She came into the room with her swaying, graceful carriage of old days, but with a new dignity and reserve of manner, carrying her lovely head with just a little more pride than in her girlhood, greeting Irving, for all her warm friendliness, like a young queen graciously ready to accept homage from her subjects. She sank into a low chair beside the fire, the flames casting a warm glow over her arms and neck from which her gold colored scarf had slipped at her entrance. Irving thought of another night ten years ago when she had sat in that very chair with the candle light falling upon her blue draperies. Then she had been a lovely girl just on the threshold of life; now she was a cultured, well-poised woman of the world, crowned by virtue of her beauty and position as the ruler of the society in which she moved. He sighed a little and suddenly felt that he was growing old. For a while they spoke of what had occurred during Irving's absence from America, the countries the young author had visited, the great men he had met on his travels. Finally he told her of his visit to Sir Walter Scott, "days of solid enchantment," he described them, from the moment when the famous author had limped down to the gate of his estate in Scotland to welcome him, his favorite stag hound leaping about him, as he grasped his guest's hand. "We spent much of our time in long rambles over the hills," Irving continued, "Scott telling me legends of the countryside as only he could tell them. And in the evenings we would sit like medieval barons before the blazing logs in the great dim hall at Abbotsford and there would be more stories and confidences until long after midnight. Ah, Rebecca, it was worth a trip across the Atlantic, just to touch his hand." She leaned toward him, her eyes sparkling. "How I would like to know him--not only his books, which I love so much, but the real man in his home," she cried. Irving smiled mysteriously. "You may not know him, but he knows you well, my lady. I told him of my American friends, your brother Hyman among them, and, surely, I could not omit you, another heroine to hang in his gallery of fair ladies of romance." Rebecca shook her head, smilingly. "But I am not a heroine nor a lady of romance," she protested.