At any subsequent period, when Geordie’s yearly pension was due, he generally contrived to call for Lady Maitland when Sir Marmaduke was out of the way. He took always the same amount of money. The only departure he made from this custom was in the year of his sister’s marriage, when he asked and got a sum of forty pounds, twenty of which he gave to her. Her husband, George Dempster, had at one time been a butler in Lady Maitland’s family; but her ladyship did not know either that he was acquainted with George Willison, or that he was now married to his sister. We may explain that George Dempster was in the family at the time when Geordie brought home the child; and, in some of his conversations with his wife, he did not hesitate to say that he suspected that Lady Maitland bore a child to a French lackey, who was then about the house; but the child never made its appearance, and strong grounds existed for believing that it was made away with. Geordie himself sometimes heard these stories; but he affected to be altogether indifferent to them, putting a silly question to Dempster, as if he had just awakened from sleep, and had forgot the thread of the discourse, and, when he got his answer, pretending to fall asleep again.
In the meantime the young foundling, who had been christened Jessie Warriston, by Geordie’s desire, grew up to womanhood. She became, in every respect, the picture of her mother—tall and noble in her appearance. Her hair was jet black, and her eye partook of the same colour, with a lustre that dazzled the beholder. Her manners were cheerful and kind; and she was grateful for the most ordinary attentions paid to her by Widow Willison, or her daughter—the latter of whom often took her out with her to the house of Ludovic Brodie, commonly called Birkiehaugh, a nephew of Sir Marmaduke Maitland, with whom George Dempster was serving as butler, in his temporary house, about a mile south from Edinburgh.
This young laird had seen Jessie Warriston, and been struck with her noble appearance. He asked Dempster who she was, and was told that she was a young person who lived with one of his wife’s friends. Brodie, whose character was that of a most unprincipled rake, often endeavoured to make up to Jessie, as she went backwards and forwards between his house and Widow Willison’s. In all endeavours he had been unsuccessful; for Jessie—independently of being aware, from the admonitions of the pious Widow Willison, that an acquaintanceship with a person above her degree was improper and dangerous—had a lover of her own, a young man of the name of William Forbes, a clerk to Mr. Carstairs, an advocate, at that time in great practice at the Scotch bar. Forbes generally accompanied Jessie when she went out at night, after she told him that Brodie had insulted her; and she discontinued her visits to George Dempster.
Foiled by the precautions which Jessie took to avoid him, Brodie only became more determined to get his object gratified. He meditated various schemes for this purpose. He turned off Dempster, who might have been a spy upon his conduct; and it was remarked, by the people living near to Widow Willison’s, that a woman, rolled up in a cloak, had been seen watching about the door. Geordie, though apparently not listening to any of these transactions, was all alive to the interests of his foundling. He kept a constant eye upon the neighbourhood, and did not fail to observe, that a woman, of the description stated, came always, at a certain hour, near his mother’s door, about the time that Jessie generally went out.
Now, Geordie was determined to know, by some means, who this woman was; and, as the day was drawing in, he thought he might disguise himself in such a way as to get into conversation with her.
Having equipped himself in the garb of a cadie, of more respectable appearance than he himself exhibited, and put a black patch over his eye, and a broad slouched hat over his head, Geordie took his station to watch the woman in the cloak.
“Wha may ye be waitin’ for?” said Geordie, in a feigned voice, to the woman, whom he at last found.
“Are you von of de cadies?” asked the woman.
“Yes,” answered Geordie.
“Do you live in de neighbourhood?” asked again the woman.