For some time after the decision of Walter’s fatuity, nothing important occurred in the history of the Grippy family. George pacified his own conscience, and gained the approbation of the world, by fulfilling the promise of settling fifty pounds per annum on his sister-in-law. The house was enlarged and adorned, and the whole estate, under the ancient name of Kittlestonheugh, began to partake of that general spirit of improvement which was then gradually diffusing itself over the face of the west country.

In the meantime, Mrs. Charles Walkinshaw, who had returned with her children to reside with their grandmother, found her situation comparatively comfortable; but an acute anxiety for the consequences that would ensue by the daily expected death of that gentlewoman, continued to thrill through her bosom, and chequer the sickly gleam of the uncertain sunshine that glimmered in her path. At last the old lady died, and she was reduced, as she had long foreseen, with her children, to the parsimonious annuity. As it was impossible for her to live in Glasgow, and educate her children, on so small a stipend, there, she retired to one of the neighbouring villages, where, in the family of the Reverend Mr. Eadie, the minister, she found that kind of quiet intelligent society which her feelings and her misfortunes required.

Mrs. Eadie was a Highland lady, and, according to the living chronicles of the region of clans and traditions, she was of scarcely less than illustrious birth. But for the last attempt to restore the royal line of the Stuarts, she would, in all probability, have moved in a sphere more spacious and suitable to the splendour of her pedigree than the humble and narrow orbit of a country clergyman’s wife. Nor in her appearance did it seem that Nature and Fortune were agreed about her destiny; for the former had adorned her youth with the beauty, the virtues, and the dignity, which command admiration in the palace,—endowments but little consonant to the lowly duties of the rural manse.

At the epoch of which we are now speaking she was supposed to have passed her fiftieth year; but something in her air and manner gave her the appearance of being older—a slight shade of melancholy, the pale cast of thought, lent sweetness to the benign composure of her countenance; and she was seldom seen without inspiring interest, and awakening sentiments of profound and reverential respect. She had lost her only daughter about a year before; and a son, her remaining child, a boy about ten years of age, was supposed to have inherited the malady which carried off his sister. The anxiety which Mrs. Eadie, in consequence, felt as a mother, partly occasioned that mild sadness of complexion to which we have alluded; but there was still a deeper and more affecting cause.

Before the ruin of her father’s fortune, by the part he took in the Rebellion, she was betrothed to a youth who united many of the best Lowland virtues with the gallantry and enthusiasm peculiar to the Highlanders of that period. It was believed that he had fallen in the fatal field of Culloden; and, after a long period of virgin widowhood on his account, she was induced, by the amiable manners and gentle virtues of Mr. Eadie, to consent to change her life. He was then tutor in the family of a relation, with whom, on her father’s forfeiture and death, she had found an asylum,—and when he was presented to the parish of Camrachle, they were married.

The first seven years, from the date of their union, were spent in that temperate state of enjoyment which is the nearest to perfect happiness; during the course of which their two children were born. In that time no symptom of the latent poison of the daughter’s constitution appeared; but all around them, and in their prospects, was calm, and green, and mild, and prosperous.

In the course of the summer of the eighth year, in consequence of an often repeated invitation, they went, at the meeting of the General Assembly, to which Mr. Eadie was returned a member, to spend a short time with a relation in Edinburgh, and among the strangers with whom they happened to meet at the houses of their friends were several from France, children and relations of some of those who had been out in the Forty-five.

A young gentleman belonging to these expatrioted visitors, one evening interested Mrs. Eadie, to so great a degree, that she requested to be particularly introduced to him, and, in the course of conversation, she learnt that he was the son of her former lover, and that his father was still alive, and married to a French woman, his mother. The shock which this discovery produced was so violent that she was obliged to leave the room, and falling afterwards into bad health, her singular beauty began to fade with premature decay.

Her husband, to whom she disclosed her grief, endeavoured to soften it by all the means and blandishments in his power; but it continued so long inveterate, that he yielded himself to the common weakness of our nature, and growing peevish at her sorrow, chided her melancholy till their domestic felicity was mournfully impaired.

Such was the state in which Mrs. Charles Walkinshaw found Mrs. Eadie at their first acquaintance; and the disappointments and shadows which had fallen on the hopes of her own youth, soon led to an intimate and sympathetic friendship between them, the influence of which contributed at once to alleviate their reciprocal griefs, and to have the effect of reviving, in some degree, the withered affections of the minister. The gradual and irremediable progress of the consumption which preyed on his son, soon, however, claimed from that gentle and excellent man efforts of higher fortitude than he had before exerted, and from that inward exercise, and the sympathy which he felt for his wife’s maternal solicitude, Mrs. Walkinshaw had the satisfaction, in the course of a year, to see their mutual confidence and cordiality restored. But in the same period the boy died; and though the long foreseen event deeply affected his parents, it proved a fortunate occurrence to the widow. For the minister, to withdraw his reflections from the contemplation of his childless state, undertook the education of James, and Mrs. Eadie, partly from the same motives, but chiefly to enjoy the society of her friend, proposed to unite with her in the education of Mary. ‘We cannot tell,’ said she to Mrs. Walkinshaw, ‘what her lot may be; but let us do our best to prepare her for the world, and leave her fortunes, as they ever must be, in the hands of Providence. The penury and obscurity of her present condition ought to be no objection to bestowing on her all the accomplishments we have it in our power to give. How little likely was it, in my father’s time, that I should have been in this comparative poverty, and yet, but for those acquirements, which were studied for brighter prospects, how dark and sad would often have been my residence in this sequestered village!’