s father, General Lennox, was a true Scot to the very tip of
his tongue, and as proud and fiery as any chieftain need be. _His_
death, certainly was an improvement in the family. But there is Rose
Hall, with its pretty shrubberies and nice parterres, what
do you say to becoming its mistress?"

"If I am to lay snares," answered Mary, laughing, "it must be for nobler
objects than hedgerow elms and hillocks green."

"Oh, it must be for black crags and naked hills! Your country really
does vastly well to rave about! Lofty mountains and deep glens, and blue
lakes and roaring rivers, are mighty fine-sounding things; but I suspect
cornfields and barnyards are quit as comfortable neighbours; so take my
advice and marry Charles Lennox."

Mary only answered by singing, "My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is
not here," etc., as the carriage drew up.

"This is the property of Mrs. Lennox," said Lady Emily, in answer to
some remark of her companion's; "she is the last of some ancient stock;
and you see the family taste has been treated with all due respect."

Rose Hall was indeed perfectly English: it was a description of place of
which there are none in Scotland; for it wore the appearance of
antiquity, without the too usual accompaniments of devastation or decay;
neither did any incongruities betray vicissitude of fortune or change of
owner; but the taste of the primitive possessor seemed to have been
respected through ages by his descendants; and the ponds remained as
round, and the hedges as square, and the grass walks as straight, as the
day they had been planned. The same old-fashioned respectability was
also apparent in the interior of the mansion. The broad heavy oaken
staircase shone in all the lustre of bees' wax; and the spacious
sitting-room into which they were ushered had its due allowance of
Vandyke portraits, massive chairs, and china jars, standing much in the
same positions they had been placed in a hundred years before.

To the delicate mind the unfortunate are always objects of respect. As
the ancients held sacred those places which had been blasted by
lightning, so the feeling heart considers the afflicted as having been
touched by the hand of God Himself. Such were the sensations with which
Mary found herself in the presence of the venerable Mrs.
Lennox--venerable rather through affliction than age; for sorrow, more
than time, had dimmed the beauty of former days, though enough still
remained to excit