ir various intermarriages, and inwardly
deprecated the remorseless and protracted accuracy with which the worthy
Sir Everard rehearsed the various degrees of propinquity between the
house of Waverley-Honour and the doughty barons, knights, and squires to
whom they stood allied; if (notwithstanding his obligations to the three
ermines passant) he sometimes cursed in his heart the jargon of heraldry,
its griffins, its moldwarps, its wyverns, and its dragons, with all the
bitterness of Hotspur himself, there were moments when these
communications interested his fancy and rewarded his attention.

The deeds of Wilibert of Waverley in the Holy Land, his long absence and
perilous adventures, his supposed death, and his return on the evening
when the betrothed of his heart had wedded the hero who had protected her
from insult and oppression during his absence; the generosity with which
the Crusader relinquished his claims, and sought in a neighbouring
cloister that peace which passeth not away; [Footnote: See Note 2.]--to
these and similar tales he would hearken till his heart glowed and his
eye glistened. Nor was he less affected when his aunt, Mrs. Rachel,
narrated the sufferings and fortitude of Lady Alice Waverley during the
Great Civil War. The benevolent features of the venerable spinster
kindled into more majestic expression as she told how Charles had, after
the field of Worcester, found a day's refuge at Waverley-Honour, and how,
when a troop of cavalry were approaching to search the mansion, Lady
Alice dismissed her youngest son with a handful of domestics, charging
them to make good with their lives an hour's diversion, that the king
might have that space for escape. 'And, God help her,' would Mrs. Rachel
continue, fixing her eyes upon the heroine's portrait as she spoke, 'full
dearly did she purchase the safety of her prince with the life of her
darling child. They brought him here a prisoner, mortally wounded; and
you may trace the drops of his blood from the great hall door along the
little gallery, and up to the saloon, where they laid him down to die at
his mother's feet. But there was comfort exchanged between them; for he
knew, from the glance of his mother's eye, that the purpose of his
desperate defence was attained. Ah! I remember,' she continued, 'I
remember well to have seen one that knew and loved him. Miss Lucy Saint
Aubin lived and died a maid for his sake, though one of the most
beautiful and wealthy m