’No, indeed, sir,’ said Alison, quite simply; ’there is no one but Mrs. Maclehose, but she is the kindest of the kind, and will show me everything that I ought to see.’ ’Oh, ay, indeed!’ said the lawyer in a different voice. After that Alison rose to go. ’I will bid you good-day now, sir,’ she said, with the modest air that had so taken the crusty old lawyer, ’and I will trust to your kindness to let Mr. Herries know that his cousin sent a message for the monies.’ (’Trust her for that!’ interpolated Nancy’s instinctive foe.) He saw his guests to the door with, for him, a singular show of courtesy. When he came back into his room he stood at the window, peering over the blind, holding a rough chin between finger and thumb in an attitude of deep contemplation. ’Graham of The Mains,’ he muttered; ’a good name, and a fine lass! She looked true. They cannot _all_ be deceivers and liars, surely. Will _he_ give any heed to her, though? There will be opportunity, chances enough. But no, no; I need never think it.’ And rather impatiently he turned to his interrupted work, and was soon buried in its details. *CHAPTER XIV.* When Herries, who had been absent on business, returned to his house, he was annoyed to find that he had missed the emissary from his cousin. ’That means, I suppose, that I must e’en trail out over there myself after office hours,’ he said to himself. ’Plague take the woman! And yet she must be visited at some time or another.’ Visits, rather of business than of pleasure to his troublesome charge in the Potterrow, were a part of the routine of his life. They would generally be spent in a wrangle over accounts, and yet hardly a wrangle either, for it takes two to make such a thing, and Nancy was incapable of quarrelling. But Herries would spend a laborious hour trying to instil into his volatile charge some notion of the nature of money, and the value of keeping and giving an account thereof. He might as well have tried to instil into the passing winds an appreciation of these practical details. Nancy had but one notion of money—to spend it. Not that even Herries, in his severest moments, could call her selfishly or systematically extravagant, which was the more provoking. It was an infinitesimal house-keeping—that of the tiny household in the Potterrow; but by systematic ideas of cutting her coat according to her cloth in all things, Nancy would not, or could not, be governed, and Herries would drive himself nearly crazy over the futility of his efforts to coerce this delicate, frail, light, feminine thing that so smilingly defied him. This night, as he prepared himself to walk over to the Potterrow, another annoyance from a feminine source assailed him. Lizzie, his housekeeper, demanded an untimely interview by knocking at his door and then entering his room, followed, at a discreet distance, by, apparently, a satellite. ’Well, woman, what is it?’ he demanded crossly.