"And your cousin, Napier, the captain?"
"Hath fled to the west—but that person—he is certainly listening—adieu!"
"Remember me?"
"How can I forget?" she replied, naïvely, as she arose to withdraw; but lo! the person started forward, and her hand, which was yet glowing with Walter's kiss, was rudely seized in the rough grasp of the intruder. Fear utterly deprived the poor girl of power to cry out.
"Aunt Grisel—dear grand-aunt Grisel!" was all she could gasp, and she would have sunk on the pavement had not the eavesdropper supported her. He was a tall, stout gallant, and muffled, by having the skirt of his cloak drawn over his right shoulder, so as to conceal part of his face, then the fashionable mode of disguise for roués and intriguantes.
"Lilian Napier, by all the devils!" cried Lord Clermistonlee, in a tone of astonishment: he was considerably intoxicated, having just left the neighbouring house, where he had been drinking for the last six hours with the Lord President Lockhart. "Now I thought thee only some poor mud-lark, or errant bona-roba. This is truly glorious. Thou shalt come with me, my beauty. What, you will scream? Nay, minx, then you have but a choice between the stone vaults of the Tolbooth and the tapestried chambers of my poor old houses of Drumsheugh and Clermistonlee—ha, ha!" and he began to sing the old ditty:—
"There was a young lassie lo'ed by an auld man——"
"Help, Finland, help, for the love of God!" cried Lilian, dreadfully agitated, but the Lord continued:—
"With a heylillelu and a how-lo-lan!
Her cheeks were rose red, and her eyne were sky-blue,
With a how-lo-lan and a heylillelu!
And this lassie was lo'ed by this canty old man,
With a heylillelu and a how-lo-lan!"
"By all the devils! I can sing as well as my Lord the President, though he hath three crown bowls of punch under his doublet."