The one window of the parlour, though not large, was of tolerable size; but little light entered, so shaded was it with a rose-tree in a pot on the sill. By the wall opposite was a couch, and on the couch lay Ian with a book in his hand--a book in a strange language. His mother and he would sometimes be a whole morning together and exchange no more than a word or two, though many a look and smile. It seemed enough for each to be in the other's company. There was a quite peculiar hond between the two. Like so many of the young men of that country, Ian had been intended for the army; but there was in him this much of the spirit of the eagle he resembled, that he passionately loved freedom, and had almost a gypsy's delight in wandering. When he left college, he became tutor in a Russian family of distinction, and after that accepted a commission in the household troops of the Czar. But wherever he went, he seemed, as he said once to his mother, almost physically aware of a line stretching between him and her, which seemed to vibrate when he grew anxious about her. The bond between him and his brother was equally strong, but in feeling different. Between him and Alister it was a cable; between him and his mother a harpstring; in the one case it was a muscle, in the other a nerve. The one retained, the other drew him. Given to roaming as he was, again and again he returned, from pure love-longing, to what he always felt as the PROTECTION of his mother. It was protection indeed he often had sought--protection from his own glooms, which nothing but her love seemed able to tenuate. He was tall--if an inch above six feet be tall, but not of his brother's fine proportion. He was thin, with long slender fingers and feet like his mother's. His small, strong bones were covered with little more than hard muscle, but every motion of limb or body was grace. At times, when lost in thought and unconscious of movement, an observer might have imagined him in conversation with some one unseen, towards whom he was carrying himself with courtesy: plain it was that courtesy with him was not a graft upon the finest stock, but an essential element. His forehead was rather low, freckled, and crowned with hair of a foxy red; his eyes were of the glass-gray or green loved of our elder poets; his nose was a very eagle in itself--large and fine. He more resembled the mask of the dead Shakspere than any other I have met, only in him the proportions were a little exaggerated; his nose was a little too large, and his mouth a little too small for the mask; but the mingled sweetness and strength in the curves of the latter prevented the impression of weakness generally given by the association of such a nose and such a mouth. On his short upper lip was a small light moustache, and on his face not a hair more. In rest his countenance wore a great calmness, but a calmness that might seem rooted in sadness.