He left the kitchen, and Cosmo followed him. Lord Mergwain turned to his daughter and said,
“What does the man mean? I tell you, Joan, I am going at once. So don’t you side with him if he wants us to stop. He may have his reasons. I knew this confounded place before you were born, and I hate it.”
“Very good, papa!” replied Lady Joan, with a slight curl of her lip. “I don’t see why you should fancy I should like to stop.”
They had spoken aloud, regardless of the presence of Grizzie.
“May it be lang afore ye’re in a waur an’ a warmer place, my lord an’ my lady,” said the old woman, with the greatest politeness of manner she knew how to assume. When people were rude, she thought she had a right to be rude in return. But they took no more notice than if they had not heard.
CHAPTER XVI.
THROUGH THE DAY.
It was a glorious morning. The wind had fallen quite, and the sun was shining as if he would say, “Keep up your hearts; I am up here still. I have not forgotten you. By and by you shall see more of me.” But Nature lay dead, with a great white sheet cast over face and form. Not dead?—Just as much dead as ever was man, save for the inner death with which he kills himself, and which she cannot die. It is only to the eyes of his neighbours that the just man dies: to himself, and to those on the other side, he does not die, but is born instead: “He that liveth and believeth in me shall never die.” But the poor old lord felt the approaching dank and cold of the sepulchre as the end of all things to him—if indeed he would be permitted to lie there, and not have to get up and go to worse quarters still.
“I am sorry to have to tell you, my lord,” said the laird, re-entering, “that both our roads and your horses are in such a state that it is impossible you should proceed to-day.”
His guest turned white through all the discoloration of his countenance. His very soul grew too white to swear. He stood silent, his pendulous under lip trembling.
“Though the wind fell last night,” resumed the laird, “the snow came on again before the morning, and it seems impossible you should get through. To attempt it would be to run no small risk of your lives.”