grey eyes; and strange it was that these, though weak-looking, cunning, and shifty, would assume at times, but covertly, a defiant, even ferocious expression, if evil passions excited him. He was almost destitute of eyebrows, but had a massive chin; and as Allan Graham regarded him, as he lay stretched upon the grass leisurely smoking, he by no means showed his father's sentiment of friendship for this son of an old friend; and there grew in his breast a mysterious instinct--almost a presentiment--that Holcroft would in some way or other bring trouble upon them conjunctly or severally. After the keepers and gillies had their repast, the luncheon apparatus was packed up, and, shouldering their rifles, the party set out for the shooting-box, which was situated in a pretty glen a few miles distant. Angus, who was--as his father boasted--strong as Cuchullin, again lifted the deer to the pony's back, and preceded by the family piper, Ronald Gair, with his pipes in full blast to the air of 'The Birks of Aberfeldie,' they departed down the winding path towards the dark blue loch that lay at the foot of the solemn, pine-clad hills. Like the gillies and keepers, Ronald was never seen without a sprig of the _Buaidh craob na Laibhreis_ (the laurel-tree of victory), the badge of the Grahams, in his bonnet.