point lace. Her hair was silver-grey, with still
a soft wave on the brow, though she must have
been sixty years old; her face, though wrinkled,
was delicately fair, and a bloom arose on her
cheeks as she acknowledged weakness by a smile
and a little shake of the head coming up the
steps. Never had I seen anything so trustable
as the tenderness in those faded eyes.

She soon made herself known to me—Mrs.
Hatteraick, my mother's friend, whose godchild
and namesake I was. My tears started to see
the meeting between her and Elspie. The two
old women stood looking in one another's faces,
and I knew they were gazing at scenes I had
never witnessed, remembering words I had never
heard. They did not speak much of the past,
which was opened up between them. A few
words and mournful shakes of the head from
Elspie, an incomplete sentence spoken with
constrained lips by my godmother, and then they
returned to me.

"We have the sweetest early roses in the
country," said Mrs. Hatteraick, "and the most
plentiful supply. I have come for your father's
permission to take you with me, to fatten you
on strawberries and cream. You look fretted
and thin; you have grown too quickly. You
were no taller than yonder gilliflower when I
saw you last."

My father, who had a deep respect for Mrs.
Hatteraick, and had been very indulgent to me
of late, easily gave his permission to my going to
Eldergowan. Luke was not there to object, and
my godmother carried me off.

A long rambling avenue, scented with wild
orange-blossoms, a far-stretching golden lawn,
shelving into the flushed horizon, with knots of
trees casting slanting shadows towards us, far
down in a sleepy hollow a sedgy lake, and a
group of cows and milkmaids to be descried
through a ruddy haze; a dark-red house, almost
brown with age, unfolding its many gables, and
wings, and chimneys, from which the smoke
arose in a curling, golden mist above a crowd
of stately chesnuts; a bay-window lying open
to the west, and a brood of white pigeons
sunning themselves on the wide stone sill;—this is
something like Eldergowan as I saw it first, on
a summer evening at sunset. I remember the
girls running out to meet us; Polly, in her
white frock, plump and fair, like one of the
pigeons that rose, scared at our approach, and
fluttered off in a long snow-wreath over our
heads; and Nell, with her longer skirts and
laughing eyes. Close upon their heels came
Uncle Mark, with the sun in his eyes, and his
dark-red whiskers in a flame, a tall, beaming,
somewhat lazy-looking gentleman, of thirty-five
at least; ten years older than Luke Elphinstone,
but younger-looking in the soft smiling of his blue
eyes and the graciousness of his good-natured
mouth. And this was the soldier-lad who had
tossed me in his arms and called me his little wife.

All that night is associated with moonlight in
my memory. It poured into the dining-room,
gemming the oak carvings, and changing the
pictures of crusty old squires and their commonplace
dames into saints and angels with aurioles
round their heads. I sat full in the midst of it,
feeling all wrapped up in a silver mantle, and I
saw Mark Hatteraick watching my face from his
vantage ground in the shadows with an intent
look, as if he were remembering, observing, or
divining something regarding me. Catching my
glance, he smiled with the same trustable look
that had drawn me on the first instant to his
mother. I believe he forgot my age that night,
and thought he might assume towards me the
same uncle-like demeanour with which he treated
his nieces. It was impossible that my face should
not catch and repeat his smile; and these kindly
signals being exchanged, we were friends on the
instant.

I sat up in bed that night and looked round
me in a fever of sleepless happiness. My room
was odd and pretty, with pale green walls all
glistering with reflexions from the moonlight.
Burning with excitement and expectation, I felt
myself lapped in an atmosphere of purest calm.
I dozed, and dreamed myself a red-hot coal lying
in a cool green field, then waked and laughed
at the conceit, surveying again with delight my
couch-bedstead, with its dark carvings and red
silk quilt, my quaint swinging bookshelves, my
small pointed window over the garden, which
had shadows of ivy-wreaths printed on the glass,
and which framed the round moon, just setting
behind the bloomy tips of the silvered fruit-trees.
Sorrow and the Mill-house were forgotten; joy had
already taken possession of me at Eldergowan.

The next morning Polly stopped buttering the
muffins to exclaim at the beauty of my diamond
ring. I drew my hand hastily from the table
where it had rested, and turned away to hide the
blush on my face.

"Your mother had some pretty jewels, Mattie,"
said Mrs. Hatteraick, who was making the
tea. "I remember her diamond ring."

So did I; but it lay in her jewel-case at
home. Having thus passed over the opportunity
to tell my friends of my engagement, I never
sought for one again. They only knew of Luke
Elphinstone as my father's partner, and I could
not bring myself to enlighten them further
concerning him.

Six summer weeks passed, during which my
heart took root at Eldergowan. I forgot that
I should have to tear it away; and when I
remembered, I tried to forget again. I was
doing no harm, I told myself; I was saying my
prayers, wearing my ring: my year was my own,
to spend as I pleased. We had a gay, noisy
time, hungry rambles, merry meals, universal
overflowing of milk and honey. I grew strong
and robust, and as full of bounding life as any
wild thing in the fields. They made me the pet
of the house, and they spoiled me, calling me
pretty names. Nell asking her uncle to
describe me one day, he dubbed me the "fair
and happy milkmaid." And at once I grew
insufferably proud through his sticking this
borrowed plume in my bonnet. It may have
been owing to these new garnishings that I
forgot my identity as I presently did.

Soldier Mark was the head and front, pillar
and mainstay, of the house of Hatteraick. It