e,
touching the glowing embers with his French shoe, careless of how he
burnt it.

"Walter," said my aunt, "will you not pleasure us with your company
to-night?"

"I cannot, my lady," said Lochinvar, without looking up; "I have made an
engagement elsewhere."

He spoke baldly and harshly, as one that puts a restraint on himself.

His mother looked at him with her eyes like coals from which the leaping
flame has just died out. For a moment she said nothing, but the soul
within her flamed out of the windows of her house of clay, fiery and
passionate. It had come to the close and deadly pinch with her, and it
was on the dice's throw whether she would lose or keep her son.

"Walter Gordon," she said at last, "has your mother journeyed thus far
to so little purpose, that now she is here, you will not do her the
honour to spend a single night in her company? Since when has she become
so distasteful to you?"

"Mother," said Wat, moved in spite of himself, "you do not yourself
justice when you speak so. I would spend many nights with you, for all
my love and service are yours; but to-night I cannot fail to go whither
I have promised without being man-sworn and tryst-breaker. And you have
taught me that the Gordons are neither."

"Wat," she said, hearing but not heeding his words, "bide you by me
to-night. There be sweet maids a many that will give their lives for
you. You are too young for such questing and companionry. Go not to my
Lady Wellwood to-night. O do not, my son! 'Tis your mother that makes
herself a beggar to you!"

At the name of my Lady Wellwood Walter Gordon started from his place as
though he had been stung and glanced over at me with a sudden and fiery
anger.

"If my cousin----"

But I kept my eyes clear upon him, as full of fire mayhap as his own.
And even in that moment I saw the thought pass out of his mind in the
uncertain firelight.

"Your cousin has told me nothing, though I deny not that I asked him,"
said my lady curtly. "Young men hang together, like adder's eggs. But
Wat, dear Wat, will you not put off your gay apparelling and take a
night at the cartes with us at home. See, the fire is bright and the
lamp ready. It will be a wild night without presently!"

"To-morrow, mother, to-morrow at e'en shall be the night of my waiting
upon you. To-night, believe me, I cannot--though, because you ask me,
with all my heart I would that I could."

Then his mother rose up from her seat by the fir