'Mother!' said Lennard appealingly, 'oh, mother!' But she averted her face, cold as a woman of ice, and said, 'Go!'
'So be it,' replied Lennard, gravely and sadly, as he drew himself up to the full height of his five feet ten inches, and a handsome and comely fellow he looked as he turned away and left the room.
'Thank God, his elder brother, Cosmo, is yet left to us!' exclaimed Lady Fettercairn earnestly.
It was the last time in this life he ever heard his mother's voice, and he quitted the house. On the terrace without, carefully he knocked the ashes out of his cherished briar-root, put it with equal care into its velvet-lined case, put the case into his pocket, and walked slowly off with a grim and resolute expression in his fine young face, upon which from that day forth his father and mother never looked again.
Then he was thinking chiefly of the sweet face of the young girl who had united her fortunes with his, and who was anxiously awaiting the result of the interview we have described.
Sorrow, mortification, and no small indignation were in the heart of Lennard Melfort at the result of the late interview.
'I have been rash,' he thought, 'in marrying poor Flora without their permission, but that they would never have accorded, even had they seen her; and none fairer or more beautiful ever came as a bride to Craigengowan.'
Pausing, he gave a long and farewell look at the house so named—the home of his boyhood.
It stands at some distance from the Valley of the Dee (which forms the natural communication between the central Highlands and the fertile Lowlands) in the Hollow or Howe of the Mearns. Situated amid luxuriant woods, glimpses of Craigengowan obtained from the highway only excite curiosity without gratifying it, but a nearer approach reveals its picturesque architectural features.
These are the elements common to most northern mansions that are built in the old Scottish style—a multitude of conical turrets, steep crowstepped gables and dormer gablets, encrusted with the monograms and armorial bearings of the race who were its lords when the family of Fettercairn were hewers of wood and drawers of water.