In other
respects, his address was gallant, free, and unencumbered either by
pride or ceremony--far remote certainly from the charge either of
haughty coldness or forward impetuosity; and so far his father had
justly freed him from the marked faults which he ascribed to the
manners of the prince and his favourite Buckingham.
While the old earl presented his young acquaintance Lord Glenvarloch
to his son, as one whom he would have him love and honour, Nigel
marked the countenance of Lord Dalgarno closely, to see if he could
detect aught of that secret dislike which the king had, in one of his
broken expostulations, seemed to intimate, as arising from a clashing
of interests betwixt his new friend and the great Buckingham. But
nothing of this was visible; on the contrary, Lord Dalgarno received
his new acquaintance with the open frankness and courtesy which makes
conquest at once, when addressed to the feelings of an ingenuous young
man.
It need hardly be told that his open and friendly address met equally
ready and cheerful acceptation from Nigel Olifaunt. For many months,
and while a youth not much above two-and-twenty, he had been
restrained by circumstances from the conversation of his equals. When,
on his father's sudden death, he left the Low Countries for Scotland,
he had found himself involved, to all appearance inextricably, with
the details of the law, all of which threatened to end in the
alienation of the patrimony which should support his hereditary rank.
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