With a velvet mantle floating from his left shoulder, a long yellow feather waving over the right, and having in his carriage all that indefinable air which the consciousness of rank and spirit seldom fail to impart, Clermistonlee walked hastily up the street, poking his nose into the hood of every woman that passed. He kissed his hand to fair Annie Laurie, as she sailed out of Peebles Wynd with her fan spread before, and her vast fardingale behind her: he made a long step to cross the grave of Merlin, (whose stone coffin for ages marked the street he had been the first to pave), he roundly cursed the sooty Tronmen who did not make sufficient way for him, kicked a water barrel ten yards off, and laid his cane across the shoulders of the aquarius, its owner, bowed to the gay fellows under Blair's pillars, and with the air of a man who knew he was pretty well observed, made a pirouette near the cathedral, surveying all around him, but without seeing the person of whom he was in quest.
"Juden," said he to that respectable personage, who stuck close to his skirts, "I see not this knave, with whom I would fain come to blows while my spirit is in its bitterest mood."
"Right, my lord; but I warrant they will be cooing and billing on the Castle-hill yet."
"They--whom? Dost mean to tell me that Lilian Napier hath appeared there with her spark?"
"Hath she no? By my faith, 'tis the toun gossip," said Juden, who, notwithstanding his devotion to his master, thought there could be no harm in rousing his fierce spirit to the utmost. "Mony a summer even in the balmy gloaming have they been seen in the King's Park, where none but lovers gang, as your lordship kens, for there yoursel and bonny Lady Alison----"
"Silence!" said Clermistonlee, through his clenched teeth; "always these memories--ever reminding me of her whom I would wish to forget for ever, as the dead should be forgotten. But the park and the hill!--Gadzooks, varlet! I believe thou liest, for Fenton hath not known her many months, I believe. I hope, too, the girl is over-modest thus to exhibit herself. Come on; by all the devils, come on!" and, giddy from passion and the fumes of his last night's wine, he turned abruptly, and made a circuit of the Parliament Square. Though it was false that Lilian had ever appeared on those solitary promenades, which then were the usual resort of avowed lovers (for such was the custom of the time), and though Clermistonlee could scarcely believe the tidings of Juden, they served the end that worthy aimed at, and became an additional gall to his spirit, and whet to his ferocity.