United States or Belgium ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Florimel gave him a strange, half startled look. Hardly more than once since her father's funeral had she heard him alluded to, and now this fisher lad spoke of him as if he were still at Lossie House. Malcolm understood the look. "Ye mean, my leddy I ken what ye mean," he said. "I canna help it. For to lo'e onything is to ken't immortal. He's livin' to me, my lady."
It was centuries since Lossie House had begun to grow shabby and beautiful; and he to whom it now belonged was not one to discard the reverend for the neat, or let the vanity of possession interfere with the grandeur of inheritance. Beneath the tarnished gold of the clock, flushed with the red winter sun, he was at this moment grooming the coat of a powerful black mare.
His admiration of and consequent attachment to Florimel had been growing ever since his visit to Lossie House the preceding summer, and if he had said nothing quite definite, it was only because his aunt represented the impolicy of declaring himself just yet: she was too young. She judged thus, attributing her evident indifference to an incapacity as yet for falling in love.
She turned to her writing table, annoyed with herself that she could not find a fitting word wherewith to rebuke his presumption rudeness, was it not? and a feeling of angry shame arose in her, that she, the Marchioness of Lossie, had not dignity enough to prevent her own groom from treating her like a child. But he was far too valuable to quarrel with. She sat down and wrote a note.
"Confound it!" he cried at last, and sprang to his feet, but without taking his eyes from his picture, "what have I been doing all this time but making a portrait of you, MacPhail, and forgetting what you were there for! And yet," he went on, hesitating and catching up the miniature, "I have got a certain likeness! Yes, it must be so, for I see in it also a certain look of Lady Lossie. Well!
An ill bred youth once it was well for him that Malcolm was not near dared the evil word in his presence: a cloud swept across the old man's face, but he held his peace; and to the day of his death, which arrived in his ninety-first year, it never crossed his lips. He died with the Lossie pipes on his bed, Malcolm on one side of him, and Clementina on the other.
From that hour he was cleaner of lamps and candlesticks, as well as blower of bagpipes, to the House of Lossie; and had everything provided necessary to the performance of his duties with comfort and success.
The explanation was, that the marquis, their seafaring over, had at length persuaded Malcolm to don the highland attire: it was an old custom of the house of Lossie that its lord's henchman should be thus distinguished, and the marquis himself wore the kilt when on his western estates in the summer, also as often as he went to court, would indeed have worn it always but that he was no longer hardy enough.
"I will take her away," she said. "Do not expose her to your servants. Lady Lossie, my Lord Liftore is the father of this child: and if you can marry him after the way you have seen him use its mother, you are not too good for him, and I will trouble myself no more about you." "I know the author of this calumny!" cried Florimel, panting and flushed.
That same evening Duncan in full dress, claymore and dirk at his sides and carrying the great Lossie pipes, marched first through the streets of the upper, then through the closes of the lower, town, followed by the bellman, who had been appointed crier upon his disappearance.
Word Of The Day