ight be allowed
to accompany them home; but to this her mother also gave a decided
negative, adding that she never should see Lochmarlie again, if she
could help it. In short, she must remain where she was till something
could be fixed as to her future destination. "It was most excessively
tiresome to be clogged with a great unmarried daughter," her Ladyship
observed, as she sprang into the carriage with a train of dogs, and
drove off to dear delightful London.

But, alas! the insecurity of even the best-laid schemes of human
foresight! Lady Juliana was in the midst of arrangements for endless
pleasures, when she received accounts of the death of her now almost
forgotten husband! He had died from the gradual effects of the climate,
and that was all that remained to be told of the unfortunate Henry
Douglas! If his heartless wife shed some natural tears, she wiped them
soon; but the wounds of disappointment and vanity were not so speedily
effaced, as she contrasted the brilliant court-dress with the unbecoming
widow's cap. Oh, she so detested black things--it was so hateful to wear
mourning--she never could feel happy or comfortable in black! and, at
such a time, how particularly unfortunate! Poor Douglas! she was very
sorry! And so ended the holiest and most indissoluble of human ties!

The Duchess did not think it incumbent upon her to be affected by the
death of a person she had never seen; but she put on mourning; put off
her presentation at Court for a week, and stayed away one night from the
opera.

On Mary's warm and unpolluted heart the tidings of her father's death
produced a very different effect. Though she had never known, in their
fullest extent, those feelings of filial affection, whose source begins
with our being, and over which memory loves to linger, as at the
hallowed fount of the purest of earthly joys, she had _yet_ been taught
to cherish a fond remembrance of him to whom she owed her being. She had
been brought up in the land of his birth--his image was associated in
her mind with many of the scenes most dear to her--his name and his
memory were familiar to those amongst whom she dwelt, and thus her
feelings of natural affection had been preserved in all their genuine
warmth and tenderness. Many a letter, and many a little token of her
love, she had, from her earliest years, been accustomed to send him; and
she had ever fondly cherished the hope of her father's return, and that
she would yet know