and horses. Moreover, he was a student, well versed in modern
history and in architecture, and with a good head for arithmetic (did he
add up the figures of the fortune of Janet Dalrymple entirely to his own
satisfaction?), and he had the additional amazing distinction chronicled
by his eulogising biographer--

"He learned the French, be't spoken to his praise,
In very little more than forty days."

It is impossible to tell how much of the love story of the girl whom he
proposed to make his wife was known to young Baldoon. Possibly he had
had it lightly sketched to him by Lady Stair's skilled hand, as a mere
girlish fancy, likely to be very soon past and already entirely on the
wane. In any case, Baldoon evidently saw no more difficulties in the way
of his nuptials than did Lord and Lady Stair. The fact that the bride
"canna thole the man" must ever be a purely secondary consideration in
such matrimonial arrangements. Meantime the unhappy bride-elect had the
scheme laid before her, and in spite of her sobbing protests, was
commanded to conform to the wishes of her parents.

The news of Lady Stair's triumph was not long in coming to Lord
Rutherfurd's ears, and he at once wrote to Janet Dalrymple to remind her
that she was pledged to him by everything that they both considered
holy. No reply came from the unhappy girl, but a letter from Lady Stair
informed the distracted lover that her daughter was fully sensible of
the grave fault of which she had been guilty in entering into an
engagement without the sanction of her parents, and that she now
retracted her vows, and was about to give her hand to Mr. David Dunbar
of Baldoon. Such an answer, written by the mother of his betrothed, and
not by the girl herself, was scarcely likely to be received with
meekness by one of the Rutherfurds of that ilk. Lord Rutherfurd demanded
an interview with Janet Dalrymple, and absolutely declined to accept any
reply that did not come to him from her own lips. It was a struggle
between a high-spirited, determined man, deeply in love with her that he
strove for, and a woman whose heart was as hard as her brain was keen,
and who did not scruple to use any means, fair or foul, by which to gain
her own ends. The lion and the snake are unequal combatants, and in this
case the lion was worsted indeed. Lady Stair granted the interview, but
took care that not for one moment was her daughter permitted to be alone
with her lover. Lord Ruthe