“Humph!” muttered Richie; “there go twa words to that bargain.”
He even meditated a joke on the means which he was conscious he possessed of baffling Lord Dalgarno's expectations; but there was something of keen and dangerous excitement in the eyes of the young nobleman, which prompted his discretion for once to rule his vit, and he only answered—
“God grant your lordship may well brook your new conquest—when you get it. I shall do your errand to my lord—whilk is to say,” he added internally, “he shall never hear a word of it from Richie. I am not the lad to put him in such hazard.”
Lord Dalgarno looked at him sharply for a moment, as if to penetrate the meaning of the dry ironical tone, which, in spite of Richie's awe, mingled with his answer, and then waved his hand, in signal he should pass on. He himself walked slowly till the trio were out of sight, then turned back with hasty steps to the door of the scrivener, which he had passed in his progress, knocked, and was admitted.
Lord Dalgarno found the man of law with the money-bags still standing before him; and it escaped not his penetrating glance, that Skurliewhitter was disconcerted and alarmed at his approach.
“How now, man,” he said; “what! hast thou not a word of oily compliment to me on my happy marriage?—not a word of most philosophical consolation on my disgrace at Court?—Or has my mien, as a wittol and discarded favourite, the properties of the Gorgon's head, the turbatae Palladis arma, as Majesty might say?”
“My lord, I am glad—my lord, I am sorry,”—answered the trembling scrivener, who, aware of the vivacity of Lord Dalgarno's temper, dreaded the consequence of the communication he had to make to him.
“Glad and sorry!” answered Lord Dalgarno. “That is blowing hot and cold, with a witness. Hark ye, you picture of petty-larceny personified—if you are sorry I am a cuckold, remember I am only mine own, you knave—there is too little blood in her cheeks to have sent her astray elsewhere. Well, I will bear mine antler'd honours as I may—gold shall gild them; and for my disgrace, revenge shall sweeten it. Ay, revenge—and there strikes the happy hour!”
The hour of noon was accordingly heard to peal from Saint Dunstan's. “Well banged, brave hammers!” said Lord Dalgarno, in triumph.—“The estate and lands of Glenvarloch are crushed beneath these clanging blows. If my steel to-morrow prove but as true as your iron maces to-day, the poor landless lord will little miss what your peal hath cut him out from.—The papers—the papers, thou varlet! I am to-morrow Northward, ho! At four, afternoon, I am bound to be at Camlet Moat, in the Enfield Chase. To-night most of my retinue set forward. The papers!—Come, dispatch.”
“My lord, the—the papers of the Glenvarloch mortgage—I—I have them not.”