were privileged to kiss her hair.
Positively there seems no great reason, after all, why he should be so
precipitate in his removal to the town! Indeed (he told himself with the
smile of his subconscious self at the subterfuge) there was a risk of
miscarriage for his mission among tattling _aubergistes_, lawyers, and
merchants. He was positively vexed when he encountered Mungo, and that
functionary informed him that, though he was early afoot, the Baron was
earlier still, and off to the burgh to arrange for his new lodgings.
This precipitancy seemed unpleasantly like haste to be rid of him.

"Ah," said he to the little servant, "your master is so good, so kind,
so attentive. Yet I do not wonder, for your Highland hospitality is
renowned. I have heard much of it from the dear exiles--Glengarry _par
exemple_, when he desired to borrow the cost of a litre or the price
of the diligence to Dun-querque in the season when new-come Scots were
reaching there in a humour to be fleeced by a compatriot with three
languages at command and the boast of connections with Versailles."

Mungo quite comprehended.

"Sir," said he, with some feeling, "there was never bed nor board
grudged at Doom. It's like father like son a' through them. The Baron's
great-gutcher, auld Alan, ance thought the place no' braw enough for the
eye o' a grand pairty o' Irish nobeelity that had bidden themsel's to
see him, and the day they were to come he burned the place hauf doon. It
was grand summer weather, and he camped them i' the park behin' there,
sparing time nor money nor device in their entertainment. Ye see what
might hae been a kin' o' penury in a castle was the very extravagance o'
luxury in a camp. A hole in the hose is an accident nae gentleman
need be ashamed o', but the same darned is a disgrace, bein' poverty
confessed, as Annapla says."

It was a touchy servant this, Montaiglon told himself--somewhat sharper,
too, than he had thought: he must hazard no unkind ironies upon the
master.

"Charming, charming! good Mungo," said he. "The expedient might have
been devised by my own great-grandfather--a gentleman of--of--of
commercial pursuits in Lyons city. I am less fastidious, perhaps, than
the Irish, being very glad to take Doom Castle as I have the honour to
find it."

"But ye're thinkin' the Baron is in a hurry to billet ye elsewhere,"
said the servant bluntly.

In an ordinary lackey this boldness would have been too much for
Count Vict