``Earl!--Earl of Glenallan!''
``He who was called William Lord Geraldin,'' said the Earl; ``and whom his mother's death has made Earl of Glenallan.''
``Open the bole,'' said the old woman firmly and hastily to her daughter-in-law, ``open the bole wi' speed, that I may see if this be the right Lord Geraldin--the son of my mistress--him that I received in my arms within the hour after he was born--him that has reason to curse me that I didna smother him before the hour was past!''
The window, which had been shut in order that a gloomy twilight might add to the solemnity of the funeral meeting, was opened as she commanded, and threw a sudden and strong light through the smoky and misty atmosphere of the stifling cabin.Falling in a stream upon the chimney, the rays illuminated, in the way that Rembrandt would have chosen, the features of the unfortunate nobleman, and those of the old sibyl, who now, standing upon her feet, and holding him by one hand, peered anxiously in his features with her light-blue eyes, and holding her long and withered fore-finger within a small distance of his face, moved it slowly as if to trace the outlines and reconcile what she recollected with that she now beheld.As she finished her scrutiny, she said, with a deep sigh, ``It's a sair--sair change; and wha's fault is it?--but that's written down where it will be remembered--it's written on tablets of brass with a pen of steel, where all is recorded that is done in the flesh.
--And what,'' she said after a pause, ``what is Lord Geraldin seeking from a poor auld creature like me, that's dead already, and only belongs sae far to the living that she isna yet laid in the moulds?''
``Nay,'' answered Lord Glenallan, ``in the name of Heaven, why was it that you requested so urgently to see me?--and why did you back your request by sending a token which you knew well I dared not refuse?''
As he spoke thus, he took from his purse the ring which Edie Ochiltree had delivered to him at Glenallan House.The sight of this token produced a strange and instantaneous effect upon the old woman.The palsy of fear was immediately added to that of age, and she began instantly to search her pockets with the tremulous and hasty agitation of one who becomes first apprehensive of having lost something of great importance;--then, as if convinced of the reality of her fears, she turned to the Earl, and demanded, ``And how came ye by it then?--how came ye by it? I thought I had kept it sae securely--what will the Countess say?''
``You know,'' said the Earl, ``at least you must have heard, that my mother is dead.''
``Dead! are ye no imposing upon me? has she left a' at last, lands and lordship and lineages?''
``All, all,'' said the Earl, ``as mortals must leave all human vanities.''
``I mind now,'' answered Elspeth--``I heard of it before but there has been sic distress in our house since, and my memory is sae muckle impaired--But ye are sure your mother, the Lady Countess, is gane hame?''
The Earl again assured her that her former mistress was no more.
``Then,'' said Elspeth, ``it shall burden my mind nae langer!
--When she lived, wha dared to speak what it would hae displeased her to hae had noised abroad? But she's gane--and Iwill confess all.''
Then turning to her son and daughter-in-law, she commanded them imperatively to quit the house, and leave Lord Geraldin (for so she still called him) alone with her.But Maggie Mucklebackit, her first burst of grief being over, was by no means disposed in her own house to pay passive obedience to the commands of her mother-in-law, an authority which is peculiarly obnoxious to persons in her rank of life, and which she was the more astonished at hearing revived, when it seemed to have been so long relinquished and forgotten.
``It was an unco thing,'' she said, in a grumbling tone of voice,--for the rank of Lord Glenallan was somewhat imposing --``it was an unco thing to bid a mother leave her ain house wi' the tear in her ee, the moment her eldest son had been carried a corpse out at the door o't.''
