"Mr. Cairns is in the dining-room, my lord."
"Bah! A low pettifogger, with the soul of a bullock. Don't let me hear the fellow's name. I've been bad enough, God knows, but I haven't sunk to the level of his help yet. If he's God Almighty's factor, and the saw holds, 'Like master, like man,' well, I would rather have nothing to do with either."
"That is, if you had the choice, my lord," said Mrs. Courthope, her temper yielding somewhat, though in truth his speech was not half so irreverent as it seemed to her.
"Tell him to go to hell. No, don't: set him down to a bottle of port and a great sponge-cake, and you needn't tell him to go to heaven, for he'll be there already. Why, Mrs. Courthope, the fellow isn't a gentleman. And yet all he cares for the cloth is that he thinks it makes a gentleman of him—as if anything in heaven, earth or hell could work that miracle!"
In the middle of the night, as Malcolm sat by his bed, thinking him asleep, the marquis spoke suddenly. "You must go to Aberdeen to-morrow, Malcolm," he said.
"Verra weel, my lord."
"And bring Mr. Glennie, the lawyer, back with you."
"Yes, my lord."
"Go to bed, then."
"I wad raither bide, my lord. I cudna sleep a wink for wantin' to be back aside ye."