guished by one's personal knowledge of him; now he was dressed in the full uniform of the forty-second Highlanders; and so well did he suit it, that, as he paraded his men on the Castle hill, or appeared at a field day on the Links, every one who saw him pointed, and said. "There there is St.Clyde! Doesn't he become the bonnet well? And the plaid, look, Rose, how elegant the folds!" The bonnet and claymore were his passports into any company, and he willingly availed himself of their power in visiting his friend Eliza. Mrs. Stuart still opposed her daughter's partiality and attachment; but Augustus, who now felt something of his sister's feelings, favoured it, and gave every opportunity he could to St. Clyde to enjoy the company and conversation of his sister; it was only walking out with Eliza; and they always met St. Clyde, who, if he came to Mr. Stuart's house, invariably got into Augustus's study, and there he was sure of having at least ten minutes chit-chat with her, for there was no other place in the house where they were safe, and there too only when Augustus was along with them. The mother never suspected her daughter for she would sit for hours together in the company of Augustus; so apt are the suspicious to be deceived by the appearance of plausibility, and to confound with their own conduct the genuine friendship of the honest and virtuous. What was on Eliza's part a real attachment, but on St. Clyde's only the Platonic sentimental, now became pure unsophisticated esteem. There was a great disparity between them; her father could, if he pleased, give her a handsome fortune, at least it was talked of in this way, though he had several children to divide his property amongst them; his eldest son was in expectation of the fortune of a bachelor uncle, who enjoyed but an indifferent state of health; but St. Clyde knew if he married Eliza against her parents' wishes, her fortune would be trifling enough, and he had none of his own; his father, though a laird, was not wealthy; the pride of the Laird St. Clyde in the meridian of his days was too great to allow him to engage in any mercantile pursuit; he had tried the profession of arms; he could never make his way to the head of a regiment; the times in which he lived were not filled with twenty years of successive bustle and strife and din of arms; and when the harvest of carnage and death arrived, he had left the service and lived on his half pay, too infirm in resolution to succeed by a second attempt of risking the dangers of the tented field; his estate was but small; he was no farmer; it was there fore by the greatest frugality and parsimony that his spouse was able to make both ends meet; but he used to say, when in company with people of quality on the island, "Annie is better to me than a fortune; a thrifty wife is of more value at the year's end than a large income.” St. Clyde had just completed the drudgery of drilling, and might be considered an accomplished soldier; he was at any rate an elegant one, and he had still much pleasure in the company of Antony Levingstone and Augustus Stuart. Colin's time was well employed in Edinburgh; he spent much of it, too, with his old professors, who felt a pleasure in the visits of their quondam pupil: and the opportunities he enjoyed, of witnessing the gradual developement of Eliza's affection, established her immoveably on the throne of his heart, as the sole empress of his |