Doubtless Lady Stair was too clever a woman not
to have a shrewd suspicion that her daughter's attachment to Lord
Rutherfurd was something more than a mere piece of girlish sentiment;
but if she did know, the knowledge did not overburden her. Obviously
another suitor must be provided without loss of time. The expulsive
power of a new affection must promptly be tried on the love-sick girl,
whose pale face was in itself enough to betray the condition of her
heart.
To Lord Stair belonged the credit of finding one who was approved of by
Lady Stair as an entirely suitable match. David Dunbar, younger, of
Baldoon in Wigtonshire, a solid young man with a good, solid fortune,
was the son-in-law of their choice; and Lady Stair found no difficulty
in getting him to see that her beautiful daughter was undoubtedly the
right wife for him.
Contemporary history furnishes us with no description of Andrew, Lord
Rutherfurd, but we learn from the Edinburgh printer who furnished the
Dunbar family with an enthusiastic elegy on the death of David Dunbar of
Baldoon that apparently he was a little red-faced man, ardently keen
about agricultural pursuits, and deeply interested in the breeding of
cattle and horses. Moreover, he was a student, well versed in modern
history and in architecture, and with a good head for arithmetic (did he
add up the figures of the fortune of Janet Dalrymple entirely to his own
satisfaction?), and he had the additional amazing distinction chronicled
by his eulogising biographer--
"He learned the French, be't spoken to his praise,
In very little more than forty days.
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