ed the conversation by assuming her place beside her husband and
extinguishing the candle.

Leaving this couple to their repose, we have next to inform the reader
that, early on the next morning, two ladies on horseback, attended by
their servants, arrived at the house of Fairy Knowe, whom, to Jenny's
utter confusion, she instantly recognised as Miss Bellenden and Lady
Emily Hamilton, a sister of Lord Evandale.

"Had I no better gang to the house to put things to rights?" said Jenny,
confounded with this unexpected apparition.

"We want nothing but the pass-key," said Miss Bellenden; "Gudyill will
open the windows of the little parlour."

"The little parlour's locked, and the lock's, spoiled," answered Jenny,
who recollected the local spmpathy between that apartment and the
bedchamber of her guest.

"In the red parlour, then," said Miss Bellenden, and rode up to the front
of the house, but by an approach different from that through which Morton
had been conducted.

"All will be out," thought Jenny, "unless I can get him smuggled out of
the house the back way."

So saying, she sped up the bank in great tribulation and uncertainty.

"I had better hae said at ante there was a stranger there," was her next
natural reflection. "But then they wad hae been for asking him to
breakfast. Oh, safe us! what will I do?--And there's Gudyill walking in
the garden too!" she exclaimed internally on approaching the wicket; "and
I daurna gang in the back way till he's aff the coast. Oh, sirs! what
will become of us?"

In this state of perplexity she approached the cidevant butler, with the
purpose of decoying him out of the garden. But John Gudyill's temper was
not improved by his decline in rank and increase in years. Like many
peevish people, too, he seemed to have an intuitive perception as to what
was most likely to teaze those whom he conversed with; and, on the
present occasion, all Jenny's efforts to remove him from the garden
served only to root him in it as fast as if he had been one of the
shrubs.

Unluckily, also, he had commenced florist during his residence at Fairy
Knowe; and, leaving all other things to the charge of Lady Emily's
servant, his first care was dedicated to the flowers, which he had taken
under his special protection, and which he propped, dug, and watered,
prosing all the while upon their respective merits to poor Jenny, who
stood by him trembling and almost crying with anxiety, fear, and
impatien