Yet she maintained with a natural grace that sort of
good-breeding which belongs to the table; and it seemed to Nigel,
whether already prejudiced in her favour by the extraordinary
circumstances of their meeting, or whether really judging from what
was actually the fact, that he had seldom seen a young person comport
herself with more decorous propriety, mixed with ingenuous simplicity;
while the consciousness of the peculiarity of her situation threw a
singular colouring over her whole demeanour, which could be neither
said to be formal, nor easy, nor embarrassed, but was compounded of,
and shaded with, an interchange of all these three characteristics.
Wine was placed on the table, of which she could not be prevailed on
to taste a glass. Their conversation was, of course, limited by the
presence of the warder to the business of the table: but Nigel had,
long ere the cloth was removed, formed the resolution, if possible, of
making himself master of this young person's history, the more
especially as he now began to think that the tones of her voice and
her features were not so strange to him as he had originally supposed.
This, however, was a conviction which he adopted slowly, and only as
it dawned upon him from particular circumstances during the course of
the repast.
At length the prison-meal was finished, and Lord Glenvarloch began to
think how he might most easily enter upon the topic he meditated, when
the warder announced a visitor.
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