‘Take one or two dozen people from behind the shop-counters in Argyle Street,’ he said to himself (with boyish contempt for the disappointing), ‘or even a few Muirburn ploughmen and weavers, give them plenty of money, and in three weeks they would be quite as fine ladies and gentlemen as any I see here.’
As the thought passed through the boy’s mind, the door was thrown open, and the names of ‘Professor Taylor and Miss Mowbray’ were announced. A tall, lean man, with long hair and crumpled old-fashioned garments, entered, and beside him walked a young lady with her eyes on the ground.
She was dressed in a cream-coloured costume, with just a fleck of colour here and there. She was indeed remarkably pretty, and possessed a soft, childlike grace which was more captivating than beauty alone would have been. She had a small, well-rounded figure—a little more and it would have been plump—abundant dark-brown hair, and a soft, peach-like complexion. Her eyelashes were unusually long; and when, reaching her host, she half-timidly raised her eyes to his, Alec (who was sitting in the background) felt a little thrill of pleasure at the mere sight of their dark loveliness.
She was the first lady, the first young lady, at least, whom he had seen, and he looked at her as if she were a being to be worshipped. But Laura Mowbray was indeed pretty enough to have turned the head of a more experienced person than the laird’s son.
Professor Taylor and his niece moved to one side; her dress almost brushed against Alec. She glanced at him for an instant; without intending it he dropped his eyes, and the girl looked in another direction with a little inward smile.
In three or four minutes dinner was announced, and Laura fell to the care of James Semple (the cousin who had taken Alec’s place at the oil-works), who had just come in. There were more men than women in the party, and Alec and one or two of the less wealthy guests were left to find their way into the dining-room by themselves at the end of the procession. Fortune, however, favoured Alec. When he took his seat, he found that he was sitting between a pale, inoffensive-looking youth and—Laura Mowbray.
He literally did not dare to look at her, much less to address her; he was not sure, indeed, whether the rules of society allowed him to do so in the absence of an introduction. In a little time, however, his shyness wore off; he watched his opportunity; but before he found one, his neighbour remarked in her soft English accent, and in the sweetest of tones:
‘What dreadful fogs you have in Glasgow!’
Alec made some reply, and the ice once broken, he made rapid progress.
‘Everybody I meet seems to be related to somebody else, or connected with some one I have met before,’ said Miss Mowbray. ‘You have all so many relations in this part of the country, and you seem never to forget any of them. In London it is different. People seldom know their next-door neighbours; and it is just a chance whether they keep up cousinships, and so on, or not.’