nstead of limiting herself to
the simple words of her message, appeared to be talking away earnestly
and fluently with the stranger; and, worse than all, she now saw that
he was coming back with her, and walking straight for the cottage. Mrs.
Butler had but time to change her cap and smooth down the braids of her
snow-white hair, when the key turned in the lock, and Jeanie ushered in
Mr. Norman Maitland. Nothing could be more respectful or in better taste
than Maitland's approach. He blended the greatest deference with an
evident desire to make her acquaintance, and almost at once relieved her
from what she so much dreaded,--the first meeting with a stranger.

"Are you of the Clairlaverock Maitlands, sir?" asked she, timidly.

"Very distantly, I believe, madam. We all claim Sir Peter as the head
of the family; but my own branch settled in India two generations back,
and, I shame to say, thought of everything but genealogy."

"There was a great beauty, a Miss Hester Maitland. When I was a girl,
she married a lord, I think?"

"Yes, she married a Viscount Kinross, a sort of cousin of her own;
though I am little versed in family history. The truth is, madam,
younger sons who had to work their way in the world were more anxious to
bequeath habits of energy and activity to their children than ideas of
blazons and quarterings."

The old lady sighed at this; but it was a sigh of relief. She had been
dreading not a little a meeting with one of those haughty Maitlands,
associated in her childhood's days with thoughts of wealth and power,
and that dominance that smacks of, if it does not mean, insolence; and
now she found one who was not ashamed to belong to a father who had
toiled for his support and worked hard for his livelihood. And yet it
was strange with what tenacity she clung to a topic that had its terrors
for her. She liked to talk of the family, and high connections, and
great marriages of all these people with whose names she was familiar as
a girl, but whom she had never known, if she had so much as seen.

"My poor husband, sir,--you may have heard of him,--Colonel Walter
Butler, knew all these things by heart. You had only to ask when did
so-and-so die, and who married such a one, and he 'd tell you as if out
of a book."

"I have heard of Colonel Butler, madam. His fame as a soldier is
widespread in India; indeed, I had hoped to have made his son's
acquaintance when I came here; but I believe he is with his re