up a winding stone stair, across a lobby, and through room after room.
"It will pe some glamour, sure, Malcolm!" said Duncan in a whisper as they went.
Requested at length to seat themselves in an ante-room, the air of which was filled with the sounds and odors of the neighboring feast, they waited again through what seemed to the impatient Duncan an hour of slow vacuity; but at last they were conducted into the dining-room. Following their guide, Malcolm led the old man to the place prepared for him at the upper part of the room, where the floor was raised a step or two.
Duncan would, I fancy, even unprotected by his blindness, have strode unabashed into the very halls of heaven. As he entered there was a hush, for his poverty-stricken age and dignity told for one brief moment; then the buzz and laughter recommenced, an occasional oath emphasizing itself in the confused noise of the talk, the gurgle of wine, the ring of glass and the chink of china.
In Malcolm's vision, dazzled and bewildered at first, things soon began to arrange themselves. The walls of the room receded to their proper distance, and he saw that they were covered with pictures of ladies and gentlemen gorgeously attired; the ceiling rose and settled into the dim show of a sky, amongst the clouds of which the shapes of very solid women and children disported themselves; while about the glittering table, lighted by silver candelabra with many branches, he distinguished the gayly-dressed company, round which, like huge ill-painted butterflies, the liveried footmen hovered. His eyes soon found the lovely face of Lady Florimel, but after the first glance he dared hardly look again. Whether its radiance had any smallest source in the pleasure of appearing like a goddess in the eyes of her humble servant, I dare not say, but more lucent she could hardly have appeared had she been the princess in a fairy tale, about to marry her much-thwarted prince. She wore far too many jewels for one so young, for her father had given her all that had belonged to her mother, as well as some family diamonds, and her inexperience knew no reason why she should not wear them. The diamonds flashed and sparkled and glowed on a white rather than fair neck, which, being very much uncollared, dazzled Malcolm far more than the jewels. Such a form of enhanced loveliness, reflected for the first time in the pure mirror of a high-toned manhood, may well be to such a youth as that of an angel with whom he has henceforth to wrestle in deadly agony until the final dawn for lofty condition and gorgeous circumstance, while combining to raise a woman to an ideal height, ill suffice to lift her beyond love, or shield the lowliest man from the arrows of her radiation: they leave her human still. She was talking and laughing with a young man of weak military aspect, whose eyes gazed unshrinking on her beauty.
The guests were not numerous: a certain bold-faced countess, the fire in whose eyes had begun to tarnish, and the natural lines of whose figure were vanishing in expansion; the soldier, her nephew, a wasted elegance; a long, lean man, who dawdled with what he ate, and drank as if his bones thirsted; an elderly, broad, red-faced, bull-necked baron of the Hanoverian type; and two neighboring lairds and their wives, ordinary, and well pleased to be at the marquis's table.
Although the waiting were as many as the waited upon, Malcolm, who was keen-eyed and had a passion for service—a thing unintelligible to the common mind—soon spied an opportunity of making himself useful. Seeing one of the men, suddenly called away, set down a dish of fruit just as the countess was expecting it, he jumped up, almost involuntarily, and handed it to her. Once in the current of things, Malcolm would not readily make for the shore of inactivity: he finished the round of the table with the dish, while the men looked indignant, and the marquis eyed him queerly.
While he was thus engaged, however, Duncan, either that his poor stock of patience was now utterly exhausted, or
