It was October when the young Saumarez’s arrived at Rosmore. October is very lovely in the west of Scotland. The trees are thinned but still glowing, the birches like lamps of gold among the darker woods, scattering round them, as the leaves drop, a golden underground that gives out light. The great line of mountains at the head of the loch were lightly touched with snow. The villas on the banks came out more brightly from the thinned foliage, and stood reflected in the shining water, with all the tints round them of red rowan berries and dazzling autumnal leaves. The air had a clearness as of the rarified air of high altitudes. There had not been any rain for ten days, so remarkable a fact that the district in general was beginning to fear the failure of its wells. In such an evening, while the sun lavished its last rays upon the loch and the opposite shore, bathing them in golden light, Rosamond and Edward came across in the steamboat to the whole Rowland family, which awaited them on the pier. I am wrong, however, to say the whole family: for Archie, who had been seized by a strong repugnance to the newcomers without any reason--a fact which, of course, made it more strong--was not of the number. He had gone up the loch or the hill with a determined intention of returning only in time for dinner. If truth had been told, he was extremely curious, even anxious about the young man who was of his own age, about whom there could be no doubt that he was a gentleman born to everything which Archie had not been born to, yet possessed. He did not think at all about the pretty sister, who probably would have most engaged the interest of the ordinary youth of twenty. But the more Archie was curious, the less had he any intention of showing it. He listened himself to what was said, but he asked no questions. Finally he started, half an hour before they went to meet the newcomers, for a long walk up the hill. “It is too lovely,” said Rosamond, presenting her cheek, as usual, that Mrs. Rowland should kiss it. “I wish some one had told me that it was a beautiful place. I never began to look till we got into the steamboat. I am not in the least tired, thank you. Eddy! where are you, Eddy? One never knows where to find him. He is always picking up everywhere some fellow he knows. He is not nice to travel with, because there are so many fellows he knows.”