THE MARQUIS OF LOSSIE. by George MacDonald



CHAPTER I: THE STABLE YARD


It was one of those exquisite days that come in every winter, in
which it seems no longer the dead body, but the lovely ghost of
summer. Such a day bears to its sister of the happier time something
of the relation the marble statue bears to the living form; the
sense it awakes of beauty is more abstract, more ethereal; it lifts
the soul into a higher region than will summer day of lordliest
splendour. It is like the love that loss has purified.

Such, however, were not the thoughts that at the moment occupied
the mind of Malcolm Colonsay. Indeed, the loveliness of the morning
was but partially visible from the spot where he stood--the stable
yard of Lossie House, ancient and roughly paved. It was a hundred
years since the stones had been last relaid and levelled: none of
the horses of the late Marquis minded it but one--her whom the
young man in Highland dress was now grooming--and she would have
fidgeted had it been an oak floor. The yard was a long and wide
space, with two storied buildings on all sides of it. In the centre
of one of them rose the clock, and the morning sun shone red on
its tarnished gold. It was an ancient clock, but still capable of
keeping good time--good enough, at least, for all the requirements
of the house, even when the family was at home, seeing it never
stopped, and the church clock was always ordered by it.