'No, mistress,' he said, 'he's not.'
'Will he be in soon?' Alison forced herself to ask.
'Are you that anxious to see him?' said Nicol, with a leer. Alison drew herself up, with a passionate scorn, though she trembled in every limb.
'I have important business with Mr. Burns,' she faltered, 'and desire an interview.'
'Ay, oh, ay, I understand!' said Nicol. 'Well, mistress, come in and wait. Rob's door is never closed to bonny lasses.' He held the door wide. Behind his uncouth figure opened a vista of dingy passage, ending in a stair. Alison hesitated, half drew back; to cross that threshold was horrible to her; it seemed to put her in the power of men—of bad men. She held her hand to her heart—it fluttered so—and cast a longing look down the empty street. Oh, for some help! But no help came.
'If there is some room where I could wait—alone' ... she began, with an unlucky inflection on the last word, which Nicol's ear caught, and bitterly resented.
'Oh, ay, there's a room where you can be private,' answered Nicol, with suspicious blandness. 'Come up the stair.' He led the way, and Alison followed in the close, malodorous darkness.
Burns occupied two rooms on the first floor of the house, a parlour and sleeping-closet communicating. It was into the former of these that Nicol ushered Alison—a disorderly and ill-kept room, with a bottle and glasses on the table, and articles of a man's wearing apparel strewn about upon the chairs and floor.
''Tis no room for a fine miss like you,' said Nicol, with dangerous politeness. 'I'll take it upon myself to usher you into our sanctum sanctorum—'tis more genteel.'
'But if this is the parlour,' said Alison, looking round her nervously, and perhaps beginning a little to lose her head, 'if this is the parlour, had I not better remain here?'