"I told her," said Richie, "about your warldly fortune, and sae forth,
something whilk is not truth just at this time; but which hath been
truth formerly, suld be truth now, and will be truth again,--and that
was, that you were in possession of your fair lands, whilk ye are but
in right of as yet. Pleasant communing we had on that and other
topics, until she showed the cloven foot, beginning to confer with me
about some wench that she said had a good-will to your lordship, and
fain she would have spoken with you in particular anent it; but when I
heard of such inklings, I began to suspect she was little better than
--whew! "--Here he concluded his narrative with a low, but very
expressive whistle.
"And what did your wisdom do in these circumstances?" said Lord Nigel,
who, notwithstanding his former resentment, could now scarcely forbear
laughing.
"I put on a look, my lord," replied Richie, bending his solemn brows,
"that suld give her a heartscald of walking on such errands. I laid
her enormities clearly before her, and I threatened her, in sae mony
words, that I would have her to the ducking-stool; and she, on the
contrair part, miscawed me for a forward northern tyke--and so we
parted never to meet again, as I hope and trust. And so I stood
between your lordship and that temptation, which might have been worse
than the ordinary, or the playhouse either; since you wot well what
Solomon, King of the Jews, sayeth of the strange woman--for, said I to
mysell, we have taken to dicing already, and if we take to drabbing
next, the Lord kens what we may land in!"
"Your impertinence deserves correction, but it is the last which, for
a time at least, I shall have to forgive--and I forgive it," said Lord
Glenvarloch; "and, since we are to part, Richie, I will say no more
respecting your precautions on my account, than that I think you might
have left me to act according to my own judgment.
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