Mr. Creighton rose in all the confusion and dismay of spirit which the entry of a female into his sanctum was wont to cause within him. In his gaunt, elderly figure Alison perceived the very image of Archibald Herries, which Nancy’s casual references to her cousin had managed to call up in her imagination. ’Will you be good enough to excuse this interruption, sir?’ she timidly began, seeing that Creighton made no effort to open the interview. ’I am come from my kind friend, Mrs. Maclehose, on a message, to receive a packet at your hands which she expects.’ Creighton was looking at her with the unsparing penetration—it had a kind of gimlet-like quality—of his habitual regard. Alison’s unconscious grey eyes met his without flinching; it was indeed he who first looked away. ’Who was the woman?’ he wondered. Somehow, with her full, large presence, her fresh face and country attire, there seemed to have come a breath of the fields and hills into his fusty room. ’Mrs. Maclehose is not accustomed to confide her messages with me, madam,’ he said. ’It is likely she meant you to apply to Mr. Herries.’ ’Why, sir,’ said Alison, confused and blushing, ’are you—are you not—’ The lawyer emitted a dry chuckle. ’I am not Mr. Herries,’ he said, smiling. ’In the matter of years I have some advantage, doubtless, over that gentleman, but he is my superior, ma’am. I am only Andrew Creighton—at your service, of course. May I ask, now,’ he went on, drily, ’how you are led to think of Mr. Herries as old enough to be his cousin’s father?’ (’It was like the little Jezebel,’ he was saying to himself, and he meant poor Nancy, ’to make her cousin out an old man, and spoil his chances with a likely lass!’) But Alison protested she knew nothing of Herries’s age, stammering, as all truthful people will, over a white fib. ’You thought all legal gentlemen were old, perhaps?’ said Creighton, quite genially, ’but I protest not; some of us are young and handsome, I assure you!’ He invited his guests to a seat, which they were too timid to refuse, and had soon evoked from Alison her name and county. ’Graham—Graham of The Mains, to be sure,’ he said. ’Why, I remember your father well. He used to be in and about the town in his youth, but he never comes now, I take it.’ ’’Tis a long way off, and my father is busy, and there are too many of _us_,’ Alison explained, and the lawyer seemed fully to understand this pregnant statement. ’Family cares,’ he gravely remarked, ’soon make a solid man out of a young spark. But you,’ he went on, ’you are come on a visit of pleasure, I understand, and must do our old city the fullest justice. You must see the sights, madam—Holyrood, the Castle, the Crags. But, doubtless,’ with a clumsy effort to be gallant, ’there are plenty ready and willing to do the honours of Auld Reekie to Miss Graham of The Mains.’