Lilias did not answer; she looked thoughtfully along the green, melancholy terrace, thinking of Lucy Murray in her solitude, and of Charlie Graeme the household traitor, whose honest, fresh, ingenuous son had never heard of Murrayshaugh.
The faint sound of a lifted latch aroused her attention and she looked round. A little old woman, with impatient, vivacious features and quick pattering steps, came along the grass-grown path. She had heard voices without, and had issued forth in evident wrath to avenge the intrusion on her territory.
“Oh, mem, I beg your pardon!” she exclaimed, as she made a dead stop in front of Lilias. “If I didna think it was Robbie Carlyle’s cuddie and that tinkler of a callant, Peter, chasing him! but ye’ll be the young lady of Mossgray?”
Lilias took the designation with a smile.
“This is Murrayshaugh, is it not?” she asked.
But the little woman’s eyes were so busy that she lost the question. She was examining with singular curiosity the face of Halbert Graeme.
“This is Murrayshaugh?” repeated Lilias.
“Ay, it’s Murrayshaugh,” was the answer emphatically given, while the speaker looked wrathfully at Halbert Graeme.
Halbert was considerably astonished; but the unconscious natural prepossessing smile remained upon his truthful face. It was a very honest straightforward countenance; what we call “aefauld,” in Scotland—and the old woman gradually melted under the frank, good-humoured smile.
“They ca’ me Eesabell Broun,” she said abruptly, “and I keep the house. I’ve lived here a’ my days, and if ye would like to see it, I’ve nae objections.”