low, silent-looking room, every foot of the walls of which was occupied with books in varied and rich bindings.  The lozenge-paned windows, with thick stone mullions, were much overgrown with ivy, throwing a cool green shadowiness into the room.  One of them, however, had been altered to a more modern taste, and opened with folding-doors upon a few steps, descending into an old-fashioned, terraced garden.  To approach this window he had to pass a table, lying on which he saw a paper with verses on it, evidently in a woman’s hand, and apparently just written, for the ink of the corrective scores still glittered.  Just as he reached the window, which stood open, a lady had almost gained it from the other side, coming up the steps from the garden.  She gave a slight start when she saw him, looked away, and as instantly glanced towards him again.  Then approaching him through the window, for he had retreated to allow her to enter, she bowed with a kind of studied ease, and a slight shade of something French in her manner.  Her voice was very pleasing, almost bewitching; yet had, at the same time, something assumed, if not affected, in the tone.  All this was discoverable, or rather spiritually palpable, in the two words she said—­merely, “Mr. Sutherland?” interrogatively.  Hugh bowed, and said: 

“I am very glad you have found me, for I had quite lost myself.  I doubt whether I should ever have reached the breakfast-room.”

“Come this way,” she rejoined.

As they passed the table on which the verses lay, she stopped and slipped them into a writing-case.  Leading him through a succession of handsome, evidently modern passages, she brought him across the main hall to the breakfast-room, which looked in the opposite direction to the library, namely, to the front of the house.  She rang the bell; the urn was brought in; and she proceeded at once to make the tea; which she did well, rising in Hugh’s estimation thereby.  Before he had time, however, to make his private remarks on her exterior, or his conjectures on her position in the family, Mr. Arnold entered the room, with a slow, somewhat dignified step, and a dull outlook of grey eyes from a grey head well-balanced on a tall, rather slender frame.  The lady rose, and, addressing him as uncle, bade him good morning; a greeting which he returned cordially, with a kiss on her forehead.  Then accosting Hugh, with a manner which seemed the more polite and cold after the tone in which he had spoken to his niece, he bade him welcome to Arnstead.

“I trust you were properly attended to last night, Mr. Sutherland?  Your pupil wanted very much to sit up till you arrived, but he is altogether too delicate, I am sorry to say, for late hours, though he has an unfortunate preference for them himself.  Jacob,” (to the man in waiting), “is not Master Harry up yet?”

Master Harry’s entrance at that moment rendered reply unnecessary.

“Good morning, Euphra,” he said to the lady, and kissed her on the cheek.