Alicia was received with affection by her grandfather; and she laboured to drive away the heavy despondency which pressed on her spirits by studying his taste and humours, and striving to contribute to his comfort and amusement.

Sir Duncan had chosen the time of Alicia’s arrival to transact some business; and instead of returning immediately to the Highlands, he determined to remain some weeks in Edinburgh for her amusement.

But, little attractive as dissipation had been, it was now absolutely repugnant to Alicia.  She loathed the idea of mixing in scenes of amusement with a heart incapable of joy, a spirit indifferent to every object that surrounded her; and in solitude alone she expected gradually to regain her peace of mind.

In the amusements of the gay season of Edinburgh, Alicia expected to find all the vanity, emptiness, and frivolity of London dissipation, without its varied brilliancy and elegant luxury; yet, so much was it the habit of her mind to look to the fairest side of things, and to extract some advantage from every situation in which she was placed, that pensive and thoughtful as was her disposition, the discriminating only perceived her deep dejection, while all admired her benevolence of manner and unaffected desire to please.

By degrees Alicia found that in some points she had been inaccurate in her idea of the style of living of those who form the best society of Edinburgh.  The circle is so confined that its members are almost universally known to each other; and those various gradations of gentility, from the city’s snug party to the duchess’s most crowded assembly, all totally distinct and separate, which are to be met with in London, have no prototype in Edinburgh.  There the ranks and fortunes being more on an equality, no one is able greatly to exceed his neighbour in luxury and extravagance.  Great magnificence, and the consequent gratification produced by the envy of others being out of the question, the object for which a reunion of individuals was originally invented becomes less of a secondary consideration.  Private parties for the actual purpose of society and conversation are frequent, and answer the destined end; and in the societies of professed amusement are to be met the learned, the studious, and the rational; not presented as shows to the company by the host and hostess, but professedly seeking their own gratification.

Still the lack of beauty, fashion, and elegance disappoint the stranger accustomed to their brilliant combination in a London world.  But Alicia had long since sickened in the metropolis at the frivolity of beauty, the heartlessness of fashion, and the insipidity of elegance; and it was a relief to her to turn to the variety of character she found beneath the cloak of simple, eccentric, and sometimes coarse manners.