Lady Rosamond felt happier and more encouraged from the fact of having such consolation and hope.

Mary Douglas had shed a ray of comfort in one unhappy heart.  She knew not the load which was thus removed.

Lady Rosamond clung to those kind words with a fond pertinacity:  not only the words, but the manner in which they were uttered.

Some evenings after the preceding interview had taken place, Sir Howard, Lady Douglas and family were assembled in the drawing room.  Miss Douglas was seated at the piano, while Miss Mary Douglas sang the song so dear to every Scottish heart—­Highland Mary.  Lady Douglas listened to the melodies of her native land with heartfelt admiration.  She loved to cultivate such taste on the part of her daughters.  None could give a more perfect rendition of Scotch music and poetry than they.

When Miss Douglas sang “The Winter is Past,” another of Burn’s melodies, Mary Douglas fancied she saw the beautifully chiselled lips of Lady Rosamond tremulous with emotion.  The first verse ran thus: 

   “The Winter is past, and the Summer’s come at last,
      And the little birds sing on every tree;
    Now everything is glad, while I am very sad,
      Since my true love is parted from me.”

The finely cultivated voice of the singer entered fully into the spirit of the song, giving both expression and effect as she sang the last verse: 

    “All you that are in love and cannot it remove,
       I pity the pains you endure: 
     For experience makes me know that your hearts are full of woe,
       A woe that no mortal can cure.”

“One would judge that my sister had some experience, if we take the face as an index of the mind,” said Captain Douglas, in playful badinage directed towards his favorite sister, who in reality did have an experience, but not of her own.

She felt the blow thus unconsciously dealt at Lady Rosamond.  Luckily for the latter, the coincidence thus passed over without any betrayal of feelings.  In Mary Douglas was a firm and watchful ally.  In her were reflected the feelings which passed unobserved in Lady Rosamond, or attributed to absence from home, separation from familiar faces, or clinging memories of the past.  Another great source of protection lay in the composition of the character of the gifted ally.

Mary Douglas was possessed of a temperament most keenly sensitive to the finest perception of poetic feeling.  Life to her was music and poetry.  A beautiful picture either called forth joy or sorrow; a pathetic song thrilled her soul with well timed vibrations of feeling; a touching story brought tears to those lovely eyes, that would move one with pity.  Thus was concealed the sympathy for Lady Rosamond, as none would sacrilegiously question those motives save in playful reminder from Captain Douglas, who bowed in fond adoration to the shrine of his sister’s loveliness and goodness.