His term of sincere mourning, joined to injured pride, and the
swelling of the heart under unexpected and undeserved misfortune,
together with the uncertainty attending the issue of his affairs, had
induced the young Lord of Glenvarloch to live, while in Scotland, in a
very private and reserved manner. How he had passed his time in
London, the reader is acquainted with. But this melancholy and
secluded course of life was neither agreeable to his age nor to his
temper, which was genial and sociable. He hailed, therefore, with
sincere pleasure, the approaches which a young man of his own age and
rank made towards him; and when he had exchanged with Lord Dalgarno
some of those words and signals by which, as surely as by those of
freemasonry, young people recognise a mutual wish to be agreeable to
each other, it seemed as if the two noblemen had been acquainted for
some time.
Just as this tacit intercourse had been established, one of Lord
Huntinglen's attendants came down the alley, marshalling onwards a man
dressed in black buckram, who followed him with tolerable speed,
considering that, according to his sense of reverence and propriety,
he kept his body bent and parallel to the horizon from the moment that
he came in sight of the company to which he was about to be presented.
"Who is this, you cuckoldy knave," said the old lord, who had retained
the keen appetite and impatience of a Scottish baron even during a
long alienation from his native country; "and why does John Cook, with
a murrain to him, keep back dinner?"
"I believe we are ourselves responsible for this person's intrusion,"
said George Heriot; "this is the scrivener whom we desired to see.
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