“I would have thought the duty of keeping down a ploy of that kind would have been congenial to your own folk,” said Elchies, drenching his nostrils vulgarly with macabaw.
Argyll smiled. “You may give us credit for willingness to take our share of the responsibility of keeping Appin in order,” said he. “I should not wonder if there are half a hundred claymores with hands in them somewhere about our old barracks in Maltland. Eh! Simon?” and he smiled down the table to his Chamberlain.
“Five-and-forty, to be strict,” said the gentleman appealed to, and never a word more but a sudden stop, for his half-eaten plum had miraculously gone from his plate in the moment he had looked up at the Duke.
“Was't in your lands?” asked Elchies, indifferent, but willing to help on a good topic in a company where a variety of classes made the conversation anything but brisk.
“No,” said Argyll, “it was in Doom, the place of a small landowner, Lamond, whose castle—it is but a ramshackle old bigging now—you may have noticed on your left as you rode round. Lamond himself is a man I have a sort of softness for, though, to tell the truth, he has forced me into more litigation than he had money to pay for and I had patience to take any lasting interest in.”
“The Baron of Doom, is that the man?” cried Elchies, dryly. “Faith, I ken him well. Some years syne he was living months at a time in the Court of Session, and eating and sleeping in John's Coffee-house, and his tale—it's a gey old one—was that the litigation was always from the other side. I mind the man weel; Baron he called himself, though, if I mind right, his title had never been confirmed by the king n liberam baroniam He had no civil nor criminal jurisdiction. A black-avised man; the last time he came before me—Mr. Petullo, ye were there—it was in a long-standing case o' multiple poinding, and if I'm no'mistaken, a place ca'd Drimadry or Drimdarry, or something like that, changed hands ower the head o't.”
Petullo the writer, shrinking near the foot of the table in an adequate sense of his insignificance, almost choked himself by gulping the whole glass of wine at his lips in his confusion, and broke into a perspiration at the attention of the company thus drawn to him. He squeaked back an unintelligible acquiescence; and completed his own torture by upsetting a compote of fruit upon his black knee-breeches.
Opposite the unhappy lawyer sat a lady of extraordinary beauty—a haughty, cold, supercilious sort of beauty, remarkable mainly from the consciousness of its display. Her profile might have been cut from marble by a Greek; her neck and bust were perfect, but her shoulders, more angular than was common in that time of bottle-shape, were carried somewhat too grandly for a gentle nature. The cruelty of her character betrayed itself in a faint irrestrainable smile at Petullo's discomfiture, all the more cruel because his eyes were entreatingly on hers as he mopped up awkwardly the consequences of his gaucherie. She smiled, but that was not the strangest part of her conduct, for at the same time she nudged with her knee the Chamberlain who sat next to her, and who had brought her into the room. To cap the marvel, he showed no surprise, but took her hint with a conspirator's enforced composure. He looked at the little, dried-up, squeaking creature opposite, and—refused the lady the gratification of a single sign of the amusement she had apparently expected. She reddened, bit her nether lip, and “Your poor man of business is in a sore plight,” she whispered, using the name Sim with significant freedom.
“My dear Kate,” said he quietly, “as God's my judge, I can find nothing to laugh at in the misery of a poor wretch like yon.”
“That's the second time!” she whispered with well-concealed ill-humour, a smile compelled upon her face but a serpent in her voice.