lightest sign of motion in the features.
Lady Penelope shrieked faintly, hid her eyes, and hurried back from the
bed, while Lord Etherington, his looks darkening with a complication of
feelings, remained gazing on the poor woman, as if eager to discern
whether the spark of life was totally extinct. Her grim old assistant
hurried to the bedside, with some spirits in a broken glass.

"Have ye no had pennyworths for your charity?" she said, in spiteful
scorn. "Ye buy the very life o' us wi' your shillings and sixpences,
your groats and your boddles--ye hae garr'd the puir wretch speak till
she swarfs, and now ye stand as if ye never saw a woman in a dwam
before? Let me till her wi' the dram--mony words mickle drought, ye
ken--Stand out o' my gate, my leddy, if sae be that ye are a leddy;
there is little use of the like of you when there is death in the pot."

Lady Penelope, half affronted, but still more frightened by the manners
of the old hag, now gladly embraced Lord Etherington's renewed offer to
escort her from the hut. He left it not, however, without bestowing an
additional gratuity on the old woman, who received it with a whining
benediction.

"The Almighty guide your course through the troubles of this wicked
warld--and the muckle deevil blaw wind in your sails," she added, in her
natural tone, as the guests vanished from her miserable threshold. "A
wheen cork-headed, barmy-brained gowks! that wunna let puir folk sae
muckle as die in quiet, wi' their sossings and their soopings."[II-10]

"This poor creature's declaration," said Lord Etherington to Lady
Penelope, "seems to refer to matters which the law has nothing to do
with, and which, perhaps, as they seem to implicate the peace of a
family of respectability, and the character of a young lady, we ought to
enquire no farther after."

"I differ from your lordship," said Lady Penelope; "I differ
extremely--I suppose you guess whom her discourse touched upon?"

"Indeed, your ladyship does my acuteness too much honour."

"Did she not mention a Christian name?" said Lady Penelope; "your
lordship is strangely dull this morning!"

"A Christian name?--No, none that I heard--yes, she said something
about--a Catherine, I think it was."

"Catherine!" answered the lady; "No, my lord, it was Clara--rather a
rare name in this country, and belonging, I think, to a young lady of
whom your lordship should know something, unless your evening
flirtations with Lady Binks h