e, say
not a word. Sit down, young gentleman.'

'I beg pardon, sir; if I am, as I understand, in Colonel Mannering's
house, I should wish first to know if my accidental appearance here gives
offence, or if I am welcome?'

Mannering instantly made an effort. 'Welcome? most certainly, especially
if you can point out how I can serve you. I believe I may have some
wrongs to repair towards you, I have often suspected so; but your sudden
and unexpected appearance, connected with painful recollections,
prevented my saying at first, as I now say, that whatever has procured me
the honour of this visit, it is an acceptable one.'

Bertram bowed with an air of distant yet civil acknowledgment to the
grave courtesy of Mannering.

'Julia, my love, you had better retire. Mr. Brown, you will excuse my
daughter; there are circumstances which I perceive rush upon her
recollection.'

Miss Mannering rose and retired accordingly; yet, as she passed Bertram,
could not suppress the words, 'Infatuated! a second time!' but so
pronounced as to be heard by him alone. Miss Bertram accompanied her
friend, much surprised, but without venturing a second glance at the
object of her terror. Some mistake she saw there was, and was unwilling
to increase it by denouncing the stranger as an assassin. He was known,
she saw, to the Colonel, and received as a gentleman; certainly he either
was not the person she suspected or Hazlewood was right in supposing the
shot accidental.

The remaining part of the company would have formed no bad group for a
skilful painter. Each was too much embarrassed with his own sensations to
observe those of the others. Bertram most unexpectedly found himself in
the house of one whom he was alternately disposed to dislike as his
personal enemy and to respect as the father of Julia. Mannering was
struggling between his high sense of courtesy and hospitality, his joy at
finding himself relieved from the guilt of having shed life in a private
quarrel, and the former feelings of dislike and prejudice, which revived
in his haughty mind at the sight of the object against whom he had
entertained them. Sampson, supporting his shaking limbs by leaning on the
back of a chair, fixed his eyes upon Bertram with a staring expression of
nervous anxiety which convulsed his whole visage. Dinmont, enveloped in
his loose shaggy great-coat, and resembling a huge bear erect upon his
hinder legs, stared on the whole scene with great round eyes