“My lady’s in a dead faint!” she whispered, and left the room to get help.
Malcolm lifted Lady Florimel in his great arms, and bore her tenderly to her own apartment. There he left her to the care of her women, and returned to the chamber of death.
Meantime Mr Graham and Mr Soutar had come.
When Malcolm re-entered, the schoolmaster took him kindly by the arm and said:
“Malcolm, there can be neither place nor moment fitter for the solemn communication I am commissioned to make to you: I have, as in the presence of your dead father, to inform you that you are now Marquis of Lossie; and God forbid you should be less worthy as marquis than you have been as fisherman!”
Malcolm stood stupefied. For a while he seemed to himself to be turning over in his mind something he had heard read from a book, with a nebulous notion of being somehow concerned in it. The thought of his father cleared his brain. He ran to the dead body, kissed its lips, as he had once kissed the forehead of another, and falling on his knees, wept, he knew not for what. Presently, however, he recovered himself, rose, and, rejoining the two men, said—
“Gentlemen, hoo mony kens this turn o’ things?”
“None but Mr Morrison, Mrs Catanach, and ourselves—so far as I know,” answered Mr Soutar.
“And Miss Horn,” added Mr Graham. “She first brought out the truth of it, and ought to be the first to know of your recognition by your father.”
“I s’ tell her mysel’,” returned Malcolm. “But, gentlemen, I beg o’ ye, till I ken what I’m aboot an’ gie ye leave, dinna open yer moo’ to leevin’ cratur aboot this. There’s time eneuch for the warl’ to ken ’t.”