n who had even as much as
caught a passing glimpse of her, this was her last resource--she would
entrap some unwary stranger, a man with money of course, and inveigle
him into marrying her. And there rose up before me visions of a tall,
angular, forty-year-old Scottish spinster, with high cheek-bones,
virulent, sandy hair, and brawny arms--the sort of woman that ought
not to have been a woman at all--the sort that sets all my teeth on
edge. Yet it was Pitlochry, heavenly Pitlochry, and there was no one
else advertising in that town. That I should suit her in every respect
but the matrimonial, I did not doubt. I can pass muster in any company
as a teetotaller; I abominate tobacco (leastways it abominates me,
which amounts to much about the same thing), and I am, or rather I can
be, tolerably amenable, if my surroundings are not positively
infernal, and there are no County Council children within shooting
distance.

But for once my instincts were all wrong. The advertiser--a Miss Flora
Macdonald of "Donald Murray House"--did _not_ resemble my
preconception of her in any respect. She was of medium height, and
dainty build--a fairy-like creature clad in rustling silks, with wavy,
white hair, bright, blue eyes, straight, delicate features, and hands,
the shape and slenderness of which at once pronounced her a psychic.
She greeted me with all the stately courtesy of the Old School; my
portmanteau was taken upstairs by a solemn-eyed lad in the Macdonald
tartan; and the tea bell rang me down to a most appetising repast of
strawberries and cream, scones, and delicious buttered toast. I fell
in love with my hostess--it would be sheer sacrilege to designate such
a divine creature by the vulgar term of "landlady"--at once. When
one's impressions of a place are at first exalted, they are often,
later on, apt to become equally abased. In this case, however, it was
otherwise. My appreciation both of Miss Flora Macdonald and of her
house daily increased. The food was all that could be desired, and my
bedroom, sweet with the perfume of jasmine and roses, presented such
a picture of dainty cleanliness, as awakened in me feelings of shame,
that it should be defiled by all my dusty, travel-worn accoutrements.
I flatter myself that Miss Macdonald liked me also. That she did not
regard me altogether as one of the common herd was doubtless, in some
degree, due to the fact that she was a Jacobite; and in a discussion
on the associations of he