“Nothing, my lady—or himself either. I hold the handle of the business. But you needn’t think it’s from any favour for him! I don’t care what comes of him. There’s no love lost between him and me. You heard yourself this very day, how he abused both me and my poor dog who is now lying dead on the bed beside me!”
“You don’t expect me to believe such nonsense as that!” said Lady Florimel.
There was no reply. The voice had departed; and the terrors of her position returned with gathered force in the desolation of redoubled silence that closes around an unanswered question. A trembling seized her, and she could hardly persuade herself that she was not slipping by slow inches down the incline.
Minutes that seemed hours passed. At length she heard feet and voices, and presently her father called her name, but she was too agitated to reply except with a moan. A voice she was yet more glad to hear followed—the voice of Malcolm, ringing confident and clear.
“Haud awa’, my lord,” it said, “an’ lat me come at her.”
“You’re not going down so!” said the marquis angrily. “You’ll slip to a certainty, and send her to the bottom.”
“My lord,” returned Malcolm, “I ken what I’m aboot, an’ ye dinna. I beg ’at ye’ll haud ootby, an’ no upset the lassie, for somethin’ maun depen’ upon hersel’. Jist gang awa’ back into that ither vout, my lord. I insist upo’ ’t.”
His lordship obeyed, and Malcolm, who had been pulling off his boots as he spoke, now addressed Mair.
“Here, Peter!” he said, “haud on to the tail o’ that rope like grim deith.—Na, I dinna want it roon’ me; it’s to gang roon’ her. But dinna ye haul, for it micht hurt her, an’ she’ll lippen to me and come up o’ hersel’. Dinna be feart, my bonny leddy: there’s nae danger—no ae grain. I’m comin’.”
With the rope in his hand, he walked down the incline, and kneeling by Florimel, close to the broken wall, proceeded to pass the rope under and round her waist, talking to her, as he did so, in the tone of one encouraging a child.