et
black like mine and Mr. Carruthers's, but dark brown and soft and shaded,
and, oh! I don't know how to say quite why they are so attractive. When
one sees them half resting on his cheek it makes one feel it would be nice
to put out the tip of one's finger and touch them. I never spent such a
delightful afternoon. Only, alas! it was all too short.

"We will arrange to sit together after dinner," he whispered, as even
before the dressing-gong had rung, Lady Katherine came and fussed about,
and collected every one, and more or less drove them off to dress, saying,
on the way up-stairs, to me, that I need not come down if I had rather
not.

I thanked her again, but remained firm in my intention of accustoming
myself to company.

Stay in my room, indeed, with Lord Robert at dinner--never!

However, when I did come down he was surrounded by Montgomeries, and
pranced into the dining-room with Lady Verningham.

I had such a bore! A young Mackintosh, cousin of Mary's husband, and on
the other side the parson. The one talked about botany in a hoarse
whisper, with a Scotch accent, and the other gobbled his food, and made
kind of pious jokes in between the mouthfuls.

I said, when I had borne it bravely up to the ices, I hated knowing what
flowers were composed of, I only liked to pick them. The youth stared, and
did not speak much more. For the parson, "Yes" now and then did, and like
that we got through dinner.

Malcolm was opposite me, and he gaped most of the time. Even he might have
been better than the botanist, but I suppose Lady Katherine felt these two
would be a kind of half mourning for me. No one could have felt gay with
them.

After dinner Lady Verningham took me over to a sofa with her, in a corner.
The sofas here don't have pillows, as at Branches, but fortunately this
one is a little apart, though not comfortable, and we could talk.

"You poor child!" she said; "you had a dull time. I was watching you. What
did that Mactavish creature find to say to you?"

I told her, and that his name was Mackintosh, not Mactavish.

"Yes, I know," she said. "But I call the whole clan Mactavish; it is near
enough, and it does worry Mary so, she corrects me every time. Now don't
you want to get married, and be just like Mary?" There was a twinkle in
her eye.

I said I had not felt wild about it yet. I wanted to go and see life
first.

But she told me one couldn't see life unless one were married.

"Not even if on