usion seemed to suit
the retired and melancholy habits of his elder brother. Lord Geraldin,
in the outset of life, had been a young man of accomplishment and hopes.
Those who knew him upon his travels entertained the highest expectations
of his future career. But such fair dawns are often strangely overcast.
The young nobleman returned to Scotland, and after living about a year
in his mother's society at Glenallan House, he seemed to have adopted
all the stern gloom and melancholy of her character. Excluded from
politics by the incapacities attached to those of his religion, and
from all lighter avocationas by choice, Lord Geraldin led a life of the
strictest retirement. His ordinary society was composed of the clergyman
of his communion, who occasionally visited his mansion; and very rarely,
upon stated occasions of high festival, one or two families who still
professed the Catholic religion were formally entertained at Glenallan
House. But this was all; their heretic neighbours knew nothing of
the family whatever; and even the Catholics saw little more than the
sumptuous entertainment and solemn parade which was exhibited on those
formal occasions, from which all returned without knowing whether most
to wonder at the stern and stately demeanour of the Countess, or the
deep and gloomy dejection which never ceased for a moment to cloud the
features of her son. The late event had put him in possession of his
fortune and title, and the neighbourhood had already begun to conjecture
whether gaiety would revive with independence, when those who had some
occasional acquaintance with the interior of the family spread abroad
a report, that the Earl's constitution was undermined by religious
austerities, and that in all probability he would soon follow his mother
to the grave. This event was the more probable, as his brother had died
of a lingering complaint, which, in the latter years of his life,
had affected at once his frame and his spirits; so that heralds and
genealogists were already looking back into their records to discover
the heir of this ill-fated family, and lawyers were talking with
gleesome anticipation, of the probability of a "great Glenallan cause."

As Edie Ochiltree approached the front of Glenallan House,* an ancient
building of great extent, the most modern part of which had been
designed by the celebrated Inigo Jones, he began to consider in what
way he should be most likely to gain access for delivery of