was playing dreadful antics with understanding. There was she,
painted like a Jezebel, with gum-flowers on her head, as was her
custom every afternoon, sitting on a settee, for she was lame, and
in her hand she held a letter. "Sir," said she, as I came into the
room, "I want you to go instantly to that young fellow, your clerk,
(meaning Mr Lorimore, the schoolmaster, who was likewise session-
clerk and precentor,) and tell him I will give him a couple of
hundred pounds to marry Miss Malcolm without delay, and undertake to
procure him a living from some of my friends."

"Softly, my lady, you must first tell me the meaning of all this
haste of kindness," said I, in my calm methodical manner. At the
which she began to cry and sob, like a petted bairn, and to bewail
her ruin, and the dishonour of her family. I was surprised, and
beginning to be confounded; at length out it came. The flunkey had
that night brought two London letters from the Irville post, and
Kate Malcolm being out of the way when he came home, he took them
both in to her ladyship on the silver server, as was his custom; and
her ladyship, not jealousing that Kate could have a correspondence
with London, thought both the letters were for herself, for they
were franked; so, as it happened, she opened the one that was for
Kate, and this, too, from the young laird, her own son. She could
not believe her eyes when she saw the first words in his hand of
write; and she read, and she better read, till she read all the
letter, by which she came to know that Kate and her darling were
trysted, and that this was not the first love-letter which had
passed between them. She, therefore, tore it in pieces, and sent
for me, and screamed for Kate; in short, went, as it were, off at
the head, and was neither to bind nor to hold on account of this
intrigue, as she, in her wrath, stigmatised the innocent gallanting