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                      THE LADIES LINDORES

                        BY MRS OLIPHANT


    IN THREE VOLUMES
    VOL. I.

    WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
    EDINBURGH AND LONDON
    MDCCCLXXXIII

    _ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN 'BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE'_


    "TWO OF THE SWEET'ST COMPANIONS IN THE WORLD."
                                            --_Cymbeline_.




THE LADIES LINDORES.




CHAPTER I.


The mansion-house of Dalrulzian stands on the lower <DW72> of a hill,
which is crowned with a plantation of Scotch firs. The rugged outline of
this wood, and the close-tufted mass of the tree-tops, stand out against
the pale East, and protect the house below and the "policy," as the
surrounding grounds are called in Scotland; so that though all the winds
are sharp in that northern county, the sharpest of all is tempered. The
house itself is backed by lighter foliage--a feathery grove of birches,
a great old ash or two, and some tolerably well-grown, but less
poetical, elms. It is a house of distinctively local character, with the
curious, peaked, and graduated gables peculiar to Scotch rural
architecture, and thick walls of the roughest stone, washed with a
weather-stained coat of yellow-white. Two wings, each presenting a
gabled end to the avenue, and a sturdy block of building retired between
them,--all strong, securely built, as if hewn out of the rock, formed
the homely house. It had little of the beauty which a building of no
greater pretensions would probably have had in England. Below the wings,
and in front of the hall-door, with its two broad flat stone steps,
there was nothing better than a gravelled square, somewhat mossy in the
corners, and marked by the trace of wheels; but round the south wing
there swept a sort of terrace, known by no more dignified name than that
of "The Walk," from which the ground sloped downwards, broken at a lower
level by the formal little parterres of an old-fashioned flower-garden.
The view from the Walk was of no very striking beauty, but it had the
charm of breadth and distance--a soft sweep of undulating country, with
an occasional glimpse of a lively trout-stream gleaming here and there
out of its covert of crags and trees, and a great, varied, and
ever-changing world of sky,--not a prospect which captivated a stranger,
but one which, growing familiar day by day and year by year, was
henceforth missed like something out of their lives by the people who,
being used to it, had learned to love that silent companionship of
nature. It was the sort of view which a man pauses, not to look at but
to see, even when he is pacing up and down his library thinking of John
Thomson's demand for farm improvements, or, heavier thought, about his
balance at his bankers: and which solaces the eyes of a tired woman,
giving them rest and refreshment through all the vicissitudes of life.
People sought it instinctively in moods of reflection, in moments of
watching, at morning and at twilight, whenever any change was going on
in that great exhaustless atmosphere, bounded by nothing but the pale
distance of the round horizon,--and when was it that there was no change
in that atmosphere?--clouds drifting, shadows flying, gleams of light
like sudden revelations affording new knowledge of earth and heaven.

On the day on which the reader is asked first to visit this house of
Dalrulzian, great things were happening in it. It was the end of one
_régime_ and the beginning of another. The master of the house, a young
man who had been brought up at a distance, was coming home, and the
family which had lived in it for years was taking its leave of the
place.

The last spot which they visited and on which they lingered was the
Walk. When the packing was over, the final remnants gathered up, the
rooms left in that melancholy bareness into which rooms relapse when the
prettinesses and familiarities of habitation have been swept away, the
remaining members of the family came out with pensive faces, and stood
together gazing somewhat wistfully upon the familiar scene. They had
looked on many that were more fair. They were going to a landscape of
greater beauty further south--brighter, richer, warmer in foliage and
natural wealth; but all this did not keep a certain melancholy out of
their eyes. The younger of the party, Nora Barrington, cried a little,
her lip quivering, a big tear or two running over. "It is foolish to
feel it so much," her mother said. "How is it one feels it so much? I
did not admire Dalrulzian at all when we came."

"Out of perversity," said her husband; but he did not smile even at the
cleverness of his own remark.

Nora regarded her father with a sort of tender rage. "It is all very
well for you," she said; "one place is the same as another to you. But I
was such a little thing when we came here. To you it is one place among
many; to me it is home."

"If you take it so seriously, Nora, we shall have you making up to young
Erskine for the love of his house."

"Edward," cried Mrs Barrington in a tone of reproof, "I feel disposed to
cry too. We have had a great many happy days in it. But don't let old
Rolls see