"Hear til him," he whispered to Sir Arthur Wardour--"hear til him; the poor mon's gone clean gyte with his saxpennies and his old penny bodies! odd, but it gars me laugh whiles!"
Both Sir Arthur and his lovely daughter, Isabel, smiled at the earnestness of the old man, and slipping some money into his hand, the latter bade him come up to the castle in the morning.
At this moment radiant in _spirituelle_ beauty, glorious Die Vernon, like another Grace Greenwood, swept past me, followed by Rashleigh, and half a score of the Osbaldistons. She was, indeed, a lovely creature. The dark-green riding-dress she wore fitting so perfectly her light, elegant figure, served but to enhance the brilliancy of her complexion, blooming with health and exercise. Her long black hair, free from the little hat which hung carelessly upon her arm, fell around her in beautiful profusion, and even the golden-tipped riding-whip she held so gracefully in her little hand, seemed as a wand to draw her worshipers around her.
Turning suddenly and finding herself so closely followed by Rashleigh, her beautiful eyes flashed disdainfully, and linking her arm within that of Clara Mowbray, who, with the gay party from St. Ronan's Well, were just entering the saloon, she waved her hand to her cousin, forbidding his nearer approach, and, with the step of a deer, she was gone.
An oath whistled through the teeth of Rashleigh, and his dark features contracted into a terrible frown.
"Hout, mon--dinna be fashed! Bide a bit--bide a bit! as my father, the deacon--"
"Ah, Bailie, are you there?" cried Rashleigh, impatiently; "why I thought you were hanging from the trees around the cave of your robber kinsman, Rob."
Ere the worthy Nicol Jarvie could reply to this uncourteous address, the smiling Mr. Winterblossom approached, and in the name of the goddess, Lady Penelope Penfeather, commanded the presence of the angered Rashleigh at the shrine of her beauty. This changed the current of his thoughts, and with all that grace of manner and eloquence of lip and eye, which no one knew better how to assume, he followed to the little group of which the Lady Penelope and her rival, Lady Binks, formed the attraction. But whatever may have been the gallant things he was saying, they were soon ended in the bustle consequent upon the sudden rushing in of the brave Captain McTurk, followed by the enraged Meg Dods, with no less a weapon in her hand than a broom-stick, with which she was striving to belabor the shoulders of the unhappy McTurk.
