"Your lordship will be wanting something?" he said. "I heard your voice. Was it to light the lights? or would it be for tea, or——"
He gave a sort of scared glance round the room, and clung to the handle of the door, but his eyes did not seem to distinguish the new-comer in the failing twilight.
"I did not call; but you may light the candles," Walter said, feeling his own excitement, which had been subsiding, spring up again, in his curiosity to see what Symington's sensations would be.
The old man came in reluctantly. He muttered something uneasily in his throat. "I would have brought a light if I had known. You might have cried down the stairs. It's just out of all order to light the lights this gate," he muttered. But he did not disobey. He went round the room lighting one after another of the twinkling candles in the sconces. Now and then he gave a scared and tremulous look about him; but he took no further notice. The stranger sat quite composedly, looking on with a smile while this process was gone through. Then Symington came up to the table in front of which Walter still stood.
"Take a seat, my lord, take a seat," he said. "It's no canny to see you standing just glowering frae ye, as we say in the country. You look just as if you were seeing something. And take you your French fallow that you were reading last night. It's better when you're by yourself in an auld house like this, that has an ill-name, always to do something to occupy your thoughts."
Walter looked at the stranger, who made a little gesture of intelligence with a nod and smile; and old Symington followed the look, still with that scared expression on his face.
"Your lordship looks for all the world as if you were staring at something in that big chair; you must be careful to take no fancies in your head," the old servant said. He gave a little nervous laugh, and retreated somewhat quickly towards the door. "And talk no more to yourself; it's an ill habit," he added, with one more troubled glance round him as he closed the door.
CHAPTER XIII.
"And so you have made acquaintance with the young lord—tell us what kind of person he is, Mrs. Forrester—tell us what you think of him, Oona."