happened that I abode in London betwixt a month and five weeks' time,
ere ever I saw Lorna. It seemed unfit that I should go, and waylay
her, and spy on her, and say (or mean to say), 'Lo, here is your poor
faithful farmer, a man who is unworthy of you, by means of his common
birth; and yet who dares to crawl across your path, that you may pity
him. For God's sake show a little pity, though you may not feel it.'
Such behaviour might be comely in a love-lorn boy, a page to some grand
princess; but I, John Ridd, would never stoop to the lowering of love
so.

Nevertheless I heard of Lorna, from my worthy furrier, almost every day,
and with a fine exaggeration. This honest man was one of those who in
virtue of their trade, and nicety of behaviour, are admitted into noble
life, to take measurements, and show patterns. And while so doing,
they contrive to acquire what is to the English mind at once the most
important and most interesting of all knowledge,--the science of being
able to talk about the titled people. So my furrier (whose name was
Ramsack), having to make robes for peers, and cloaks for their wives and
otherwise, knew the great folk, sham or real, as well as he knew a fox
or skunk from a wolverine skin.

And when, with some fencing and foils of inquiry, I hinted about Lady
Lorna Dugal, the old man's face became so pleasant that I knew her birth
must be wondrous high. At this my own countenance fell, I suppose,--for
the better she was born, the harder she would be to marry--and mistaking
my object, he took me up:--

'Perhaps you think, Master Ridd, that because her ladyship, Lady Lorna
Dugal, is of Scottish origin, therefore her birth is not as high as of
our English nobility. If you think so you are wrong, sir. She comes
not of the sandy Scotch race, with high cheek-bones, and raw
shoulder-blades, who set up pillars in their courtyards. But she comes
of the very best Scotch blood, descended from the Norsemen. Her mother
was of the very noblest race, the Lords of Lorne; higher even than the
great Argyle, who has lately made a sad mistake, and paid for it most
sadly. And her father was descended from the King Dugal, who fought
against Alexander the Great. No, no, Master Ridd; none of your
promiscuous blood, such as runs in the veins of half our modern
peerage.'

'Why should you trouble yourself about it, Master Ramsack?' I replied:
'let them all go their own ways: and let us all look up to them, whether
they