A
moment, and Lady Florimel was flitting across the room.
"Papa! papa!" she cried, and, throwing her arm over him, laid her
cheek to his.
The marquis could not return her embrace; he could only receive
her into the depths of his shining tearful eyes.
"Flory!" he murmured, "I'm going away. I'm going--I've got--to
make an--apology. Malcolm, be good--"
The sentence remained unfinished. The light paled from his countenance
--he had to carry it with him. He was dead.
Lady Florimel gave a loud cry. Mrs Courthope ran to her assistance.
"My lady's in a dead faint!" she whispered, and left the room to
get help.
Malcolm lifted Lady Florimel in his great arms, and bore her tenderly
to her own apartment. There he left her to the care of her women,
and returned to the chamber of death.
Meantime Mr Graham and Mr Soutar had come. When Malcolm re-entered,
the schoolmaster took him kindly by the arm and said:
"Malcolm, there can be neither place nor moment fitter for the
solemn communication I am commissioned to make to you: I have, as
in the presence of your dead father, to inform you that you are
now Marquis of Lossie; and God forbid you should be less worthy as
marquis than you have been as fisherman!"
Malcolm stood stupefied. For a while he seemed to himself to be
turning over in his mind something he had heard read from a book,
with a nebulous notion of being somehow concerned in it. The thought
of his father cleared his brain.
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