"Poor woman!"
"What is the difference of age between Flora and our Cosmo?"
"A suggestive question."
"How?"
"Never mind, my lord."
"Some sixteen years or more, I think. You should remember best, Winny, their ages."
After this they walked on in silence, the lady, already match-making and scheming out certain matters with reference to the young heiress of Ardgour, had her mind bent on futurity; while the old lord's thoughts were with the past, full of other days and other scenes, when youth and hope went hand in hand—days, which, in the wars of Napoleon, were being fast forgotten by the world at large.
The evening was beautiful; the air was still and calm, though at times a breeze stirred gently the foliage of the sycamores of that stately avenue which led from the haunted gate to the ancient highway from Maybole—trees which had cast their shadows on many a generation of the Crawfords of Rohallion, who had gambolled along that avenue in infancy, and tottered down it in age; and since the days of King James VI. they had seen many a son of the house go forth with his sword and return no more, for many of them have fallen in domestic feuds and foreign wars.
On the uplands the golden grain was waving, but there was no sound in the air save the voice of the corncrake in the fields, the hum of the summer bee, the plaintive notes of the cushat-dove among the foliage of the oak-wood shaw, or the flash of the bull-trout in the linn that bubbled on one side of the avenue, and disappeared under a quaint arch, on each side of which stood two moss-grown lions sejant, the armorial supporters which the family of Rohallion inherited from Sir Raynold Crawford, high sheriff of Ayrshire, the uncle of Sir William Wallace of Elderslie.
Quentin, who had been in advance with a couple of barking terriers, now came running back, waving his hat, to announce that Lady Eglinton's carriage was coming bowling along the dusty road; and just as he spoke it wheeled into the echoing avenue, where the horses' hoofs crashed among the gravel.