s
face, and shaking back the redundant ringlets that shaded her own.

"Perfectly so," replied her husband, with a sigh.

"What? Dull? Then I must sing to enliven you."

And, leaning her head on his shoulder, she warbled a verse of the
beautiful little Venetian air, _La Biondina in Gondoletta._ Then
suddenly stopping, and fixing her eyes on Mrs. Douglas, "I beg pardon,
perhaps you don't like music; perhaps my singing's a bore."

"You pay us a bad compliment in saying so," said her sister-in-law,
smiling; "and the only atonement you can make for such an injurious
doubt is to proceed."

"Does anybody sing here?" asked she, without noticing this request. "Do,
somebody, sing me a song."

"Oh! we all sing, and dance too," said one, of the old young ladies;
"and after tea we will show you some of our Scotch steps; but in the
meantime Mrs. Douglas will favour us with her song."

Mrs. Douglas assented good-humouredly, though aware that it would be
rather a nice point to please all parties in the choice of a song. The
Laird reckoned all foreign music--_i.e._ everything that was not
Scotch--an outrage upon his ears; and Mrs. Douglas had too much taste to
murder Scotch songs with her English accent. She therefore compromised
the matter as well as she could by selecting a Highland ditty clothed in
her own native tongue; and sang with much pathos and simplicity the
lamented Leyden's "Fall of Macgregor:"

"In the vale of Glenorehy the night breeze was sighing
O'er the tomb where the ancient Macgregors are lying;
Green are their graves by their soft murmuring river,
But the name of Macgregor has perished for ever.

"On a red stream of light, by his gray mountains glancing,
Soon I beheld a dim spirit advancing;
Slow o'er the heath of the dead was its motion,
Like the shadow of mist o'er the foam of the ocean.

"Like the sound of a stream through the still evening dying,--
Stranger! who treads where Macgregor is lying?
Darest thou to walk, unappall'd and firm-hearted,
'Mid the shadowy steps of the mighty departed?

"See! round thee the caves of the dead are disclosing
The shades that have long been in silence reposing;
Thro' their forms dimly twinkles the moon-beam descending,
As upon thee their red eyes of wrath they are bending.

"Our gray stones of fame though the heath-blossom cover,
Round the fields of our battles our spirits still hover;
W