There stood his visitor
waiting for him, such as my reader knows her, black and gaunt and
grim, in a bay window, whose light almost surrounded her, so that
there was scarcely a shadow about her, and yet to the eyes of the
marquis she seemed wrapped in shadows. Mysterious as some sybil,
whose being held secrets the first whisper of which had turned her
old, but made her immortal, she towered before him, with her eyes
fixed upon him, and neither spoke nor moved.
"To what am I indebted--?" began his lordship; but Miss Horn
speedily interrupted his courtesy.
"Own to nae debt, my lord, till ye ken what it 's for," she said,
without a tone or inflection to indicate a pleasantry.
"Good!" returned his lordship, and waited with a smile. She promised
amusement, and he was ready for it--but it hardly came.
"Ken ye that han' o' wreet, my lord?" she inquired, sternly advancing
a step, and holding out a scrap of paper at arm's length, as if
presenting a pistol.
The marquis took it. In his countenance curiosity had mingled with
the expectation. He glanced at it. A shadow swept over his face but
vanished instantly: the mask of impervious non expression which a
man of his breeding always knows how to assume, was already on his
visage.
"Where did you get this?" he said quietly, with just the slightest
catch in his voice.
"I got it, my lord, whaur there's mair like it."
"Show me them."
"I hae shawn ye plenty for a swatch (pattern), my lord.
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