Page:Tales of my landlord (Volume 2).djvu/281

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
OLD MORTALITY.
273

Thus speaking, he offered his arm with an air of old-fashioned gallantry, which Lady Margaret accepted with such a curtesy of acknowledgment as ladies were wont to make in Holyrood-house before the year 1642, which, for one while, drove both curtesies and courts out of fashion.

Upon the bartizan of the turret, to which they ascended by many a winding passage and uncouth staircase, they found Edith, not in the attitude of a young lady who watches with fluttering curiosity the approach of a smart regiment of dragoons, but pale, downcast, and evincing, by her countenance, that sleep had not, in the preceding night, been the companion of her pillow. The good old veteran was hurt at her appearance, which, in the hurry of preparation, her grandmother had omitted to notice.

"What is come over you, you silly girl?" he said; "why, you look like an officer's wife when she opens the News-letter after an action, and expects to find her husband