’I thank you, no,’ Herries answered. ’Make my excuses to Nancy. I have business this evening.’ ’I—I should thank you for a very pleasant day, sir,’ said Alison, timidly. ’I have greatly enjoyed myself.’ ’Nay,’ said Herries, with a little flourish, ’the pleasure was mine! I trust we have other enjoyable days, in company, to come.’ And with that they parted, and Herries walked down the town alone. ’If all pleasures were as innocent and as cheap, mistress,’ he said to himself, thinking of Alison’s little speech, ’men would be better and richer than they are!’ And he laughed when he thought of the modest total of Lucky’s bill. On his doorstep he found Creighton’s terrier, Dick, shivering in the cold. ’Come in, beastie!’ he said, ’and lie by the fire till your master goes.’ He was in a singularly softened mood, and in high good humour with all the world. *CHAPTER XX.* Mrs. Maclehose, having provided her young friend with a pretty gown, was of no mind that that garment should waste its sweetness in a cupboard. It was now the height of the Edinburgh winter season, and she was full of engagements; so that the two ladies were presently immersed in quite a whirl of mild dissipation. They went to kettle-drums, sometimes night after night; to literary _soirées_, such as Nancy loved, where lions, of more or less celebrity, mildly roared; sometimes to concerts at the St. Cecilia Hall, for which Herries would send them tickets; and once or twice even to a rout in the Assembly Rooms, where Alison looked on at, but could not join, the extremely stiff and joyless dancing of the day. At nearly every entertainment they frequented, Herries would be present, for it was by virtue of his introduction that his cousin had the _entrée_ everywhere, and he was widely known. He was heartily sick of the social round, but it was necessary for his professional interests that he should be seen, and he was fully aware of the fact. One pair of eyes watched the door for his coming in those days, though he did not know it. Alison, in a room full of strangers, would look longingly for the one face that she knew, and, almost unconsciously, her eyes would follow the now familiar figure. She thought that all the world watched him thus. For, surely, he had a better carriage, a finer head, a smarter coat than any other man. Herries certainly had distinction, but he was below, rather than above, middle height, and not, naturally, one to rise above a crowd.