Miss Carry Hodson returned from Paris in a very radiant mood; she had had what she called a real good time, and everything connected with the wedding had gone off most successfully. Her dress, that she had ordered long before she came to the Highlands, was a perfect fit; Lily Selden made the most charming and beautiful of brides; and no less a person than a prince (rather swarthy, and hailing from some mysterious region east of the Carpathians) had proposed the health of the bridesmaids, and had made especial mention of the young ladies who had travelled long distances to be present on the auspicious occasion. However, on the morning after her return to Inver-Mudal her equanimity was somewhat dashed. When she went along the passage to the little hall—to see what the morning was like outside—she found waiting there a respectable-looking elderly Highlander, with grizzled locks, who touched his cap to her, and who had her waterproof over his arm. This last circumstance made her suspicious; instantly she went back to her father. ’Who is that man?’ she asked. ’What man?’ ’Why, an old man, who is waiting there, and he has got my waterproof slung over his arm.’ ’Well, I suppose that is the new gillie.’ ’Isn’t Ronald going down?’ she said, with very evident disappointment. ’Of course not,’ her father said, with some sharpness. ’I think you have taken up enough of his time. And just now, when he is getting ready to go away, do you think I could allow him to waste day after day in attending to us? Seems to me it would be more to the point if you put your small amount of brain into devising some means of squaring up with him for what he has done already.’ ’Oh, very well,’ she said—or rather, what she did really say was ’Oh, vurry well’—and the pretty, pale, attractive face resumed its ordinary complacency, and she went off to make friends with the new gillie. She was on good terms with the old Highlander in about a couple of minutes; and presently they were on their way down to the loch, along with the lad John. Her father was to follow as soon as he had finished his letters.