He strode across the hall as he spoke; and the Lady smiled internally to observe how much his mind dwelt upon the prerogatives of birth, and endeavoured to establish his claims, however remote, to a share in them, at the very moment when he affected to hold them in contempt. It will easily be guessed, however, that she permitted no symptom to escape her that could show she was sensible of the weakness of her husband, a perspicacity which perhaps his proud spirit could not very easily have brooked.
As he returned from the extremity of the hall, to which he had stalked while in the act of vindicating the title of the house of Glendonwyne in its most remote branches to the full privileges of aristocracy, “Where,” he said, “is Wolf? I have not seen him since my return, and he was usually the first to welcome my home-coming.”
“Wolf,” said the Lady, with a slight degree of embarrassment, for which perhaps, she would have found it difficult to assign any reason even to herself, “Wolf is chained up for the present. He hath been surly to my page.”
“Wolf chained up--and Wolf surly to your page!” answered Sir Halbert Glendinning; “Wolf never was surly to any one; and the chain will either break his spirit or render him savage--So ho, there--set Wolf free directly.”
He was obeyed; and the huge dog rushed into the hall, disturbing, by his unwieldy and boisterous gambols, the whole economy of reels, rocks, and distaffs, with which the maidens of the household were employed when the arrival of their lord was a signal to them to withdraw, and extracting from Lilias, who was summoned to put them again in order, the natural observation, “That the Laird's pet was as troublesome as the lady's page.”
“And who is this page, Mary?” said the Knight, his attention again called to the subject by the observation of the waiting-woman,--“Who is this page, whom every one seems to weigh in the balance with my old friend and favourite, Wolf?--When did you aspire to the dignity of keeping a page, or who is the boy?”
“I trust, my Halbert,” said the Lady, not without a blush, “you will not think your wife entitled to less attendance than other ladies of her quality?”
“Nay, Dame Mary,” answered the Knight, “it is enough you desire such an attendant.--Yet I have never loved to nurse such useless menials--a lady's page--it may well suit the proud English dames to have a slender youth to bear their trains from bower to hall, fan them when they slumber, and touch the lute for them when they please to listen; but our Scottish matrons were wont to be above such vanities, and our Scottish youth ought to be bred to the spear and the stirrup.”