“Yes, I am giddy; but neither ill nor nervous. I am giddy to think--oh, how strange it is! Do you remember, Mr. Aubrey, when we were in the Highlands in August?” “Nearly three months ago. Indeed, I remember very well. Do you think it is likely I should forget?” “Oh, I don’t suppose it was much to you,” said Margaret, with an abstraction of tone which prevented him, though very willing, from accepting this as provocative of something like flirtation. “It was myself that I was thinking of, and it made me giddy. Since that time I am quite different. Since then I have grown up.” “I don’t see very much difference,” said Aubrey, contemplating her with those pleased looks of unspoken admiration which he knew did not in general afford an ungrateful mode of homage. “Oh! perhaps I have not grown much taller; but this is more than tallness. Do you remember Earl’s-hall, Mr. Aubrey? It is not really, is it, so very far away?” “I should not say so--about fifteen or sixteen hours’ journey, if the railway went straight, without that horrid interval of the Firth.” “Oh, that was not what I was meaning!” said Margaret, turning her head away a little coldly. And though he went on talking, she did not pay much attention. She came home with dreamy eyes, and suffered him to lift her off her horse, and went straight up to her room, leaving him. They had not ridden quite so far as they intended, and the ladies had not got home from their drive. As Margaret went up-stairs, carrying her train over her arm, she met Miss Parker, her poor relation, on the stairs, who gave a jump at the sight of her, and uttered a cry. “Oh, my dear, I thought you were a ghost!” she said. “Why should I be a ghost? I don’t feel like a ghost. Come in and tell me,” said Margaret, opening the door of her room. Miss Parker had palpitations, and this was quite enough to bring one of them on. “I never thought you were like your poor mamma before,” cried the house-keeper in her agitation, “not a bit like. You are just like the Leslies, not her features at all; but in that habit, and in the very same hat and feathers!” Margaret took off her hat at these words, and Miss Parker breathed a little more freely. “Ah, that is better, that is not so startling. You were as like her, as like her--” “Why should not I be like her? Poor mamma, it is hard upon her having nothing but me to leave in the world, that I should be so unkind as not to be like her,” said Margaret, musing, half thinking through the midst of this conversation how strange it was that Earl’s-hall should seem so very far away. “I remember her as well as if it were yesterday,” said Miss Parker, “coming up that very stair after her last ride with--oh, I should not speak of him to you! It was before she had ever seen Sir Ludovic, your papa.” “Her last ride with--whom?” Margaret’s cheeks grew crimson. Somehow it seemed to be half herself about whom she was hearing--herself in her mother.