"How can I tell your lordship?" answered his attendant. "I thank God I
know nothing of her likings, or mislikings--only her coffin is there;
and I leave your lordship to guess what a live person has to do with a
coffin. As little as a ghost with a lantern, I trow."
"What reason," repeated Nigel, "can a creature, so young and so
beautiful, have already habitually to contemplate her bed of last-long
rest?"
"In troth, I kenna, my lord," answered Moniplies; "but there is the
coffin, as they told me who have seen it: it is made of heben-wood,
with silver nails, and lined all through with three-piled damask,
might serve a princess to rest in."
"Singular," said Nigel, whose brain, like that of most active young
spirits, was easily caught by the singular and the romantic; "does she
not eat with the family?"
"Who!--she!"--exclaimed Moniplies, as if surprised at the question;
"they would need a lang spoon would sup with her, I trow. Always there
is something put for her into the Tower, as they call it, whilk is a
whigmaleery of a whirling-box, that turns round half on the tae side
o' the wa', half on the tother."
"I have seen the contrivance in foreign nunneries," said the Lord of
Glenvarloch. "And is it thus she receives her food?"
"They tell me something is put in ilka day, for fashion's sake,"
replied the attendant; "but it's no to be supposed she would consume
it, ony mair than the images of Bel and the Dragon consumed the dainty
vivers that were placed before them.
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