"Pardon me, noble Sir James," interrupted Edward, bowing low and with mock gravity to the portrait, "I will place you and your stern-looking son there at your side next in my veneration to our first ancestor. Yet you showed that, like me, you had little value for wealth or station."
"Edward!" ejaculated Lady Houstoun, in an accent of displeasure, "that we are willing to sacrifice a possession at the call of duty does not prove us insensible of its value."
"Nay, mother mine, speak not so gravely, but acknowledge that you would be prouder of your boy if you saw him by his own energies winning his way to distinction from earth's lowliest station, than you can be of him now—idler as he is."
"There is no less merit, Edward, in using aright the gifts which we inherit, than in acquiring them. There is as much energy, I can assure you, demanded in the proper management of large estates, and the right direction of the influence derived from station—ay, often more energy, the exercise of higher powers, than those by which a fortunate soldier, in time of war, may often spring in a day from nameless poverty to wealth and rank."
The Lady Houstoun's still fine figure was elevated to its utmost height as she spoke, and her dark eye flashed out from beneath the shadow of the deep borders of her widow's cap. A stranger would have gazed on her with admiration, but her son turned away with a slight shrug of the shoulders and a curling lip, as he said to himself, "My mother may feel all this, for she manages the estates, and she bestows the influence—while I amuse myself. Mother," he added aloud, "they say there is fine sport in the neighborhood of the Glen, and I should like to see the place. I will take a party thither next week, if you will write to your farmer to prepare the house for us."
"I will, Edward, certainly, if you desire it, but it has been so long since any of us were there, that I fear you will find the house very uncomfortable."
"So much the better, if it give us a little variety in our smooth lives. I dare say we shall all like it very much. I shall, at least, and if the rest do not, they can return."
The Glen was a wild rural spot among the Highlands, where Sir Edward had delighted occasionally to spend a few weeks with his wife and child and one or two chosen friends, in the enjoyment of country sports. For several years before his father's death, Edward had been too much engaged in his collegiate studies to share these visits. During the three years which had passed since that event, neither Lady Houstoun nor her son had visited the Glen, and it was not without emotion that she heard him name his intention of taking a party thither; but she offered no opposition to the plan, and in a little more than a week he was established in the comfortable dwelling-house there, with Walter Osgood; Philip Van Schaick, and Peter Schuyler, companions who were soon persuaded to leave the somewhat formal circles of the city for a few days of adventure in the country. They had arrived late in the night, and wearied by fifteen hours' confinement on board a small sloop, the visitors slept late the next morning, while Edward Houstoun, haunted by tender memories, was early awake and abroad. Standing in the porch, he looked forth through the gray light of the early dawn on hill and dale and river, endeavoring to recall the feelings with which he had gazed on them seven years before. Then he was a boy of scarcely sixteen, eager only for the holiday sport or the distinction of the school-room—now, he stood there—a boy still, his heart indignantly pronounced, though he had numbered nearly twenty-three years. Edward Houstoun was beginning to wake to somewhat of noble scorn in viewing his own position—beginning to feel that to amuse himself was an object hardly worthy a man's life. Turning forcibly from such thoughts, he sprang down the steps, and pursued a path leading by the orchard and through a flowery lane, towards the dwelling of the farmer to whom the management of the Glen had been intrusted, first by Sir Edward and afterwards by Lady Houstoun. The sun was just touching with a sapphire tint the few clouds that specked the eastern sky; the branches of the wild rose and mountain laurel which skirted the lane on the right were heavy with the dews of night, and the birds seemed caroling their earliest song in the orchard and clover-field on the left, yet the farmer's horses were already harnessed to the wagon, and through the open door of the house Edward Houstoun as he approached caught a glimpse of Farmer Pye himself and his men seated at breakfast. As he was not perceived by them, he passed on, without interrupting them, to the dairy, where the good dame was busy with her white pails and bright pans. A calico bonnet with a very deep front concealed his approach from Mrs. Pye until he stood beside her; but there was one within the dairy who saw him, and whose coquettish movement in snatching from her glossy brown ringlets a bonnet of the same unbecoming shape with that of Mrs. Pye, did not escape his observation.
"Well, now—did I ever see the like! Why, Mr. Edward, you've grown clean out of a body's memory—but after all, nobody couldn't help knowing you that ever seen your papa, good gentleman—how much you are like him!"
Thus ran on Dame Pye, while Edward, except when compelled by a question to attend to her, was wondering who the fair girl could be, who was separated from her companion not less by the tasteful arrangement of her dress—simple and even coarse as it was in its material—and by a certain grace of movement, than by her delicate beauty. Her form was slender in proportion to its height, yet gave in its graceful outline promise of a development "rich in all woman's loveliness;" and her face, with its dark starry eyes, its clear, transparent skin, and rich, waving curls of glossy brown, recalled so vividly to Edward Houstoun's memory his favorite description of beauty, that he repeated almost audibly:—