"
"It's too late now anyhow. Come tomorrow evening, and I'll see if
I can't go with you."
"I canna, my leddy--that's the fash o' 't! I maun gang wi' Blue
Peter the morn's nicht. It was my last chance, I'm sorry to say."
"It's not of the slightest consequence," Lady Florimel returned;
and, bidding him goodnight, she shut and locked the door.
The same instant she vanished, for the tunnel was now quite dark.
Malcolm turned with a sigh, and took his way slowly homeward along
the top of the dune. All was dim about him--dim in the heavens,
where a thin veil of gray had gathered over the blue; dim on
the ocean, where the stars swayed and swung, in faint flashes of
dissolving radiance, cast loose like ribbons of seaweed: dim all
along the shore, where the white of the breaking wavelet melted
into the yellow sand; and dim in his own heart, where the manner
and words of the lady had half hidden her starry reflex with a
chilling mist.
CHAPTER XXIV: THE FEAST
To the entertainment which the marquis and Lady Florimel had
resolved to give, all classes and conditions in the neighbourhood
now began to receive invitations--shopkeepers, there called
merchants, and all socially above them, individually, by notes, in
the name of the marquis and Lady Florimel, but in the handwriting
of Mrs Crathie and her daughters; and the rest generally, by the
sound of bagpipes, and proclamation from the lips of Duncan MacPhail.
To the satisfaction of Johnny Bykes the exclusion of improper
persons was left in the hands of the gatekeepers.
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