--But why do I speak to him of all this," she said, checking
herself, and shrugging her shoulders with an expression of pity which
did not fall much short of scorn. "He hears me not--he thinks not of
me.--Is it not strange that the love of gathering gold should survive
the care to preserve both property and life?"
"Your father," said Lord Glenvarloch, who could not help respecting
the strong sense and feeling shown by this poor woman, even amidst all
her rudeness and severity, "your father seems to have his faculties
sufficiently alert when he is in the exercise of his ordinary pursuits
and functions. I wonder he is not sensible of the weight of your
arguments."
"Nature made him a man senseless of danger, and that insensibility is
the best thing I have derived from him," said she; "age has left him
shrewdness enough to tread his old beaten paths, but not to seek new
courses. The old blind horse will long continue to go its rounds in
the mill, when it would stumble in the open meadow."
"Daughter!--why, wench--why, housewife!" said the old man, awakening
out of some dream, in which he had been sneering and chuckling in
imagination, probably over a successful piece of roguery,--"go to
chamber, wench--go to chamber--draw bolts and chain--look sharp to
door--let none in or out but worshipful Master Grahame--I must take my
cloak, and go to Duke Hildebrod--ay, ay, time has been, my own warrant
was enough; but the lower we lie, the more are we under the wind.
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