“No, not you and me; but two people under the big silver fir--Margaret and--a gentleman; there is no use mincing the matter. By what Effie saw, a lover, Ludovic! Well, you need not get up in a passion, it may be no harm. It may be somebody your father knew of. We are all strangers to her, poor little thing. There may be nothing to blame in it. Only I don’t know what gentleman it can be near this, for it was not Randal Burnside.” “How do you know it was not Randal Burnside?” said Sir Ludovic, rising and pacing about the room, in much fuss and fret, as his wife had feared. “No, but it could not be. He is too honorable a fellow.” “Mind, Ludovic, we don’t know it is not as honorable as anything can be; your father might have sanctioned it. I would lay my life upon Margaret that she is a good girl. It cannot be more than imprudent at the worst, if it is that.” “She should be whipped,” said her brother; “a little light-headed thing! not a fortnight since my father died!” Sir Ludovic, though his blood was as good as any king’s, was a homely Scotsman, and the dialect of his childhood returned to him when his mind was disturbed, as happens sometimes even in this cosmopolitan age. “Whisht, whisht, Loodie!” said his wife. “She is a poor little motherless girl, and my heart bleeds for her--and I cannot bear to say anything to Jean. Jean would interfere with a strong hand, and make everything worse. If we only knew who it was! for I can think of no gentleman of these parts, unless it was one of the young men that are always staying with Sir Claude.” At this her husband started and gave a long whew-w! of suspicion and consternation. “I know who it is,” he said--“I know who it is!” and began to walk about the room more than ever. Then he told his wife of his encounter with Rob Glen; and the circumstances seemed to fit so exactly that Lady Leslie could but hold up her hands in pain and horror. “No doubt my father was foolish about it,” said Sir Ludovic. “It is true that he used to have him here to dinner; it is true that he made a sketch of the house, spending days upon it. John says he always disapproved, but my father had taken a fancy to the young man. Rob Glen-- I know all about him--the widow’s son that has the little farm at Earl’s-lee: a stickit minister, John says, an artist--a forward, confident fellow, as I saw from the way he addressed me; and, by-the-way, I met Margaret coming in just before I met him. That makes it certain. It is just Rob Glen, and no gentleman of these parts: not even an artist of the better sort from Sir Claude’s--a clodpole, a lout, a common lad--” “Oh, Ludovic!” Lady Leslie shivered, and covered her face with her hands; “but if your father took him up and had him about the house, Margaret was not to blame. If he is, as you say, ‘a stickit minister,’ he must have some education; and if he could draw your poor father, he must be clever. And probably he has the air of a gentleman--”