“Not so, Mr. Lovel; many years of deserved happiness, founded on a more rational basis than your present wishes, are, I trust, before, you. But it is full time, to finish this conversation. I cannot force you to adopt my advice--I cannot shut the door of my father’s house against the preserver of his life and mine; but the sooner Mr. Lovel can teach his mind to submit to the inevitable disappointment of wishes which have been so rashly formed, the more highly he will rise in my esteem--and, in the meanwhile, for his sake as well as mine, he must excuse my putting an interdict upon conversation on a subject so painful.”
A servant at this moment announced that Sir Arthur desired to speak to Mr. Oldbuck in his dressing-room.
“Let me show you the way,” said Miss Wardour, who apparently dreaded a continuation of her tete-a-tete with Lovel, and she conducted the Antiquary accordingly to her father’s apartment.
Sir Arthur, his legs swathed in flannel, was stretched on the couch. “Welcome, Mr. Oldbuck,” he said; “I trust you have come better off than I have done from the inclemency of yesterday evening?”
“Truly, Sir Arthur, I was not so much exposed to it--I kept terra firma--you fairly committed yourself to the cold night-air in the most literal of all senses. But such adventures become a gallant knight better than a humble esquire,--to rise on the wings of the night-wind--to dive into the bowels of the earth. What news from our subterranean Good Hope!--the terra incognita of Glen-Withershins?”
“Nothing good as yet,” said the Baronet, turning himself hastily, as if stung by a pang of the gout; “but Dousterswivel does not despair.”
“Does he not?” quoth Oldbuck; “I do though, under his favour. Why, old Dr. H--n* told me, when I was in Edinburgh, that we should never find copper enough, judging from the specimens I showed him, to make a pair of sixpenny knee-buckles--and I cannot see that those samples on the table below differ much in quality.”
* Probably Dr. Hutton, the celebrated geologist.
“The learned doctor is not infallible, I presume?”
“No; but he is one of our first chemists; and this tramping philosopher of yours--this Dousterswivel--is, I have a notion, one, of those learned adventurers described by Kirchner, Artem habent sine arte, partem sine parte, quorum medium est mentiri, vita eorum mendicatum ire; that is to say, Miss Wardour”--